The Defining Challenge for the Obama Administration: Ensuring the Facade of Reform does not Betray the Promise of True Health Care Reform

Since my last post, President Obama has begun to demonstrate how he can play a pivotal leadership role in the defining struggle over health care reform. His inspiring and reinvigorating speech to the nation and the Joint Session of Congress on September 9 emphasized the value and need for a public option to bring health care spending under control. For any Health Care Reform bill that fails to create the structures to deliver equitable health care access to all Americans, and to bring health care spending under control, will be a "Reform" bill in name only, and in reality a lie and betrayal of Reform.

If Congress and the President pass a "Reform" bill that fails to win equitable access to health care for all Americans, and to bring the rise in health care spending under control, such a passage will not only betray the promises and hope of health care Reform for a generation, but will be substituting a lie and the facade of Reform in place of true Reform for the American people. And the negative political, social, and economic consequences of substituting the facade of Reform for real Reform will not take long to manifest themselves. The anti-reform Republicans, and the institutional status quo will make sure of that.

While the Democratic-led Congress may feel that passing any Reform bill in 2009 is better than passing no bill at all, the consequences of bowing to anti-Reform pressures to pass a bill that substitutes the facade of Reform for the real thing will quickly turn around to haunt the Democrats in ways that will be even more negative for them than passing no bill at all would be.

This past week's failure of the Senate Finance Committee to include the public option in its recommended version of health reform policy, and the uncertain fate of the public option in this month's upcoming Senate debates, will require President Obama to demonstrate creative leadership not only to show he can shape an effective and forceful Congressional coalition for true Health Care Reform, but to show he can raise public and Congressional awareness and understanding of the essential need for a public option as a catalytic new force to drive institutional change of both the health care insurance and broader health care provisions industries.

This is a tall order, but the American people would not have elected Mr. Obama to be President if they had not believed he was capable of taking on this kind of challenge to become a truly transformative leader in this great transformative moment of both crisis and opportunity for our country.

The greatest leaders of our history, such as Presidents Lincoln and F.D. Roosevelt, rose to the tremendous challenges of their times not by thinking they could solve the country's greatest problems for the country, but by humbly recognizing and accepting that their greatest contribution would come from CLEARING AND OPENING THE WAY that would allow America's people to to go to work together in new ways to solve these problems for themselves.

In the past, as in the present, "opening the way" to change meant standing up against the seemingly overwhelming force of the political and institutional status quo in Washington, and fighting for the interests of the broad majority of America's people, instead of the minority of the powerful corporate elites who too often control the agendas of the political and institutional status quo of the nation.

For the sake of all Americans, and the future of the United States as a country and national community, we must all struggle to both challenge and support President Obama as he takes on this pivotal and defining challenge in the days ahead.

We must hope and pray that President Obama and our real leaders in Congress will not shy away from making this a consequential political struggle over the principles by which the future of this nation will be defined. Will it continue to become a nation of the corporate elite, controlled by inequitable powers that deny the right of all citizens of this nation to fair and humane health care? Or will this nation begin to live up to the promise and requirement of any humane 21st-century nation, that all its citizens be guaranteed fundamental rights to health and equitable care?

It has often seemed over the last months that too many Democratic leaders, including the President at times, have been far too timid in making clear the principles for which they are willing to fight, and for which they are willing to stake their claims to leadership. Are Democratic leaders now willing to make clear that they are fighting for a more equitable and just nation for all Americans through this struggle over health care, or will they show themselves continually willing to compromise these principles away, so that their leadership ends up standing for nothing more than their own petty interests?!

This challenge now needs to be issued to every Senator, as well as to the President and all the members of his administration, to encourage them to claim the strong democratic backbone of the principles of justice and equity for which this nation stands, and for which their leadership either stands, or fails to stand. And if they fail to stand for these principles, they fail to stand for the hopes and needs of the American people and our common country.

In this kind of defining struggle for the future of this country, there is no middle ground, no sitting on the fence over these fundamental principles of equity, fairness, and justice for all Americans.

Either the corporate interests of the status quo will win this political battle for the reform of health care and the future of the country, or the American people and their most representative leaders will win it. There will be no middle ground.

And if this battle cannot be won in the first round of struggle over the Health Care Reform bill in 2009, true democratic leaders will not compromise away these principles in order to declare a false victory and abandon the real struggle for these principles. They will continue to fight to bring this struggle to a head, so it can be clearly and truly fought out by all Americans, who will together decide their common fate in 2010, if not in 2009.

