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After the healthcare reform bill passed, President Obama went out of his way to say that the passage of the healthcare bill was not about him. A strange thing to say since no one ever thought that it was about him. No one perhaps but Obama himself, because every time Obama mentions that something is not about him, he gives the impression that he thinks it is about him.
It's hard to imagine Lyndon Johnson saying at the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, that it's not about him. Or JFK, Clinton or Reagan or any other president. In fact its almost laughable. Especially because Obama deserves no credit for getting this bill passed. In fact he was ready to give up on it.
After Scott Brown's victory there was a meeting between Democrats in the senate and Axelrod where there was considerable Obama handwringing over Brown's victory and as everyone remembers, Obama was out the next day saying the economy and jobs was going to be his focus and healthcare was suddenly on the back burner. According to those at that meeting, Al Franken went ballistic over what he saw as Obama's abandoning of healthcare reform and nailed Obama and Axelrod to the wall, accusing Obama of having no convictions on healthcare. According to witnesses Axelrod and Franken got into a shouting match but the upshot was that it was theDemocrats in congress that put healthcare back on the agenda and it was Obama who was ready to drop it.
There was a history of Obama caving in on a number of occassions on healthcare, dropping the public option when the political heat of the town hall meetings made him uncomfortable and he had to be dragged back into supporting it by Pelosi, Howard Dean and congressional Democrats. The day after Obama had said the public option was only a "sliver" of healthcare reform, they came out and said it was the "centerpeice" of healthcare reform. Obama then supported the public option but dropped it again.
On MSNBC, on the night of the vote, a panel was pointing out that the healthcare vote was making history. But, there was also a lot of rewriting of history.
The consensus was that this was an example of Obama leadership. But Obama never showed any leadership and it had gotten so bad, Democratic members of congress were privately complaining about the lack of leadership Obama had shown on healthcare, his waffling, his selling out of the public option and giving no direction to congress. Obama tried to spin his lack of direction and involvement as a "strategy" , trying to claim some credit for the senate bill after it passed, which only the most gullible swallowed.
The day after the healthcare vote, Ed Schultz said on his MSNBC show that given the vitriol over healthcare he was amazed that "Obama was able to get healthcare passed:". This, as the record shows is preposterous as Obama had so little to do with getting healthcare passed he was prepared to be out of the country when the vote was taken. When a Democratic member of congress privately accused Obama of "political malfeasance" for planning on being out of the country, Obama postponed his trip. The only thing Obama had to do with getting the bill into law was signing it.
If anything Obama almost blew the entire effort and what did get passed because of his lack of leadership was tepid. yes, better than nothing but still tepid.
As was pointed out on the Taylor Marsh web site, Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration said this of the bill that Obama signed into law::
Obama's legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. [...] Obama applies Nixon's idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it.
As for getting anything passed, Obama mostly gummed up the works from day one, making bipartisanship a useless, worthless and self defeating goal, something I pointed out as far back as the beginning of August but something Obama obviously couldn't or wouldnt see. Obama wasted 9 months trying to get a Republican vote,( remember the Olympia Snowe debacle?) making process more important than policy and giving the Republicans the platform they needed and used to try and kill healthcare.
Ed Schultz who suffers from Battered Obama Syndrome, tried to make the point that the bill being passed proved that Obama's critics inside the Democratic party during the primaries who said he wasn't ready to be president were proved wrong.
Actually the entire healthcare debate over the last 15 months proved them right, thtat Obama wasnt ready to be president, and Schultz seemed to forget that after Scott Brown's victory Obama was ready to dump health care reform as he had dumped the public option. He and others also seem to forget that this bill was passed not because of Obama, but because no previous Democratic president ever had the large Democratic majorities in congress that Obama had. And even with that, because of Obama's mishandling of the entire healthcare issue the bill was tepid.
But even with a tepid bill, Obama had shifted gears after Scott Brown's victory, wanting to go where he thought the political winds were blowing, putting healthcare on the back burner and saying he was going to focus on jobs and the economy. It was Al Franken getting into that shouting match with Axelrod and Nancy Pelosi's tenancity and committment, Harry Reid, and the conviction and committment of congressional Democrats who are the people who literally rescued healthcare reform from Obama,
Obama deserves no credit for the healthcare bill. Making 56 speeches on healthcare which accomplished nothing count.s for nothing. As they say, talk is cheap. In fact without Obama the bill would have been a lot stronger. A public option would have passed and everything that happened Sunday could have been done 10 months ago through reconciliation and should have been..
The real credit for the passage of the healthcare bill goes to Pelosi, Harry Reid, Al Franken , Democrats in congress and to a great extent a number of Democratic PAC's who pressured members of congress to get it done. Unlike Obama they decided yes they could. And they did.
Comments
obamasain I can not wait until your approval rating gets down to 11% like your sidekick dimwit nancy that is some rating outstanding is what I think you said to joe yesterday, YEH you should be proud of all the crooked ways you did it, some of the ideas are priceless the only thing I can say is when you die they should give you a grave marker that looks like a big wood screw. It would be fitting to the way you screwed people to get this healthcare done. yes you should be proud. Your lies make me want to puke.
Pelosi, Harry Reid, Al Franken - The three Stooges - Let's vote them out of office. This is the will of the people.
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