Some examples from VDH:
Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer “enemy combatants” there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is “fundamentally sound” is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.
Not to mention what a disaster that it would be to make health insurance benefits taxable, which was one of the many mendacious ways by which they slithered into the White House, except that now, maybe it’s not such a bad idea:
Now that Mr. Obama has begun the health debate, several advisers say that while he will not propose changing the tax-free status of employee health benefits, neither will he oppose it if Congress does so.
Let me translate: “Yes, I don’t want to take responsibility for it, because even my lapdogs in the media might find that too much hypocrisy to stomach after all my demagoguery on the issue last fall, but I’ll sign the bill when it gets to my desk, so go for it.”
Well, actually, I’m not sure that it would make Orwell proud. More likely sad at his own prescience.
Anti-Obama meme #1: He’s railroading his campaign platform into law.
Anti-Obama meme #2: He’s a hypocrite for not opposing every idea that he didn’t campaign on.
Pick whichever one works for you today.
a) those two membes are not incompatible and b) no one’s accusing him of being a hypocrite for “not opposing every idea he campaigned on” (at least not in this post.
Learn to read. Or think.
My problem isn’t that he’s a hypocrite, but that he’s switching out his “good” campaign promises for things that are even worse. I’d be fine with the hypocrisy if he had been a closet Cato subscriber …
Jim, your value here will be enhanced if you don’t devolve into knee-jerk opposition to everything the host says.
…”devolve into…?
He started out that way.
He campaigned against dropping the employer health insurance tax deduction as a way to push everyone into the individual private insurance market. Now he’s apparently open to taxing some health insurance benefits (e.g. the gold-plated plans), because that may be how Congress decides to pay for some of its health reform plan. And somehow this is supposed to be Orwellian….
Jim, I don’t think anyone here is accusing Obama of railroading anything. Indeed, railroading implies a certain amount of muscle and determination, political competence, and there are many of us who wish Obama showed a little more of that. Let’s have some muscle at Treasury, for example, instead of this limp-d*ck temporizing and hope ‘n’ change speechmaking (“It’s not that bad! Really! Buy stocks…please?”)
It’s not that he’s muscling in his agenda against the majority’s will. The criticism of his agenda per se is that his agenda is disastrous, and the prediction is that when it becomes clear what his agenda means in practice — for example, when the precise way in which health care is to be come “free” and “universal” becomes clear, i.e. it will be rationed and crappy — then there will be no majority support for it.
As for the second point, I don’t think the impression is that Obama is a hypocrite. Being a hypocrite implies you have convictions, and act on them — you just say something else.
I think the growing impression is that Obama has no serious convictions, that he just says whatever is convenient for the moment and the audience. That no one can trust him, not even his erstwhile supporters. (Indeed, I would suggest you personally abandon Obama as soon as possible, lest the inevitable violent revulsion when you do so later turn you into a rabid Buchananite or something. Blue Dog/Truman/Scoop Jackson Democrat is still open to you now, Jim. Listen to your feelings! Use the force!)
The impression is that Obama’s election has been something a like a pinata exploding. You’re left without a direction, without any kind of identifiable policy, just lots of people swinging sticks at random and scooping up goodies (taxpayer money) as fast as they can.
Carl: I think that is a serious misreading of the situation. Obama’s health plan (and energy plan, and education plan) were published over a year ago, and are consistent with the ideas in Audacity of Hope, published even earlier. The budget he announced is consistent with those plans, the plans the country voted for in November. Now there are people saying that he should drop or delay the ideas he campaigned on, because of the financial crisis. But Obama himself has been more consistent about his convictions and plans than any other politician I can think of. Remember how Bush ran on being a uniter, having a humble foreign policy, and avoiding nation building?
As a practical matter, presidents don’t write legislation, Congress does. So it won’t be Obama’s budget and health care plan, it’ll be Congress’s, and he won’t get everything he wants. That’s politics. The fact that he understands that (in contrast to, say, the Clintons when they were trying to do health care reform), is a mark in his favor.
> He campaigned against dropping the employer health insurance tax deduction as a way to push everyone into the individual private insurance market.