True Democratic political leaders will stand up for the principles and reality of real Reform, and will rather vote against a 2009 bill that offers only the facade of reform, than betray the promise of true reform.

And in this political struggle over real Reform and the future of our nation, we will all get the leaders we deserve: If we are not willing to struggle to engage each other and our elected leaders to challenge them to become the leaders we need on health care reform--leaders who will make it possible for us to work together to remake our nation into a just and equitable nation for all its citizens--then we will continue to end up with the same kinds of ineffective leaders we have had over the last several decades--"leaders" in name only who have been more engaged in feathering their own nests than in serving the true interests of the American people.

This month, and the months ahead, let us all not only hope, but fight to make sure it is possible for President Obama and our Senators to become the true leaders we need in this moment--for hope without action is a betrayal of not only the promises of change, but of our own positive potentials as citizens and a nation.

Krugman Refutes Idea that Seeking Truth about the Past Will Interfere with Moving Forward

Contrary to the eternal obfuscations of politicians who would like to claim otherwise, Truth-telling about the Past directly serves the present and future needs of democratic government and policymaking for any Nation that wants to move forward after a period when its traditions of laws and democratic accountability have been betrayed and broken.

In a brief but eloquent editorial in yesterday's (4/24) NY Times titled "Reclaiming America's Soul-Why We Can't Let the Abuses Slide," Paul Krugman--who has emerged as our nation's truth-teller in chief--directly confronts and reveals the folly of the ad nauseam arguments being made in Congress and by the Obama administration (including the President himself) suggesting that seeking the Truth about the Past will somehow interfere with Moving Forward in the Present.

Krugman puts the pin to this big balloon of rhetorical obfuscation and political hot air:

What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration's abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true - even if truth and justice came at a high price - that would arguably be a price we must pay: LAWS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ENFORCED ONLY WHEN CONVENIENT. . .

The only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

And in response to the constantly repeated suggestion that pursuing proper investigation of potential crimes of the Bush era would be distracting to the work of the present Obama administration, Krugman offers the following rejoinder:

Would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let's be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn't, and indeed shouldn't, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job - which he's supposed to do in any case - and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.

I don't know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.

Krugman throws down the gauntlet to the Obama administration and to Congressional leaders by going to the heart of what is at stake in the ongoing struggle to reclaim America's soul.

In stressing the seriousness of the work at hand related to uncovering the truth of what happened re: authorizations of torture during the Bush era, Krugman raises the crucial question that needs to be posed to Congressional leaders and the Obama administration: Will they stand up and support the hard work of investigation and truth-telling that will be required to reclaim America's soul after the disastrous years of the Bush administration, or will they continue to obstruct this hard work?

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract "confessions" that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It's hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn't, now declare that we should forget the whole era - for the sake of the country, of course.

This is perhaps the most telling point in Krugman's brief editorial. And it is now up to the People of this nation to make sure their leaders, including President Obama, understand that WE will not accept another 4 years of a government policy of burying heads in the sand to AVOID facing the Truth--in the DELUDED BELIEF that ignoring the truth is the best thing for this country.

As Krugman concludes, by showing the deceptive rhetorical strategy behind the repeated suggestion that seeking the truth of the past somehow implies vindictiveness--

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions - not out of vindictiveness, BUT BECAUSE THIS IS A NATION OF LAWS.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn't about looking backward, it's about looking forward - because it's about reclaiming America's soul.

AMEN, Paul Krugman, and THANK YOU for being someone who is willing to use his public voice and authority to stand up for the truth rather than to obstruct it. Now if only more people in power would learn to follow your example.

Contrary to the eternal obfuscations of politicians who would like to claim otherwise, Truth-telling about History Serves the Needs of democratic government and policymaking in the Present if we want to move forward.

The worst thing for a democracy and a nation of laws to do is to cover up the truth of the past under the delusion that doing so will somehow benefit the future. As history has abundantly shown, such deluded thinking does more than anything to condemn a nation to the darkness of a present and future of repeated abuses of truth and government; and only a clear break with such ways of thinking and governmental practice can ever help to liberate a nation from the curse that such past practices will otherwise continue to inflict on its present and future.

History and just democratic government demand that nations hold themselves accountable for past crimes for the sake of their own--as well as humanity's--present and future. And a democratic people's authority to demand such accountability from their government is most important precisely when politicians continue to refuse to admit the need for such accountability.