The promise of the Barack Obama campaign seemed improbable for any number of reasons. For me, two elements seemed most suspect. First, that he would become the emissary of the common man amid the temples of power. And second, that he would build consensus among all Americans--rich and poor, black and white, left and right. Each of these goals is laudable, if quixotic. But together, I believed they eventually would prove mutually exclusive.
Now, in the final throes of legislating health care reform, this has come to pass.
The President is facing the Achilles heel of his belief system--that with enough intelligence, logic and charm, it is possible to win the support of those whose own position depends on defeating you. Bill Clinton came to Washington with the same delusion. Many historians would say that FDR and Andrew Jackson did the same. Compromise does not work. Not with with cancer cells. Not with the cancerous special interests who corrode the arteries of democracy.
Mr. Obama faces a choice. He can begin the process of providing health insurance to the tens of millions of Americans who currently can't afford it--and actually save some money in the process. Or he can cling to the hope that somehow those whose own well being depends on the untreated illnesses of others...will somehow change their minds.
Mr. President, it will not happen. You must choose. You know the situation. While some argue with the World Health Organization's ranking of America's health care system as only 37th best in the world, it unquestionably is the most unfair, the most expensive, and even--shockingly to me--the most prone to cause death by surgical or medical mistakes.
Either represent with courage the 'average Americans' you promised to defend; or let that first cancer cell of compromise begin to replicate within your own body politic.
