Obama and Public Healthcare: The Man Who Could Have Been

It’s not easy being Barack Obama these days: too many high hopes, too much opposition, too many complaints from the “professional left” (as his press secretary put it), too many problems with the economy, too many problems with healthcare, too many problems with Afghanistan and Wiki-leaks, too many Tea-Party rallies, too much pressure from Corporate America and Wall Street, too many Rush Limbaugh wannabes, too much debt, too many issues with the BP oil spill, too many issues with Israel and Palestine, too many issues with Lebanon and the Russians, too many issues with Iran, people saying he’s too progressive or not progressive enough, Republicans circling him like vultures, just TOO MUCH STUFF! So not surprisingly I’ve heard people say how much they just would not like to be “in Obama’s shoes”, it would just be too much of a hassle, they say.  I disagree, for I know exactly what I would have done.
  
Take healthcare reform for instance.  If Obama had been truly progressive and truly serious about securing affordable healthcare for all, he would have done the following as soon as he was elected: he would have addressed the American people, pointed his finger squarely at the Republican hacks and “Blue Dog” Democrat stooges and said, “People, you want affordable healthcare and these privileged, wealthy, Mayo-Clinic-visiting elites stand in the way this basic aspiration.  I campaigned on change, but I need your help to make it happen.  I invite you to come into the streets and show these Senators and Congressmen how you feel – healthcare is your right.  If you want it, come out and claim it!” Millions would have turned out, the Senate would have been forced to back down and national single-payer public healthcare would have become a reality in America.

But this did not happen.  As it happens Americans didn’t even get the so-called “public option” that everyone was talking about for awhile as a compromise.  Why? Because someone had to do things by the book, even after he had won a historic election victory largely because he did not do things by the book! Elected as a progressive, Obama rapidly showed himself to be a conservative: caving in on healthcare, caving in on finance reform and bank regulation, failing to prosecute the crimes of the Bush Administration, perpetuating the War on Terror, failing to stand up against Israel on the issue of expanding Jewish settlements, failing to empower American workers or increase the strength of unions, and now promising “cuts” to social spending in order to pay down a deficit created by the Pentagon and by Wall Street – two powers he is afraid to infringe upon.  He rode to power on the back of a popular movement of unprecedented power, fired up by the prospect of progressive reform after years of conservative lies and abuse, but he chose to disband this movement, his greatest source of strength, thus abandoning the streets of America to the ultra-conservative Tea-Party movement pretty much without a fight.

I’ve heard a lot of commentators dismiss Obama’s failure on cultural grounds – somehow he was just out of touch with American “public opinion” (almost always referring to the Tea Party people) which is just too “conservative” to accept “big government” solutions like universal public healthcare.  Obama is thus condemned for being “arrogant” and for not realizing the kind of country the United States is.  David Brooks of the New York Times in particular was quick to criticize Obama’s “lack of humility” in the face of the people.  I agree that Obama is ignorant of what his people want, but it is not the kind of ignorance that Brooks talks about nor is he alone in his misperceptions.

In response to a news article about how Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs was condemning the progressive left for being “too harsh” on Obama for not supporting a “Canadian-style healthcare system,” one Canadian viewer on the CBC website posted a comment agreeing that Canadian-style single-payer healthcare just would not work in America.  He gave the usual cultural argument: Americans are just too “survivalist” and “individualistic” to accept such a program.  Canadians, by contrast, are much more “socialistic” by nature so we can “handle” public healthcare in a way the Americans can’t.  Obama echoes this sentiment, claiming that it “would be nice” if Americans could have single-payer healthcare and that in “some countries” it “works pretty well” but it is just not in line with America’s “traditions”.  It’s all very cute, but if this is true and Americans are just too “redneck” for single-payer healthcare than why, in poll after poll, do the majority of Americans (in some cases as much as two thirds) say they want it? Of course then there is the response that there is just “too much opposition” for single-payer healthcare to be successful in America.  One wonders how many people it takes to de-rail progressive legislation in the US that the majority of people want.  Considering the public option crashed and burned while single-payer wasn’t even given a fair hearing, apparently not much.  This has not been a failure of the American people, but a failure of political will on the part of the elected representatives that the American people trusted to do the right thing.

After running an election platform based on new beginnings, Obama promptly lost touch with his people’s appetite for change.  Americans are not naturally conservative; the powers that be would just like to think that way.  If Obama hopes to survive in office, he’d better understand this.