An entire presidency, and indeed an entire era of this nation’s history, has come to be defined by one huge mistake and the refusal of those who made the mistake to correct it
It’s frustrating sometimes to think about how America could have spent the past five years, and what we could have focused on. Whether we had a Democrat or Republican president, we could have spent that time debating the tax code, energy policy, the regulatory structure, the nation’s role on the international stage, the nation’s fiscal struggles, the problems of inner cities . . . you could go on all day.
Conservatives could have offered their ideas, liberals could have countered with theirs. Maybe we would have enacted effective solutions to some of them.
But we’ll never know, because that is not how America has spent the past five years. Instead, we have spent that time fighting over one thing that never should have been a major issue at all, because it never should have existed. And that is ObamaCare.
I’m not saying we never talk about those other issues. But what I am saying is that, today, all discussion of those issues happens in the context of a larger battle that always sees ObamaCare at the center. It has been the main issue in both election cycles since it was passed and it will be the main issue this year too. In 2010, it was about the nation’s anger at having had ObamaCare shoved down our collective throats. In 2012, it was about whether to repeal it before it fully took effect. In 2014, it will be about how to deal with the disaster ObamaCare is proving to be now that it is going into full effect, save for the portions Obama arbitrarily changes and delays.
And in 2016, it will be about how to repair the damage.
An entire presidency, and indeed an entire era of this nation’s history, has come to be defined by one huge mistake and the refusal of those who made the mistake to correct i.
Everyone knows it too. The left says our side has made this so because we won’t just accept that it’s the law and it’s here to stay. Our side counters that of course we won’t accept it because the law is doing huge damage to the nation and that needs to be stopped. But whichever side you’re on, one thing you can’t deny is that ObamaCare keeps sucking all the air out of America’s political lungs, and there is no end to this in sight.
And that, my friends, represents a gigantic failure of leadership on the part of Barack Obama and his party.
When Obama took office, America was reeling from the mortgage market meltdown and the resulting economic collapse. People also wanted a different way forward in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not saying I ever agreed with Obama’s ideas in these areas. I did not. I am saying these were the nation’s priorities at that time. Ripping a health care system most people liked out by its roots and replacing it with a new, government-driven system was not a priority at all. The nation didn’t want it, didn’t need it and told the Democrats not to do it.
They did it anyway, not because it was necessary and certainly not because they had the consent of the governed, but because a government takeover of health care had been a liberal dream since the 1930s, and for a rare and fleeting moment, the Democrats found themselves with the votes to make it happen. They would do whatever they had to do to get it done. This was the Holy Grail of American left-wing politics and this was their chance. No matter the short-term electoral consequences, no matter the lies they would have to tell, no matter the problems they would have to grapple with later, they simply had to push it through because they might never get another opportunity so golden.
And now all of American politics revolves around a policy that should never have even been on the agenda. Every day we debate whether this or that American really got screwed out of good insurance, or whether doctors will stay in the industry, or whether premiums can ever be contained as the president promised, or whether there will ever be enough people signed up, or whether full-time work is being obliterated by the law’s mandates, or whether they can ever make the damn web site work!
We have no plan to accelerate economic growth or job creation. We have no plan to curtail the mounting of debt. We have no idea what to do about rogue nations making mischief throughout the world. We’re nowhere on fixing the tax code. We can’t even get a simple pipeline built!
But every day we’re fighting about the latest delay to address the latest ObamaCare complication. Or we’re debating the fate of some cancer patient whose insurance was not even an issue before ObamaCare. Or we’re discussing why most of those who are uninsured are not signing up for ObamaCare.
It’s ObamaCare 24/7. We can’t escape it. And all because one political party completely ignored the nation’s true priorities and took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime majority to help itself to power.
The health care system before ObamaCare had a lot of things wrong with it, and it needed to be fixed. But the fixes could and should have been relatively simple, and real leaders would have gotten them out of the way so the nation could move on to far more important priorities. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi chose to make health care the defining issue of an era by perpetrating the biggest and most egregious power grab of all time – just because they could.
Throughout American history, it is hard to recall many leadership failures more egregious than this one.