To be fair, McCain’s plan had a tax credit for health care purchases as well, so the net effect was that folks who bought for themselves received the same tax advantages as folks who got health coverage as a work benefit.
Note that the deduction is worth more to folks in the upper brackets than it is to folks in the lower brackets. In other words, McCain’s proposal was actually more progressive than the status quo.
Obama never mentioned the credit in his opposition to dropping the deduction.
To be fair, Obama is not proposing a credit now; he’s just proposing eliminating the deduction.
Er…what? I’m not sure with what you’re disagreeing, Jim. You can’t be disagreeing with the notion that Obama’s “plans” — for health or whatever — are just things he says to garner support from, well, you, for example, without any serious intention to implement them at all. He has, in fact, not implemented any of them yet. If and when he does, and they look just like his earlier statements, you’ll be entitled to say Ha! Told you so!
However, so far the stuff he’s actually implemented — with respect to Guantanomo, Iraq, rendition, FISA, budget balancing, earmarks — seems to differ substantially from his campaign statements. It’s on that basis people are wondering about his principles. The fact that he seems an equal opportunity betrayer — betraying his promises to the Left on the “War on Terror” and his promises to the right on spending — is what leads people to wonder whether he has any principles at all. Maybe he’s a raging idiosyncrat? A guy with strongly held beliefs that are held by almost nobody else at all?
Nor can I see that you disagree with my suggestion that his agenda, even assuming it corresponds to what he’s said it is, is something that will be deeply unpopular once the details of its implementation become visible.
Health care is a great example, of course. Everyone feels it should be “reformed,” just like everyone always feels there should be less “waste” in government. It’s like complaining about the weather, death and taxes. You can always get agreement on how bad it is. The problem comes when you try to actually do something different. All of a sudden, you begin to realize why the present state of affairs is so persistent. However bad it is, it’s the best you can get and still have broad-based agreement.
Once again, if Obama puts in place some real health-care reform, i.e. something other than the happy changey hopey nostrum of electronic health records (with individualized URLs! On Facebook!) or lots of “preventative” medicine (Individualized diet recommendations! On Facebook! Et cetera) and these things, even at the proposal stage, are popular, well, you let me know.
As a practical matter, presidents don’t write legislation, Congress does
Don’t be silly. That may have been true in Henry Clay’s day, but no longer. Presidents propose legislation, and their tame Congressmen obligingly introduce it. Where do you think the AUMF came from? Social Security? Welfare reform?
Were you paying attention when the Clinton’s did health care reform? I was. They didn’t fail because Congress was too independent. They failed because when the details of what they proposed leaked out, people reacted with utter horror. Since Congressmen were up for re-election, and not Clinton himself, it was Congress that was more sensitive to the potential electoral disaster and resisted.
Where I agree with you that Obama is smart is that he may realize he’s going to fail in exactly the same way, and is preparing the groundwork for the rationalization now. See? I tried, but those bastards in Congress just prevented it from happening (Republicans) or added all those provisions that you now realize suck like a Hoover (Democrats). Don’t blame me! It’s not my fault!
In fact, I’m going to nominate It’s Not My Fault!</i. as the Obama Administration’s informal slogan. They like it a lot.
So Jim, how much is enough? When you add the interest on the debt he has authorized, it’s 2 TRILLION dollars. Define a “gold plated” plan. I don’t pay any premium. If I have to pay tax on my health benefits, that’s more money out of my pocket. If you think I should pay, I have some nasty words and a brown shirt for you.
His whole presentation is Orwellian. Every bill he pushed will do the opposite of its name. He says private health care is okay but authorizes a governmnet star chamber to look at “efficiency” in providing care. That’s one example and there are plenty more.
I will say this much about Obama. He certainly does not seem to care one whit whether he is re-elected because he certainly does not hesitate to spit in the eye of the middle-class.
In fact, if I were to give the donkeys a laundry list of things to do to not get re-elected, I could have scarcely have done better than they are doing right now. He does not need Rush Limbaugh to help him either.
“Remember how Bush ran on being a uniter, having a humble foreign policy, and avoiding nation building?”
