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Victory at What Cost?
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 24, 2009 10:26am |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Thursday, December 24, 2009 04:25:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The Senate's passage of health reform is a great step forward, but reveals how difficult future legislative victories, and governing, will be for Obama.
Mark Schmitt | December 24, 2009 | web only
"The most troublesome task of a reform president," Henry Adams wrote in his autobiography, is "to bring the Senate back to decency." President Barack Obama did not accomplish that task this year, far from it. But what he and other Democrats did accomplish this morning is something that eluded every reform president before him, and is in a sense, all the greater an accomplishment for the fact that the institution -- not just the Senate itself but the Washington culture that surrounds it -- was at its most indecent.
Every major policy victory, even though it creates momentum and potentially strengthens the president who leads it, inevitably comes with a cost. The cost may be an expenditure of political capital, a political concession due in the future, a sacrifice of a constituency, a compromise on some other policy, or a compromise within the policy itself. It's hard not to feel in one's gut that this victory came at a considerable price. But it's also hard to put one's finger on exactly where the cost is.
The cost is certainly not in the policy itself. The legislation is imperfect, compromised, and in many ways insufficient. (It can be improved slightly in conference with the House, through the addition of the House's mild employer mandate or a change in the financing, but everything will have to be cleared with the 59th and 60th most liberal senators.) But the answer to Jane Hamsher of the blog Firedoglake's "Ten Reasons to Kill the Bill" did not need actually need an item-by-item response, although it's useful that Ezra Klein provided one. It would have been sufficient to say simply that everyone who will be affected by the bill will be far better off. |
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