On Health-Care and such

I haven't discussed politics for weeks. I've been trying to find a way to discuss health -care reform in a studied, yet candid manor, but it has alluded me. This has been a debate that I have carried on for years with some friends, especially some from France, where I too have witnessed the good side of socialized medicine...but the truth of the matter is...even the most liberal of the French will tell you that the system is far from perfect...and that despite the fact that maternity leave, daycare, etc. are top-notch, they come at a price.



Our President has been on a rampage lately, espousing his views at town hall meetings, and calling anyone who disagrees a cynic. All of a sudden, this has become a "do or die' issue. All or none. Either you agree with him...or you are participating in a "decline of civil debate". In response to this, Dorothy Rabinowitz crafted a beautiful response in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. So instead of trying to write about it myself, today I choose to quote Dorothy:



"That treatment, or rather it's memory-__like the adulation of his great mass of voters__has had its effect on our President, and not all to good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they'll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.



This would have to do with the fact that the real Barack Obama-product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and what they hear in this lecture about one of the central concerns in their lives__his message freighted with generalities__they are not prepared to believe that our first most important concern is now health-care reform or all will go under.



The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds__he is at home withe those. He is a stranger to the country's heart and character.



He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don't take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health-care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don't know if they want to go and being told it's good for them.



Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer__the same who listened to those speeches of his during his campaign, searching for their meaning.



I took this battle over health-care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation-repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgement of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him."



Amen.