The Politics of Tenacity

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090723_the_politics_of_tenacity/

The Politics of Tenacity


Posted on Jul 23, 2009

By E.J. Dionne


Wow, what big and unexpected news! Reforming the health care system is really hard, and Republicans want President Obama to fail. Imagine that.

Oh, yes, and when the public gets a close look at the sausage-making process in Washington, it doesn’t like what it sees. And one more revelation: In a bad economy, it’s tough for a president to maintain approval ratings in the 60s indefinitely.

A sense of crisis pervades the nation’s capital. Congress is behind schedule in pushing along health system reform and the president’s poll numbers have dipped slightly.

Thus Obama’s prime-time news conference Wednesday, aimed at defending his past actions on the economy and explaining, yet again, why reforming health care is a better idea than leaving things as they are.

When this city goes berserk, it’s helpful to entertain an alternative view of reality: that certain problems were going to have to be dealt with eventually, and that only the appearance of a crisis would bring them to the surface.

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It was entirely predictable that we would have this cacophony once the debate was joined in earnest and once citizen-consumers began counting up the costs and benefits of reform.

But the only choice that matters is whether we want to cover all Americans and begin the multiyear task of fixing the health system, or whether we prefer, once again, to use the details as an excuse for evading what we know must be done someday.

The politics of escape uses difficulties as an excuse for inertia. The politics of tenacity accepts that some problems are excruciatingly difficult, and resolves to deal with them anyway. The crisis in Washington arises because that choice is now upon us.