And see how a real leader was able to put aside their personal convictions and adapt to the challenges that faced us. Rarely are we dealt the cards exactly the way we want to play them. So, what do we do? We change our plans to meet reality. Doing anything differently is audacious indeed — an audacious world of make believe and fairy dust.
“Well you see, my New Deal Xtreme Max II 3d plan will succeed when we move over to the unicorn powered energy plan and the pixie dust healing spellcare system.”
“As a practical matter, presidents don’t write legislation, Congress does. So it won’t be Obama’s budget and health care plan, it’ll be Congress’s, and he won’t get everything he wants. That’s politics.”
Yes and when Bush wouldn’t sign a pork laden budget, he was an obstructionist. Obama signs a pork laden bill with 8000 plus earmarks that he says he’s against. I’m against earmarks so here, have 8000 of them. Another Orwellian example.
Nice attempt to give some cover to him, though. He’s the leader of the party. His agenda drives the party. His is the last signature on the bill. It is his.
Carl: Universal health coverage isn’t some pie-in-the-sky idea; every other industrialized nation has it. And polling shows a lot of support for Obama’s approach.
I disagree that voters will be unhappy with the results; I think that GOP opposition is based on the opposite conclusion. In 1993 Bill Kristol wrote a famous memo telling all GOP officeholders to oppose health care reform, regardless of the specifics, because a Democratic victory on health care “will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996” and that “the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse — much worse.” The GOP is making the same calculation today — they are opposing health care reform because the voters will like it.
Bill: Bush took over a government in surplus and increased the debt by 5 trillion. How many tea parties did that inspire?
The only bill Bush ever vetoed while the GOP ran Congress was for stem-cell research. He approved lots of pork.
“every other industrialized nation has it.”
If every other industrialized nation decided to jump off the roof, would you follow them? (Yep, jim’s argument boils down to the teenager’s “everyone else is doing it!” whine.)
Jim,
I asked before about your age. IIRC, Winston Churchill (yes, a Tory) said to the effect “those before 30 who aren’t liberal have no heart, and those above 30 who aren’t conservative have no brain.” Your arguments are circular and continue to be based on Keynesian thinking, leading to the same arguments that communist use… “if only we have more spending, then the problem will go away.” Andrea has it right.
Every other Industralized Nation is not the most sucessful nation in history. We are.
Why should we emulate the losers and the runners-up? Should they not aspire to emulate us in a rational world?
Go check how Clinton got his supposed surplus and mention that one event that happened oh about September 11th.
http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16
Also Bush didn’t say how much he disliked earmarks while signing a bill with over 8,000 of them. The point of the post was Obama’s doublespeak.
As to the state of other nations’ medicine, I’d advise reading the opinions of those who live there AND have to deal with said health systems. I read American expats in Britain and in Japan, and in each case the verbatim quotes have been “How do I like (nation)’s health system? Here’s some advice: Don’t get sick outside of normal business hours! Which since that covers a third or less of any given day, I take it to mean “Don’t get sick, period.” Great for those of us in the 20-45 age bracket. Less so for Boomers on the cusp of retirement, their aging parents, and the next generation now being born. Nationalized health care amounts to LoganCare – even according to those who now live it.
Lastday; renew, renew!
Jim says: The GOP is making the same calculation today — they are opposing health care reform because the voters will like it.
They are opposing it because it won’t work, as proven by the children’s health care experiment in Hawaii. You give something for free, everyone comes to it, nothing gets done.
Jim says: The only bill Bush ever vetoed while the GOP ran Congress was for stem-cell research. He approved lots of pork.
I’ll never say Bush was a good president, but one thing he alwys said and promised while campaigning is to reach across the aisle and work with the democrats. HE DID THAT and they continued to put more and more pork into bills. Bipartisanism to a liberal means give me everything I want and we’re working together. If you stiff me, you’re an obstructionist.
Your beloved Kennedy coerced Bush into 500 billion for education reform in the first term. Nothing changed though. Then when Bush wanted to try something different for education, Kennedy told him to jump off a bridge. So much for bipartisanism to solve a problem. Thanks Teddy the Porker.
