Joe Conason: Obama’s Enforcer: Not Really Tough Enough

Obama’s Enforcer: Not Really Tough Enough
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090819_obamas_enforcer_not_really_tough_enough/
Posted on Aug 20, 2009

By Joe Conason

If the Democrats fail to pass real changes in the health care system this year—rather than a sham that mimics and mocks reform—they will have nobody to blame but themselves. Or at least nobody to blame but other Democrats, notably those in the White House who have never been committed to this most venerable and fundamental aspect of party policy.

Of course, the right-wing rumor mongers have done their share of damage, spreading lies about “death panels” and stirring up the boob cohort with warnings about socialism. Republican elected officials have decided to damage the president rather than address an issue they know is critical to the nation’s future. Health insurance lobbyists and corporate leaders have spent millions of dollars to kill reform, buying legislative obedience the same way they buy advertising time or legal advice.

Yet in the months that followed the momentous election of November 2008, the Democrats have possessed the power to fulfill the moral imperative—good, affordable health care for all Americans—that they have pursued since the Harry Truman era. Both the new president and the new majorities in both houses of Congress declared their determination to create the kind of health care system that other developed nations have enjoyed for the past 50 years or so.

Now competing measures that might or might not accomplish that worthy goal are stalemated in Congress while the White House dithers over how best to placate Republicans and conservative Democrats who have opposed serious reform from the beginning.

The ultimate responsibility for this sorry state of affairs belongs with the president, who vacillates between speaking out boldly for a “public option,” and permitting his aides and appointees to undermine his message by confiding their plans to sell out.

His worst tendency, to exalt bipartisan compromise above progressive policy, has left him at the mercy of senatorial frauds like Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who pretended to negotiate over details while denouncing the president for seeking to terminate America’s grandmothers. Obama assigned far too much responsibility for health care reform to aides who exacerbate that weakness—and in particular to Rahm Emanuel, the current chief of staff and former congressman from Chicago.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090819_obamas_enforcer_not_really_tough_enough/

the public interest once again. He will congratulate himself on a job well done. His Blue Dogs will boast of frustrating that liberal Obama. Everyone will get a nice check from the insurance lobbyists."

How true. :(

We all knew from the beginning that Rahm was a corporatist snake. Appointing him was just one of many horrible appointment choices Obama made, and it is all going to come back to bit him, and us, on the ass.