"There is nothing more difficult to carry nor more doubtful of success," Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, "than to initiate a new order of things." Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that the candidate of change is having trouble selling the American people on his largest plan for reform. Americans have always been slow to come around to change, from the years of oppressive British rule to the concern over Obama's health care reform. The supporters of our 44th president, especially the young and liberal ones, have nonetheless become disillusioned at the stalemate. Which begs the question: did you really think it was going to be easy?
Liberals have historically faced long struggles for reforms that have become standard and well regarded today. It took the long string of economic abuses during the country's Gilded Age to finally initiate progressive reforms like a standard workweek, abolition of child labor and clean food in the early 20th century. Only the Great Depression could bring about the New Deal. Government-run health insurance for the elderly, more commonly known as Medicare, failed in Congress under Truman and Kennedy until Lyndon B. Johnson passed it under huge congressional majorities. Health care reform, however, has long been the reformer's holy grail. FDR had to take it out of the Social Security Act to assure the bill's passage. Truman's proposal was dead on arrival. Kennedy and Johnson didn't even try thanks to Dixiecrats, Nixon's fate mirrored Truman's and Clinton's failed attempt nearly derailed his presidency. Regardless of this history, Obama is seeking to finally bring a new order to health care.
Obama's supporters are disappointed, though. Despite large congressional majorities and presidential goodwill and momentum so high, it has been a brutal struggle and reform is still in no way guaranteed. In addition to that, the government-run, alternative health plan, or public option, appears in danger. The public option would be an effective competitor to health insurance companies, and an essential part of cost control. It should be included. But in Congress, of course, should is never enough.
The argument of the disaffected, as explained by liberal Obama critic Bill Maher, is that since compromise was always a necessity, Obama should have started with what he really wanted, a single-payer government-run health insurance plan and worked back from there. The problem with that scenario is that, despite the popularity of Medicare, a "government-run" health insurance bill would have been met with near-universal scorn. Don't forget that although America is moving left, it is still very much a center-right nation. Therefore, Democrats in Congress, fearing the 2010 midterms with nightmares of 1994 in their heads, would have tripped over themselves running from the President and Obama's initiative would become yet another in the long string of heath care reform failures. Now as difficult as that road seems now, remember that Republicans won't be a part of this equation. In fact, I am certain that not a single GOP Senator will vote for any Obama health care bill. Therefore, the only people who can prevent the Democrats from finally succeeding where all others have failed are themselves.
So, what should health care reform's foot soldiers, and the president, be doing? Buck up, get organized, put pressure on the Blue Dog Democrats and finally prove that progressives matter in American politics. In the 2008 primary race, Hillary Clinton, who knows more than anyone the difficulty of health care reform, infamously lampooned the hopeful Obama supporters by describing their hopes for the future thusly: "...the sky will open, the light will come down ... and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect ... You are not going to waive a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."
It's now time for the president and his supporters to prove their meddle. Machiavelli explained that the difficulty of reform is rooted in the fact that "the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who profit by the new order." It's now time for the lukewarm supporters to band together, overcome history's imposing trend and once again bend its arch towards justice.