Andrea and Mike: Carl argued that national health care was something we’d never get; I pointed out that we’re unusual in not having it.
R: Everyone has a story about health care. My family got socialized medical care for the first 18 years of my life. It was rationed, it wasn’t fancy, the doctors weren’t well paid, but it was excellent care and we never worried whether it’d be there if we needed it. It was provided by the U.S. Army.
But instead of trading stories, look at the data. Other countries spend less, are healthier, and are happier with their health care than we are. We aren’t the best at high-speed train travel, ski jumping, or taking vacations; isn’t it possible that we aren’t the best at health care?
Bill: Obama didn’t campaign against earmarks; that was McCain’s shtick. Obama realizes that they’re 1) unpopular and 2) a tiny piece in the big picture. The earmarks in the omnibus bill were put there before Obama was sworn in, so he could either veto it and slow down his entire agenda, or let it slide this time. If you’re looking for hypocrites, look at who put the most earmarks in — they’re GOP members, some of whom didn’t even vote for the bill! Talk about heads I win, tails you lose….
Mac: Read the Kristol memo. The GOP opposed Social Security and Medicare; in both cases they became very popular programs that keep Democrats in office to this day. The GOP doesn’t want health care to become another political score for the Democrats.
Jim says: The GOP opposed Social Security and Medicare; in both cases they became very popular programs that keep Democrats in office to this day.
Popularity does not mean good. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi Scheme in the US.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/the-national-ponzi-scheme.html
The GOP opposes these programs because they’re bad for the country’s economic life.
My family got socialized medical care for the first 18 years of my life.
This sentence will be proven incorrect.
It was rationed, it wasn’t fancy, the doctors weren’t well paid, but it was excellent care and we never worried whether it’d be there if we needed it. It was provided by the U.S. Army. See?
Military healthcare for families is not socialist in any way, shape, or form. It requires that a citizen give up a great deal of his or her freedoms, and imposes sacrifice on their families as well.
Meanwhile, Jim’s ODS is clearly on display.
The GOP opposed Social Security and Medicare; in both cases they became very popular programs that keep Democrats in office to this day. The GOP doesn’t want health care to become another political score for the Democrats.
I echo that sentiment. We don’t need more destructive programs that survive because they have a constituency.
John: It was government-provided healthcare, paid for by tax dollars, delivered to us free of charge by federal employees, in government facilities. You don’t get much more socialized than that. And for whatever it’s worth, no one chose it, at least not to start — my dad was drafted. His only choice was whether he wanted to have Army health care or prison health care.
Now you can say that the health care we got isn’t good enough for you, it’s only good enough for the military. But don’t tell me that the U.S. government is incapable of providing health care.
…don’t tell me that the U.S. government is incapable of providing health care.
Of course it’s capable of providing health care, as long as the recipients are suitably circumscribed. I’m quite confident that Congress is happy with its health care. What is in dispute is whether it is capable of providing acceptable health care to everyone, at an acceptable cost.
By the way, Jim, since you are so gung ho about having the government provide health care, I’m sure that you’ll be opposed to the administration balloon about shifting veterans’ care to private insurance, right?
It must be a dilemma for someone who supports every action of this administration with a knee jerk.
Yes, I’m opposed to the idea of billing vets’ private insurance for VA care. I can’t imagine what Obama thinks he’s accomplishing by raising that idea.
Jim, you move those goal posts real well, that or your reading comprehension is for sh#t. He says one thing and does another which, again, was the point of the post and what I talked about.
Now you can say that the health care we got isn’t good enough for you, it’s only good enough for the military.
Yeah, Jim, you’re an idiot. Military brat and veteran here, and I was right on the money. The healthcare is part of the service agreement, at least until Obama gets started on his long betrayal of the military. It’s no more socialist than employer-provided insurance.
Bill, Jim has many failings. He doesn’t have any reading comprehension, and he’s forgotten the first rule of holes.
Hey, John, let’s give him a little credit. Unlike Barack Obama on…well…everything, he did decide to swap a shovel for a rope on the Ron Silver post.