August 2009

Around the time in 1975 that Senator Ted Kennedy made it clear he would not run for President in 1976 he came to Phoenix, Arizona.  I covered the Senate hearing he chaired.  It sought to shine light on the challenges facing Native Americans.  The often moving testimony that day concluded with the Senator making clear with whom he would stand.

Local reporters lined up for individual interviews.  I was second following a competitor who looked a lot like Lt. Tragg on Perry Mason.  He shoved his microphone as he asked in his gravelly voice, “Isn’t the real reason you’re not running for President Senator Kennedy that young girl you killed in your car?”  Kennedy answered with “no” and his explanation to multiple forms of the same barked question.  I imagined my interview evaporating as the Senator made a quick exit.

Ending his first interview Senator Kennedy stepped toward me.  He answered my questions-all centered on the hearing and worked his way through the entire line of waiting reporters.  There was no anger or hostility, only grace.

It is a small story in the life of a giant.  But experiencing that kind of character, Senator Kennedy’s character, was rare in my twenty-five years in the media.  Taking comfort over the years in Ted Kennedy’s unwavering adherence to his core values and beliefs I’ve thought of it often.  Masterful at legislative compromise he never abandoned his values and beliefs.  A unique national leader has passed.

Gloom and despair join to create overcast for Democrats these days.  As my recent blogs indicate, this one included.  Driven by a sense that the moneyed interests are successfully using one of their properties, the Republican Party, we fear loosing the reform of health care in America.  Perhaps worse is the sensed growing possibility that calculated, exploited ignorance would again defeat reason.  M. Scott Peck has defined evil as “militant ignorance.”  Evil stalks our land.

One result is falling approval numbers and growing disappointment with President Barack Obama.  Despite a seething anger I can’t sign up for this view.  My every instinct fights against it.  Joining instinct is a belief that hidden by today’s chaos the forces for good are working an effective strategy.  It includes dividing the enemy, using the Legislative process, and a long-term belief in the judgment of the American people.

One cause for the failure of the Clinton health reform of the early 90s was unified opposition from the health care industry.  The Obama Administration has divided this powerful enemy.  It negotiated a private agreement with the pharmaceutical industry.  Pharma contributes $80 billion to reduce the cost of its products for seniors over the next ten years.  In exchange it avoids having to negotiate drug prices in a reformed health care system.   Standing alone, the deal stinks and progressives are wildly derisive.  But big pharma has joined a coalition funding ads supporting health care reform.  The American Medical Association is another member of the coalition.  The juggernaut faced by the Clintons is broken.

President Obama has been widely criticized for not taking control of the process to write reform legislation.  In the Senate, he has worked beyond all ordinary reason and hope for a bipartisan reform bill.  The Republican leading work on bipartisan legislation, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, has even endorsed the “death panel” ignorance of anti-reform groups.  Any bill that Grassley supports will be awful.  Legislative process, however, favors the pro-reform forces.  Consider how this story could unfold.

As the Senate continues its work, the House has produced a bill through its committee process that includes a public option.  This bill is likely to be approved by the full House in September.  Once the awful counterpart emerges from the Senate, the two bills go to a House/Senate conference committee to sort through the differences.  The product is a bill that will come before each chamber.  I believe it will include a public option.  There are enough votes in the House to pass it.

The filibuster is a major stumbling block to Senate approval of anything.  Unless 60 Senators join to stop debate, Republicans can use the filibuster-as they often do-to kill reform.  Even with 60 Democratic Senators it’s unlikely they would join to stop debate.  President Obama and his allies then have a trump card to play.  The health care reform bill can be considered a budget reconciliation procedure.  “Reconciliation” does not permit the filibuster.  The bill would pass with a majority of 51 votes.  Critical heat will be aimed at any effort to bypass “normal” Senate procedure.  But this is the road we travel to health care reform with a public option.

The thugs working town halls across the country have intensified the storm clouds over reform.  Calculated exploitation of lies whip reform opponents into a frenzy.  The resulting mob then drowns any perspective but its own with screams and physical intimidation.  The news media revels in the chaos creating a sense that this strategy works.

Despite cries for outrage, President Obama counters with far less dramatic reason and truth.  He is making a huge, calculated political bet.  Two results are possible:  militant ignorance wins and we loose America, or we get a true reform bill.  If the latter, watch when the dust settles.  Republicans may have put the final nail in their political coffin they have constructed with such intent.  The President will stand at the winner’s window to collect on his bet on the American people.

It is a fearful, tense and troubling time.  There is little comfort from the media that watches.  Let’s not blink.  As we did in the 2008 election we have cause to stand with President Obama.  We had hope then.  We have hope now.

