Hubris or Leadership?

The week ahead will be full of political theater. Democrats are poised to force a vote on the House floor for President Obama's healthcare reform package, which would federalize one-seventh of the the U.S. economy. What's remarkable about this legislative effort is that the President and Democratic leaders in Congress continue to push this unpopular bill in spite of the fact that the American people--after more than a year of debate--are clearly telling their elected representatives that--while they want healthcare reform--they do not want this bill to become law.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 43% of Americans support the bill while 53% oppose it. More telling, only 23% strongly favor the bill while 43% strongly oppose it. This sentiment is not just being expressed in public opinion polls, but in the polls that are the only ones that count--the ballot box. During the fourth quarter of last year, Democrats suffered defeats in Virginia (a moderate, usually right-of-center state), New Jersey (a consistently left-leaning state), and--remarkably--Massachusetts (the bluest of blue states and consistently liberal). Yet in spite of these electoral losses and the clear message that voters seem to be sending to Washington, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have clearly adopted a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" strategy. They are leaning heavily on Democrats to vote affirmatively on the bill, even though many of those Democrats sense that a yes vote will mean a quick ticket home when they come up for re-election this November.

Some see this as leadership--the notion that the President, against a wave of negative polls and the headwinds of public opinion, will lead us out of the morass and into a new era of prosperity with healthcare coverage for all Americans. I see it as hubris on a grand scale.

During a moment of unguarded candor, Obama opened a window on to his view of the often messy democratic legislative process in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News on February 7: "I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people." 


When one parses this quote, some interesting undercurrents in the President's thinking are revealed:

• He believes that an 'academically-approved' approach is the best. Clearly, if we would only allow the academic elites at Harvard or Yale to figure out this healthcare mess for us and then enact their solutions into law, all would be well.
• Not only is the academic approach best, but it would be 'very elegant'. The democratic process which includes lobbyists, deal-making, public polls, town hall meetings with voters, and commentary from the pundits is unsavory and beneath the dignified, direct, and monarchical approach which Obama would clearly prefer.
• Having 'legislative fingerprints' on a piece of legislation just messes things up. The Constitution is incredibly inconvenient for a man of Obama's intelligence, sophistication, and prowess.

And so it ends with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn't worth it--worth the discord, the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost over the past year is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous. Memo to future presidents: never stake your entire survival on the painful passage of one bad bill.