July 2009

Hearing the avalanche of polling data on the health care issue I return to the question I asked during the Presidential campaign:  as a nation, “how dumb are we?”  Indisputable is that the United States currently has the most broken health care system among all modern industrialized nations.  Statistics on our health spell out the consequences.  We are less well than the people living in those nations.  Yet gradually increasing numbers of people cling to the status quo.

The media, of course, performs to its modern form.  Stand entirely in the middle and let someone for reform speak and then let someone against it speak.  Republicans froth at the mouth with lies about the result of planned reform.  With the exception of Paul Krugman of the New York Times few from the institution that is supposed to present America the best available information challenge.  Krugman even takes on the Blue Dog Democrats and their specious claims to be working to reduce future deficits.

But the electorate chose Barack Obama in the election with 52% of us nearly shouting, “We’re not that dumb.”  Polls on health care suggest a companion question:  “How selfish are we?”  As we stand witness to the fifty million people with no health insurance in America many increasingly fear their current coverage will be harmed by reform.  Pair that with the fact that no one’s current coverage is sustainable without reform and we’re back to, “How dumb are we?”

Do you suppose it’s possible that we are smart enough to elect Barack Obama but dumb enough to stand in the way of required, practical change?  The results will tell us.  His willingness and ability to work the process and press toward reform is a significant part of hope.  As he reminded throughout the campaign though, he can’t do this alone.  He needs our help.

In his response to a New York Times Op Ed on coal and green house gases, my brother Mike stirs me to again write.  Mike:  “It is most interesting how the phrase “it’s politics” has become so common in its use without an appreciation of its intrigue and complexities. Strategies to force opposing sides into undesirable positions and extremes of positions have become the norm.  I am constantly reminded each day of a quote I have in my office from the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving the EPA:  ‘There is nothing in the law requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to follow the most logical or sensible course of action open to it…the ramifications of requiring a federal agency to follow the most logical course are beyond the judicial imagination.’ ”

My friend Don reminded me last week that we live in the nation that turned its industrial machine on a dime in World War II to produce armaments required to defeat the most evil national force in modern history.  We now stand incapable of planning our way to green energy, impotent in reforming the most broken health care system in the industrialized world, simply not up to regulating a financial system engaged in practices that will visit economic ruin on the world.  “It’s politics.”  These two words define our collective national failure to solve problems-even though they pose consequences of life and death.

Another friend, who served in the Oregon Legislature, offered an insight some years ago.  He was stunned by the inability of legislators to use process to discover effective action.  Committee hearings at nearly all governmental levels have degenerated.  Once used to ask, discuss and probe to discover collective wisdom, they now serve to build support for preconceived notions and grow political power.

In his book The Assault On Reason, Al Gore writes, “Faith in the power of reason-the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power-was and remains the central premise of American democracy.  This premise is now under assault.”  The assault mutilates hope.  Observing the present scene you could be forgiven for concluding that the “central premise of American democracy” has been defeated.

This sense of our national condition combines with intense family experiences this summer to take the pen from my hand.  Not writing provides small comfort.  Writing is not itself the answer, but “It’s politics” is no cause for silence.  Thanks brother for the lesson.

In approaching the American celebration of Democracy we are given an object lesson.  Two hundred thirty three years ago Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and the band of founding giants codified a governing process.  Openly working diverse, conflicting viewpoints in the community square grinds them into collective wisdom, the cement that binds common action.  Two institutions major in all our lives face ruin for rejecting this Democratic foundation:  the Republican Party and the Catholic Church.

Nobly founded as a rejection of American slavery the Party of Abraham Lincoln is dead.  More than 100 years later Ronald Reagan doubles down on Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy.  The resulting Republican inquisition tortures and kills thinking outside conservative and hard-right religious bookends.  Enshrining pre-conceived thinking evaporates collective wisdom.  Its replacement is the universal and singular political strategy of firing up the base.  In-bred ideas produce feeble and contorted offspring.  Climate change is a scientific hoax.  Using health to make money wards off socialism.

The New York Times front page reports symptoms of another institutional death:  “The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.”  Those straying beyond clearly marked conservative doctrine must be corralled.  Pope John-Paul II and Benedict XVI play the religious counter-point to Reagan and Nixon.

John Paul’s powerful personal charisma and many great acts obscure a key governing strategy.  Over 27 years he populates the College of Cardinals with those sharing his deeply conservative perspective.  Diverse views alive in the real world disappear as those who think alike gather to govern.  More tightly drawn doctrinal reins reduce those within the circle of faith.

Our nation’s Founders understand the natural variety of complex and layered human beliefs—and more.  They recognize each strand holds a portion of the truth.  They oppose Community withering strategies forcing homogeneity with the public square, the market place of ideas worked to reap collective wisdom.  From that soil grows the rose of American Democracy.

A rose by any other name is not necessarily a rose (see the previous post).  It might be a weed.  On the eve of July 4th consider the Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

The elections of 2006 and 2008 raise a mighty voice.  Rejecting lies, barely veiled manipulation, ignorance and anti-science, American voters sound the call for change and reform.  Too many in the majority party in the U.S. Senate have not the ears to hear.

From community discussion to polling to election results it is clear the voters charge elected officials to act in three areas:  health care, climate change, and reforming the financial system that failed this nation and the world.  The clarity of public opinion is all the more remarkable because it emerges in a nation controlled by moneyed, special interests.

We Devout Democrats celebrate the Party of the big tent.  But there are times and issues that demand unity of action.  Discipline of purpose need not tear down the big tent.  From assigning chairmanships to providing campaign contributions Party leaders and President Obama can and should enforce discipline in these three areas.

Bill Clinton went to Washington in 1992 with a Democratic Congress.  It stalled, stumbled and stuttered.  After the 1994 elections Republicans owned both Houses.  This American tragedy should not be repeated.  Fighting the weeds need not destroy the garden.