Believing that Barack Obama’s inauguration ended our time of national darkness may still prove to be true.  Beyond hoping, I pray that it is.  America is at stake.

The nightmare returns:  Birthers and deathers take to the American streets.  Their anger, generated by so many concerns beyond health care-immigration, the stimulus, the bail-out of Wall Street, the take-over of GM-captures its first hostage:  media pundits who increasingly forecast the demise of health care reform.  If the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling the consequences reach far beyond health care.

Those who enlisted in the Obama army in the last campaign first defeated cynicism.  Believing in the era of Bush that a first term U.S. Senator who is African American could win a national election initially engendered derision in the political world.  For many who enlisted, taking action grew out of taking a stand and not a rose colored belief in victory.  Prerequisite though was a belief in the founding values of American democracy.  Central to potential victory is having a case to make.  What a case Barack Obama and his army joined to make.

Birthers and deathers present an alternative route to potential victory.  Light the fuse that ignites deep-seated resentment; unleash screaming rage.  A case to make is not necessary for victory.  In a land ruled by ignorance, the lowest IQ leads.

Imagine America as the land of the right wing:

• All twelve million or so illegal immigrants are expelled with a shattering result to our national economy if not our soul.
• There is no stimulus plan sending tens of thousands more Americans to the unemployment lines.
• There is no bailout of Wall Street and the international economy collapses.
• GM and Chrysler disappear taking with them huge numbers of manufacturing jobs.
• The ranks of those without access to health care swell as the cost of the status quo overwhelms the ability to pay.

Now, imagine what happens politically in America.  The next promising leader to take the stage will face derision without much hope of marshalling an army.  Some might act in an absence of potential victory, but it won’t be an army.

The nightmare returns.  The birthers and deathers take to the American streets.  Their only case to make is the expression of anger.  If anger carries the day then Thomas Jefferson’s view that we cannot be ignorant and free becomes more than an admonition.  It could become a nation’s epitaph.

We find ourselves in the midst of a national psychotic break.  It is stoked by moneyed interests seeking to again defeat health care reform.  It is stoked by the political party that represents those moneyed interests.  It is stoked by a media that generally behaves as though it is among the moneyed interests.  It is a good time to consider what we know.

• The current health care system in America is not sustainable. Without reform more of us will either loose our health care, pay much more for it, or experience reductions in what our insurance plans cover.
• Without reform the deficit of the national government will grow significantly because of uncontrolled medical costs that impact Medicare and Medicaid.
• Independently collected data shows that the health of citizens of this country is less than that of the nations providing universal health care for all their citizens.
• The current health care system generally reimburses medical providers for individual services provided whether needed and regardless of whether another provider has already performed the service. It does not reimburse providers because of good health results for the patient.
• The health insurance that polls highest for the satisfaction of the people it covers is Medicare-a government run system.
• The most efficient health care provided in the United States, meaning the one with the lowest administrative costs, by far, is Medicare-the government system.
• Congress agreed during the Bush Administration to subsidize private insurance companies to provide seniors the same coverage as the government’s Medicare program. That subsidy now amounts to 177 billion taxpayer dollars a year.
• Those who receive tax-free medical benefits through their employer do not have to worry that their insurance company will deny coverage for a pre-existing condition. There is a government regulation that prevents it.
• Those who individually buy insurance coverage through private companies face a gauntlet. Those insurance companies hire many people to find reasons not to pay for the medical care of clients with this type of coverage.
• At the time of the debate on the Clinton proposals for health reform, private insurance companies paid out about 95% of premium dollars collected for medical care. Today those private companies pay out about 80% of premium dollars collected for medical care.
• Private health care providers refer to the money they pay out for the medical coverage of those holding their policies as “losses.”
• The argument against health care reform 2009 is a repeat of the arguments orchestrated over many decades by the health insurance industry to oppose reform. “Socialism” and “government take-over” of health care are not just tired arguments they are lies. Remember the Ronald Reagan recording in opposition to the original Medicare Act?

Because of what we know let us answer the call to fight for reform of the American health system, access to health care for all Americans, and sanity.

This is perhaps the best column I’ve read yet on the health care debate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080603854.html

At town hall meetings across America we witness how Republicans treat those with whom they disagree.  In this harsh atmosphere, nine Republican Senators distinguished themselves yesterday in voting to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court.  We note their measure of honor.

Senator Lamar Alexander R-TN
Senator Kit Bond R-MO
Senator Susan Collins R-MA
Senator Lindsey Graham R-SC
Senator Judd Gregg R-NH
Senator Richard Lugar R-IN
Senator Mel Martinez R-FL
Senator Olympia Snowe R-MA
Senator George Voinovich R-OH

Our nation takes a historic step.  By the end of Senate business today we will have the first Hispanic member of the United States Supreme Court-and the third woman in our 233-year history.  We have miles to travel before we sleep in a post racial America, but our recent record supports a pause to savor.  Congratulations America for this rare moment in an otherwise coarse and hostile political time.

