More Shamefaced Obama Skepticism

By Ezra

To be sure, my piece on Obama in The Guardian is part of the online edition, not the print. But I encourage folks to read it. As I write there, I really loathe the position of Obama-skeptic. I'm no less able to glimpse his potential for greatness than anyone else, and my gut tells me that his base instincts, averaged out over foreign and domestic policy, are more progressive than either Hillary or Edwards (I think Edwards is more progressive on domestic, but Obama quite a bit more on foreign policy). And he's a politician so good his critics feel guilty questioning him! But his popularity, and the ease of his political ascent, and his emphasis on unity leave me concerned that he's more interested in bringing the country together -- which is a perfectly valid priority, just not mine -- than fighting for the sort of policies I support.

Take his announcement speech. Matt liked the absence of policy specifics. But they're not what worry me. What worries me is which policies are mentioned. So Obama says:

Let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis. We can control costs by focusing on prevention, by providing better treatment to the chronically ill, and using technology to cut the bureaucracy. Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.

I find that unsettling. He's yoking himself to weak policies that already have achieved consensus, not trying to build consensus around policies which Americans might support, but just haven't been convinced of. And this is a choice. He could just as easily have said:

Let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis. We can control costs by preventing insurers from spending money to figure out how to deny care to the sick, by bargaining with Big Pharma so the focus isn't on giving Americans more medicine but on making them better, and by at long last delinking insurance from employment so our entrepreneurs can innovate and so no worker need ever fear his child's asthma attack while he searches for a new job. Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.

If the rhetoric of consensus were being used to sell a forward-thinking, progressive agenda, I'd feel safer. But what Obama is saying we can agree on is electronic medical records, preventive care, high-risk pools, and universality. We already agree on all that. The Bush administration is already pushing for electronic medical records, as are Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton. No one doubts the utility of preventive care, high-risk pools are becoming the norm (and are mainly a way to take the burden off insurers), and even the insurance industry supports universality, the question is how we get there.

Obama is the most eloquent, most attractive, most inspiring, most promising politician in a generation. I want to see him put those qualities to work in service of an agenda worthy of his gifts. I understand why other politicians need to focus on technocratic incrementalism. He doesn't. He, possibly alone among the contenders, has the rhetorical chops and personal magnetism to change paradigms, to do what Reagan did, to, in Obama's own words, "transform the country." The question is whether he has the courage or the intent to do so. This speech, which was a beautiful, soaring, address, did not provide an answer. And that has to be seen as a choice, because with a few changed words, it easily could have.