Edwards and Obama Draw Contrasts on Health Care Reform
| Thu Dec. 20, 2007 8:19 AM PST
In my most recent article on John Edwards, I wondered if Edwards' strident anti-corporate message, courageous and admirable as it may be, would turn off voters in the general election.
Yesterday, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek answered with an emphatic yes.
How many 20th Century American presidents have been elected on a populist platform? That would be zero... millions of Americans still work for corporations or aspire to do so and bashing them wholesale is a loser politically. It works sometimes in Democratic primaries with a heavy labor vote (though not for Dick Gephardt). But not in general elections. The last two Democrats elected president—Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992—also campaigned during recessions. Both were smart enough to reject populism in favor of a responsive but upbeat message.
Alter also discusses the differences Obama and Edwards have on health care. Obama says that he will initiate health care reform by sitting down at a big table with patients' advocates, health care economists, insurance companies, and other interested parties. Everyone would have the right to state their priorities, but the meeting would be CSPAN and the American people would know who is motivated by greed, who is negotiating in bad faith, and who is working against the interests of everyday Americans. Alter writes, "having triumphed over the drug and insurance companies in the court of public opinion, the legislative victories will follow."
Edwards says it is "a fantasy" to expect insurance companies and drug companies to negotiate their power away at a table such as Obama's. The only real option, Edwards says, is to exclude these corporate interests from the discussion and "take" their power away. How he plans on doing that is never quite articulated.
It's worth pointing out that Edwards and Obama have managed to have this debate without going negative. The debate over which approach to health care reform is less realistic continues, but gently...
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Comments
Nice mischaracterizations. Edwards is not and does not claim to be anti-corporate. He is, rather, against corporate malfeasance in rigging the system by using our government as a means for entrenchment and enrichment to the detriment of average citizens.
If corporations behaved ethically we wouldn't be having this discussion. And Obama is hopelessly naive to think that he can sit down with these powerful interests and convince them to give their power away. That is indeed fantasy, CSPAN or not.
"To call Obama 'anti-change,' as Paul Krugman does, is anti-common sense. Leadership requires a mixture of confrontation and compromise, with room for the losers to save face. 'They have to feel the heat to see the light,' LBJ liked to say. That heat is best applied up close. In public. Across the big table." http://www.newsweek.com/id/80882/page/1
"How many 20th Century American presidents have been elected on a populist platform? That would be zero."
Wait, what? That's not true at all. TR in 1904, FDR in 1936, and Truman in 1948 won on what are generally considered populist platforms. (Those were all re-election campaigns, though, unlike this one.)
More importantly, isn't the first half of this post the kind of "electability" stuff that you just criticized a couple days ago?
We can't simply exclude the insurance companies from the discussion, as Edwards suggests. But merely televising the debate--which is going to be arcane even to most CSPAN viewers--will only lend itself to grandstanding, not solutions. Instead, we need to put forth real, workable models, allow the players to have their input, and then submit the best model to a vote, after substantial public education about the issues. That's what's going to happen in California, and the nation should follow suit.
