And A Few Choice Words For Robert Kuttner

After reading this piece, I may never subscribe or contribute to The American Prospect ever again.

TAP was created as an antidote to the plethora of right-wing journals that have littered the political landscape over the past several decades.  As such, it has mostly done its job well.  But, from time to time, its articles have succumbed to the tendency of liberals to wring their hands and declare defeat for all time every time the political road gets bumpy for one or more of their causes.  Kuttner's assessment of the ACA's prospects in the wake of the Web site problems is, sadly, a prime example.

I'm particularly annoyed by Kuttner's completely bogus assertion of the political landscape for health care reform prior to the enactment of the ACA.  In his view, all Obama had to do was expand Medicare, and he could declare "mission accomplished."  Kuttner even goes so far as to say that this is what "many of us wrote at the time."  Well, my memory on this subject differs rather significantly from Kuttner's, in that I very clearly recall the Medicare-expansion concept as being a last-minute effort to include some kind of "public option" as part of the ACA.  It was never the benchmark for what health care reform could be, in terms of political reality.  Even then, the proposal was limited to individuals 55 and over--hardly the definition of "Medicare for All."  And it was being sponsored by then-Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, two men who, although Democrats, can hardly be defined as liberal heroes.

Kuttner's after-the-fact revisionism seems to be an exercise in finger-pointing.  It is, in part, but it's also a classic example of how the lazy idealism of some liberals sometimes threaten to eat the entire progressive cause alive.  People who allow the perfect to serve as the enemy of the good never have to do any of the heavy lifting to make even the good a reality.  They can pontificate, they can point fingers, they can spill endless prose over the contours and details of a supposedly perfect world--but they never have to get their hands dirty with the ugly political details that are part and parcel of making any kind of progress worthy of the word.

And, when things go wrong (as they always do, from the perspective of these folks), they never have to worry about anyone pointing fingers at them.  Oh, no.  They've been purer than the driven snow all along.  And they can get started looking for the new progressive "hero," the person who will be perfectly perfect from day one--but who will likely never get anything done, or even be elected in the first place.  The word "compromise" is embedded in the word "politics" and, when a political system is set up they way ours is, to discourage massive change that turns on a dime, it stops "perfection" dead in its tracks.

Repent and reconsider, Mr. Kuttner.  Obamacare is far from perfect, from either a liberal or a conservative perspective.  It is, like most compromises, a horse create by a committee.  But it moves us decisively in the right direction, and there's every reason to think that it can be made to work.  We may never get a better chance to begin real health care reform than this one.  Don't throw it away for the sake of a purity that politics can never reflect.