[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img] It’s official. President Barack Obama has broken my heart.
I know, I know – I was warned.
I have only myself to blame.
Despite my concerted effort to ignore the 24-hour news cycle, I’ll admit that in 2008, I got caught up in Obamamania. Like everyone else so afflicted, I read his books and thought, Thank goodness, someone is running for President who has had a clear thought in his head – other than how being President could enhance his (or her) family’s legacy.
Gone would be the days of a not-so-smart President who’d stolen an election (with the aiding and abetting of the majority Republican-appointedUnited States Supreme Court, a complacent Al Gore, and a Senate that could not find one member to echo the objections being made by several members of the House). I was looking forward to a federal government led by smart, Ivy League-educated people – not unlike myself. So I (somewhat narcissistically) cast my lot with Obama. I even held my nose over his (politically motivated) choice of Joe Biden as a running mate.
But on July 1, my love affair ended. The White House health care summit, which I dutifully watched on C-Span.org, was the last straw. The first question hit the nail squarely on the head of my current problem with Obama. Steve White, from somewhere in upstate New York, asked the President: “Why are we considering a health care plan which maintains the private insurance companies with their high overhead costs, instead of a single-payer plan, which would eliminate the high overhead costs, saving the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars, while covering everyone in our country?”
A President’s Weak Response
At least it was the first question.
I wouldn’t have to wait long.
I was dying to know why Obama, who has both written and said that a single-payer system is the answer to our woes, had backed down once he was actually in a position to make this change we could believe in.
I speculated it had something to do with the secret visitors to the White House or the 350-plus former lawmakers and government staffers turned lobbyists that top insurers have hired. But Obama is still that smart, educated man for whom a majority of Americans voted. So I waited patiently for a well thought out, buzzword-free answer.
What came from Obama was woefully inadequate. His bottom line was that “[t]o transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive.”
Disruptive? Is that a legitimate reason to deny needed change? The switch to Medicare took all of one year, and by the end of that “disruptive” transition period, over 95 percent of intended beneficiaries were covered. Medicare remains a successful program supported by both major political parties today.
Even if his concern about the “disruptive” nature of change were legitimate, where exactly does it rank compared to the daily “disruption” of average Americans seeking out much-needed medical care, only to be denied such coverage by their insurance companies because providing care is too “disruptive” to the maximizing of profits?
Of course, that question was neither asked nor answered.
He Must Act Now, Not Later
And so, after wasting more than an hour of a Wednesday morning watching more non-answers to a bunch of softball questions, I went on hiatus. For the past two weeks, I’ve been on a news and information blackout.
Every so often, I go on a personal blackout. This time, I’m doing it to get over my anger over Obama’s inaction and surprising inability to articulate a reasonable explanation for it. For far too many mornings in June, I was waking up, and the first conversation topic with which I peppered my husband was something silly Obama or the Congressional Democrats had said or something they’d not done that was annoying me.
I was working myself into a stress headache before 7 a.m.
I want to go to the White House, grab the President by the shoulders, and shake some sense into him. (This is not a threat, Secret Service. Take notice of my tongue firmly implanted in cheek).
If he doesn’t watch it, I want to warn him that 2010 is going to look a lot like 1994. This is the best Congress he’s going to get (and one he specifically said he needed to get things done). Unless he shoves some good legislation through, the next two or six years of his presidency are going to look a lot like Clinton’s very long lame-duck period.
And by good legislation, I do not mean poorly designed, inadequately funded stimulus packages, and more bank and automaker bailouts.
When Obama took office, he claimed to be a student of history. Photo ops showed him reading the works of Lincoln and studying the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He claimed that a book about FDR was on the nightstand. Not to be left behind, in December, I read the FDR book he was purportedly reading, “The Defining Moment.”
It more or less discussed how FDR’s first hundred days paved the way for the New Deal policies, which put an end to the Great Depression. As we lurk on the brink of our own modern-era depression, I expected bold action, and a stimulus plan that really stimulates the economy (not one that just gloms up traffic everywhere I go).
As economic indicators slide, and unemployment rises, many economists agree that we need real stimulus – a second, better, less Wall Street-friendly bill. Yet, I see that nowhere on Obama’s radar – other than his defense of the status quo.
I expected more than an appointment of the same old people (Wall Street insiders, and former Clintonites). He said he liked to surround himself with smart people. Obviously Obama’s definition of “smart people” is the same old politicians and retreads who’ve had a hand in getting us where we are today.
Though the economy has gotten the lion’s share of media attention, I think it the least of his problems. A friend of mine recently explained Obama’s inaction by saying if he did anything that wasn’t related to the economy, he’d be accused of taking his eye off the ball (though she was personally ticked off about plum foreign service assignments going to top donors) and would be roundly criticized.
I’d like to think the President is going to take more from the Bush/Republican playbook than secreting White House visitors and refusing to investigate torture. Rather, he should do what the Republicans have always done so well – delegate. Now, he shouldn’t delegate the whole Presidency a la Bush or Reagan, but perhaps some of those pesky things that need to get done.
Like making nominations for appointment to the federal bench. As of today, there are 81 vacancies. So far Obama has made eight appointments. Sure the nomination and hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor get all the attention, but the lower court vacancies need to be filled as well. Justice delayed (and that’s what you get with increased cases and fewer judges) is justice denied.
Like treating health care reform as more than a band-aid on sick care. Any plan that ultimately enriches the insurance companies is doomed to fail, and will likely take down the U.S. economy with it. Instead, I think the President should use his bully pulpit and notoriety to talk about the terrible food Americans are ingesting. He should discuss how the heavy subsidizing of the corn industry has led every animal in this country from cows (who should eat grass) to pigs (who should forage for roots), to chickens (who should be eating insects), to people (who do not need any more high fructose corn syrup) to eat corn (and take antibiotics), and it is making all of us sick.
Like engaging in a true economic stimulus, which builds up our infrastructure , with things like high speed rail, better public transportation, or an upgraded air traffic control system, instead of throwing money at clones of the bridge to nowhere.
Like coming up with real student loan reform – that caps the amount schools can charge if they accept government loans. Whether the government is a direct lender or guarantor does not deal with the fundamental issue that schools will continue to urge students to go into debt up to their ears to earn that precious college degree (is it really worth $100,000?), and their parents and society will urge them to do so – everyone fearing a jobless life without any degree at all. And as schools build more luxury dormitories and student centers – the costs will continue to spiral, outpacing inflation and earnings.
I know, everyone in this country likely has his or her own laundry list of things to see from this President. And my list, I’m sure, differs greatly from others; but even if the foregoing list were entirely different, it would at least provide a guide to getting something positive done. Leadership is about leading, and not just with the chin. But the latter is just what Obama is doing by promoting compromise solutions that really provide nothing at all.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
