Passing Health Care Reform has done some strange things to some pundits. Here, for instance, is Mark McKinnon, maverick strategist, former advisor to Dubya and McCain and also, of course, a lapsed Democrat:
If you think politics have been partisan up until now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The passage of this bill will only sharpen the divide. Now there is a clear hero and a clear enemy, something to fight for and fight against. The target now has a bull’s eye.
[…] While Democrats will argue this bill is the most important health-care legislation since the enactment of Social Security and Medicare, Republicans will note that all those measures passed with significant bipartisan support. Medicare had the backing of 65 House Republicans and 13 senators, while Social Security was approved with 77 GOPers casting aye votes, joined by 14 senators.
That was published on March 21st. Four days earlier McKinnon had written another piece for the Daily Beast arguing:[…]President Obama has made his stand on health care and said it may cost him a second term. Let’s give him kudos for candor because given the searing politics of this issue, he may be right.
Obama’s approval ratings, on the other hand, hover well above his colleagues’—at a healthy 48 percent.
Let’s drill down on that a bit. It’s hard to imagine that things will get any worse for Obama during his presidency. The economy may not be roaring by 2012, but it’s likely to be better. Whatever happens with the health-care bill, assuming it does ultimately pass, it will have had time to take effect and will probably be less onerous than feared. Most soldiers will be out of Iraq and perhaps progress will be apparent in Afghanistan.
So which is it? Or can both arguments be correct? Possibly – but probably not. Note how, in less than a week, HCR went from something that would probably have a political impact that would be “less onerous than feared” to being a potential Presidency-ender. All that happened in between these pronouncements was that the Democrats won a vote in the House of Representatives.No president has been reelected with an approval rating below 47. And, so Obama, at what is probably the lowest point in his presidency, still has a strong enough approval rating to win a second White House term. And that’s before a reelection campaign in which he and his team will probably spend $1 billion.
Equally, I’m puzzled why McKinnon, who is not a Beltway Guy, seems to have purchased stock in Washington’s fetish for bispartisanship. Sure, no Republicans voted for this bill, but how many would it have taken for their votes to have made the bill “bipartisan”? Five? Ten? Fifteen? No-one ever says. Does a bill suddenly become mre acceptable because Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have voted for it?
In any case, while you can just about make a case for saying that the President is somewhat responsible (politically, not constitutionally) for the votes cast by his own party it seems absurd to then try and make him responsible for votes cast by the opposition too.
For that matter, what is bipartisanship? Why not much more than the means by which Washington covers its ass any time controversial legislation lumbers into view. It’s but a means of providing cover. If a sufficient number of Republicans and Democrats alike endorse a given bill or idea then neither party can be fairly held responsible for any of the consquences that might ensue. If it goes wrong both parties are culpable; in the unlikely event it works both parties claim their prizes.
As such you could almost suspect that the fetish for bipartisanship amounts to a conspiracy against the public, obscuring and eliminating dividing lines for the sole reason of making life more comfortable for Democrats and Republicans alike. It is, then, something that corrupts politics far more than it enhances it.
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