Judge-soon to be Justice-Sotomayor brings to the Supreme Court the deepest resume and judicial record of any nominee in the past Century.  This record can attract disagreement but not serious attack.  Sorting through hundreds of thousands of her public words those who seek to stand in her way surfaced about six concerning the wisdom of a wise Latina.  Public relations tactics of repeating those words endlessly produced a just result:  failure.

As opponents-from Mitch McConnell to John McCain-announce their reasoning for voting no, they only confirm that this Latina indeed holds a superior wisdom.   As opponents suggest she is a judicial activist, we need only compare, amidst our derisive laughter, her judicial record to that of Chief Justice John Roberts.  Let us embrace the coming time of deeper, richer thought on the nation’s highest court.

In accepting her nomination, Judge Sotomayor touched America as she told the story of her widowed mother’s support that fueled her remarkable educational and professional achievements.  The soon to be Justice said she is half the woman her mother is.

My Hispanic wife’s family-my family-knows a special pride this day.  A life perspective colored with experience much like their own is now represented on the United States Supreme Court.  Congratulations America.

Growing reports from around the country describe the Republican practice of democracy these days.  You organize a group of thugs to prevent any exchange of ideas at Congressional town halls.  Shout down anyone supporting health care reform.  If necessary, bring the meeting to a halt.  In New York a Congressman had to be escorted from his town hall by five policemen.  How to instructions for this strategy are in a memo written at the lobbying firm headed by former House Republican leader Dick Armey.

Democrats do not have a rich history of sedate debates, but we do like to argue-often and with emotion.  One of our leaders, Vice President Gore, authored a book detailing the national loss of the ability to reason.  As he wrote in The Assault On Reason, discovering and comparing the best available evidence to solve problems is the hallmark of self-government.  Organizing to prevent discussion in a democratic society seems a strategy designed in a country with a different operating system than democracy.   Iran perhaps.

It is such an affront to the process, often messy, of reasoning our way through complex problems.  Most unfortunate is that we are robbed of hearing the argument the Republicans would actually make against reforming the most dysfunctional health care system in a modern nation.  Of course we’ve heard the talking points from strategies developed by the health care industry:  government take-over of health care, they really want to euthanize your grandparents, etc. etc. etc.  But these are not arguments.  They are talking points designed to find traction in the population through repetition, not truth.

These strategies do seem a natural follow to Republican practice during the Bush Administration.  Remember the town halls of George Bush?  Entry reserved for like-minded people; wearing a t-shirt suggesting a different viewpoint would get you thrown out.  What do you suppose would have happened to those who tried to shut down his town hall meetings?

If any issue demands the rigor of a democratic debate it is health care.  The answer includes consequences of life and death.  The behavior of thugs threatens more than our system of government.  It threatens the health of our children.

The Quality movement in the private sector has been defined as finding and eliminating waste.  If there is an unnecessary step in the production line, get rid of it.  It’s time for a Quality movement in politics.

There are so many complex, difficult issues that confront us.  Imagine focusing on each part of an issue, considering the best available evidence and finding the solution.  Take health care as the example.  Reform opponents shape the debate while implementing the strategies of the health care industry.  Fear and doubt, not reason, grow:  the public option will result in government run health care, government bureaucrats will make your medical decisions, you won’t be able to chose your doctor, the elderly will be targeted for euthanasia.  Once entering this rabbit hole we just circle phony idea after phony idea.  But that’s a key part of the strategy.

Or take the birther movement, please.  The repulsive debate over whether Barack Obama was born in America exudes waste.  Two significant contentions emerge.  Are we too stupid for self-government or is this just cover for those swimming in a huge pool of racism.  Of course these are not mutually exclusive conclusions.

Throughout history stupid ideas have colored the political landscape.  Now they consume it.  It is a significant threat to democracy as it drives thoughtful people from the process.

Once the media was a tool for political Quality.  Ignoring the stupid it helped focus on the real questions.  Today, it builds programs on the waste and becomes a big part of the problem.

If a silver bullet solution is out there I don’t know it.  Perhaps we just need to combine small steps.  More selective use of the media is one.  I try not to miss New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, or Bill Moyers’ Journal.  The Internet of course is a powerful tool to find cogent discussions of real issues.  Many companies using Quality as a strategy created Quality Circles.  Workers group in teams to focus on a given part of the big picture.  Threaded, email discussions become the modern version.

Small strategies are not individually the answer but they can combine to eliminate waste.  Step-by-step we can build Quality in politics.