Shoot the message and the messenger

For some one who was supposed to be the nation’s hip professor with that smooth oration style holding us all rapt and breathless, President Barack Obama sure has turned into to the teacher who has lost control of the classroom. I can’t recall any president–other than LBJ on Vietnam–that has rolled out a major policy and lost the conversation so quickly. It’s not that great of a leap to see remnants of “Hey, Hey LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?” in the faces of seniors who have some how been convinced that discussing living wills puts them in danger of being set out on the ice floes by their government. How did this administration lose control of this conversation so rapidly?

I would speculate that the major players in the debate did not want a repeat of the “HillaryCare” episode so they may have concentrated a bit too much on not repeating a similar process. There were no blue ribbon panels meeting all over the country and no attempts to set up a health care czar. Instead there was this via Bloomberg: “Six Lobbyists Per Lawmaker Work on Health Overhaul” and this from Jane at FDL : Memo Confirms Deal Between phRMA and White House. With this White House–as with Richard Nixon’s–it’s always about following the money. Before the bill even hit the Congress and the people, it was morphed into something that is said to be setting up windfall profits for the people who profit grandly already from the ill among us. Given that, now we’re supposed to buy it as a foot in the door to the real thing. Excuse me for my lack of trust. I’m just not buying that passing this thing will lead to anything but corporate windfall profits and a win in the Obama column.

That’s six lobbyists for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, according to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense. More than 1,500 organizations have health-care lobbyists, and about three more are signing up each day. Every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is involved in an effort that could affect 17 percent of the U.S. economy.

These groups spent $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group, more than any other industry. They spent $241.4 million during the same period of 2008. Drugmakers alone spent $134.5 million, 64 percent more than the next biggest spenders, oil and gas companies.

“Whenever you have a big piece of legislation like this, it’s like ringing the dinner bell for K Street,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group …

We now have a botched roll out, a messy misunderstood plan, and rooms filled with shrieking constituents of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Is any one buying this as a national conversation?

Nearly every one knows the old joke about managing Democrats is like herding cats. My biggest question in all of this is why on earth wouldn’t the White House try to get Congress on a similar page before hurrying this behemoth piece of legislation through committees? Was Nancy Pelosi that certain of her ability to whip her minions or was Rahm that certain that POTUS could charm them or their constituents into capitulation? Did Rahm think since most of those Blue Dogs owe their seats to him that they were going to suddenly roll over when given the command? If the meme about the primary was this group out organized the Clinton machine, why is Bill Clinton out drumming up support for the plan now to the very people that pushed the Bill’s fairy tale comment is racist canard? Suddenly, CDS is no longer an issue when you need some one who has a way with explaining stuff to us little folks here in the great fly-over.

Mr. Clinton concluded that segment by saying, “the president needs your help and the cause needs your help.’’

And he continued, drawing on his own history with the failed health care bills of his own terms: It is “politically imperative for the Democrats to pass a health care bill now. One thing we know and that I’ve lived through — if you get out there and you don’t prevail — the victors get to rewrite history.”

He counseled them to debate the best parts, toss out the ones no one could agree on and forget the bad. But stay, he urged, in the lane to get it done.

At that point, Mr. Clinton began a point-by-point revisit of the 1993-94 health care battles, contending that the insurance companies were now rewriting that history. He ended the segment by asking, “Do you want to go through that again? Of course you don’t.”

“This battle is not over,” he cajoled the friendly audience. “We have big-time responsibilities. It is an honor for all us to be alive and to carry this responsibility. We can’t be in the peanut gallery. We have to be actors. … Don’t lose your energy because things don’t work out the way you want. It won’t take you 40 years to get health care reform. ….”

They’ve got the Big Dawg at Net Roots and Hillary, earlier in interviews with the Sunday Talk Show circuit, carrying water once for one botched roll out as the two democrats left standing in the room with any credibility. Paul Krugman is now using his position as economics professor to the NY Times readership to question the timber of our national conversation on health care that’s become more like watching a death match between the bad guy and the incrementally less bad guy. How am I supposed to be enthusiastic about health reform that doesn’t include every citizen in the country and ensures windfall profits to the very folks that messed the market up to begin with? That’s not the issue however, if you watch the shrieking citizens attending town hall meetings. It’s all about the slogans they’ve been fed by their media masters. Krugman’s op ed piece today outlines both the Palin Death Panels nonsense as well as the fear mongering memes of Senator Chuck Grassley, one of the supposedly reasonable Republicans. His bottom line however, is germane to my question.

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

What, then, should Mr. Obama do? It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition? Only time will tell.

Krugman is on to something here. We’ve always noticed this surprised and somewhat supercilious look on the face of President Obama when some one fails to immediately be charmed by his velvet voice and concerned eyes. It’s as if that’s at least 80% of the contents of his political and leadership bag of tricks. The other 20% is then the long, drawn-out stuttering explanation of why he knows best. Well, it worked a year ago, but it’s not working now for a variety of reasons. The first one being that Republicans are not the party of reason any more. The second being every one in this country is already feeling beaten about the face by 8 years of bad decision making by the Bush administration and our trust of Washington D.C. is at an all time low since Watergate. The current astroturf wars aren’t serving either side well. All you have to do is go to the red or blue kool aid sites to see the film. It’s spin chaos.

So, what’s the answer? How do we get a conversation at this point given that the roll out process has been botched so badly? I, for one, don’t think Obama on the campaign trail again is doing much good. I hate to come back to this again, but it’s really the media that deserves the boot or the boo for continuing the histrionics. They’re helping every one to shoot the message as well as all the messengers. Instead of documentaries with doctors and patients, we’re getting panels of politicos discussing the latest outburst at a townhall meeting. At least Lou Dobbs, of all people, is running a series nightly discussing the health care plans of other nations. It may be a few short minutes, but at least it’s information.

Perhaps, as the Big Dawg says, we in the blogosphere do have a unique opportunity to discuss and learn about the real issues. We’ve tried very hard here at The Confluence to bring it on and our front pagers and down pagers bring links, videos, and life experiences to bear. We even have a few folks that do have ‘socialized’ medicine as well as single payer with whom to compare experiences. So, let’s ask them if they’d trade their health plans for ours! If the bill is still in a becoming state, and the lobbyists and hysterical haven’t won yet, maybe we should step forward with the adult conversations and arm ourselves with the facts and not the spin. How else are we even going to get a single payer plan as an option, ever?

Anything has to be better than the nonsense going on out there. Shame on the administration for rolling this out in such a chaotic way. It’s too important of an issue for the nation and its people for the conversation to have been botched so badly. Maybe we should file a medical malpractice suit before the bill morphs into something that outlaws them.

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