The health care war has been decided, but one battle continues. Republicans and Democrats debate: Have Obama’s bare-knuckled tactics proven that his campaign promises of post-partisanship were pure rhetoric? Or has Republican obstructionism pushed even his nuanced soul into Bush-like “if you’re not with us, you’re with the enemy” line drawing?
As it often turns out in politics, the answer is that both sides are mostly right. On the one hand, there is no question that the Republicans have been using obstructionism for political gain. Reform proposals that some Republicans once endorsed or at least considered have since been maligned by the party as “socialist.” Scott Brown, the 41st vote that forced the Democrats to use the ironically named “reconciliation” procedure, voted for the Massachusetts health care law on which ObamaCare is largely based, and even the end-of-life counseling provision that inspired the term “death panels” is similar to a provision Republicans supported in 2003. Some of the Republicans’ rightward turn is a reaction to record-setting deficits, but some is a reaction to the polls. Right now, obstruction sells.
But those claiming that Republican tactics forced a post-partisan Obama to fight when he wanted to compromise are forgetting something: Obstruction doesn’t always sell. As Newt Gingrich found out the hard way when he shut down the government over budget disputes, obstruction backfires when the president stands closer to the political center than the obstructionists. And time and time again during his presidency, Obama’s liberal ideology has led to decisions that let Republicans claim the center by blocking him.
Obama’s chief liberal mistake was to put the left’s dreams of universal coverage ahead of the average American’s actual concerns. When Obama’s term began, the country had a single overriding concern: preventing economic catastrophe. Beneath this concern seethed populist anger, anger both toward the causes of the crisis and toward some of the government’s steps to resolve it: the bailouts and the exploding deficit.
Obama knew to focus on the crisis, but he ignored the anger. A post-partisan president would have seized on it and used it to push through difficult banking reforms under the slogan, “Never another bailout.” He would have worked hard to create credible, long-term plans for deficit reduction and promised Americans that their children would not inherit a crushing load of debt. Had Republicans chosen to obstruct these goals, a post-partisan president would have smashed them in the polls. Instead, our liberal president’s banking reforms have languished while he spent all his political capital on health care and submitted a budget that barely pays lip service to deficit reduction. And when you talk as much as Obama, lip service isn’t worth much.
Having ignored the political center by making health care his first priority, Obama steered further to the left by building his reform plans around the goal of universal coverage. A post-partisan president would have recognized that although making health care more widely available is an admirable goal, it is not nearly so pressing as the need to cut health care costs—an indisputable and urgent problem that unites Democrats, Republicans, and independents. A post-partisan president would have prioritized accordingly, putting cost control first and tackling problems like the uninsured only within the broader framework of reducing the price of health care.
During the 2008 campaign, President Obama made the promise to “bring us together,” and despite the Republicans’ obstructionism, it is President Obama who bears chief responsibility for not living up to that promise. By making health care his top priority over the economy, and by making coverage the center point of the health care debate instead of costs, the President made his priorities very clear. For all the hype, post-partisanship was never more than packaging. Liberalism was always the product.
Alan Hurst and Stephen Richer are natives of Utah. Alan is a third year law student at Yale Law School. Stephen works at legal think tank in Washington, D.C.