Obama: Jimmy Carter 2? Hardly, but still...

Bipartisanship means nothing if one side is craven, and the other side is comprised of hobbled psychos looking for cudgels. You'd think these would be easy to find, because their knuckles comb the ground anyway. I could go on and on about the pathetic but still vociferous GOP, but I'm actually quite pissed at President Obama.

He waltzed into office with a vow of thoughtful bipartisanship, but it has become painfully apparent that Republicans have officially waved goodbye to reason and common sense. Their leaders, and especially the notoriously resilient John McCain (especially when he crashes and burns, literally, and ends up a POW), consistently batter what Obama was elected to do. Guantanamo? Closed, technically, but replaced with a more sinister Gulag-esque dungeon that will continue to babysit these purported terrorists.

Compromise always sounds like a magnanimous ploy. Eventually, though, the other side capitalizes on what they perceive to be a weakness. When Jimmy Carter was elected, he tried to pass a few bills that focused on some relatively tame water projects, but these bills never held water (pardon the pun) because Congress stalled them. The funny thing was, though, that Democrats controlled Congress. Like today, they ate their own young, and paved a way for the unbelievably reckless Reagan years, which only made the economic disparities of the time widen the gulf between the middle class and the upper class. Evan Bayh, from Indiana (state of my birth, unfortunately) looks distressingly like Russell Long, the Louisiana Democratic senator who originally opposed Carter on the water stuff. Not literally, obviously. Then, an avalanche ensued in which Carter's hands were tied by the Democratically-led Congress. This is beginning to seem painfully familiar, because Americans are starting to forget that Republicans are the real crazies. Now, Obama has begun to backpedal on health insurance policy, and this bothers me immensely.

Of course, he never campaigned on mandatory universal health care. However, the whisperings of the AMA along with large insurance companies make it only that much harder to negotiate with these greedmongers who panic whenever they hear the word "mandatory." When you stand back and take an empirical look at it, it appears insane that the AMA would cower underneath the vague threats of insurance monsters, because the tail now wags the dog. It actually is insane, and any pragmatic doctor will admit that the large conglomerates are huge stumbling blocks for what they really want to do. This says nothing of malpractice suits that have run amuck and make these doctors skittish as it is.

As a little personal anecdote, I will say that I had been covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that in October of 2007, when given the choice, I went with the HMO because it was cheaper. In retrospect, this was a monumentally bad decision.) Since they denied my entry into the Northwestern/Rush stem cell trial, even after I switched to the PPO, because it is quite expensive, I had to switch to Medicare, which immediately approved my request. And here we are. I know that some doctors want the Porsche, the houses, and other material extravagances, but I believe that most are interested in actual medicine. Dr. Richard Burt, the Northwestern immunologist in charge of the stem cell trial, falls in this latter egalitarian category. Not to digress too much, but I remember receiving a phone call one day and being shocked that it was actually Dr. Burt. Up until then, I had spoken only with my prior neurologist's nurse. This may be a personal choice, but I can't believe that my previous neurologist was a narcissist unconcerned with the plight of his patients. In truth, he was probably preoccupied with the Alzheimer's patients that dominate his practice. But I digress, yet again...

It was a great decision for Obama to roll back the idiotic restrictions on stem cell research that Bush instituted. However, since then I find myself inexplicably rallying around, of all people, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who heretofore had been only avuncular, and not in a good way. He has had enough with his own party's waffling, and now tells the members of his own party to ignore the insane opposition. If you have the numbers, and a real (not bullshit, like Bush's) mandate for action, why does Obama obsequiously court the crazy opposition? He still has three years before he's up for reelection, and substantive health care reform can negate any grumblings from Republicans if it's successful.

So why does he wait? Change is a slow process, admittedly, but it cannot be static, lest scum form.

R
(Obama is actually much better than Carter when it comes to foreign policy, thankfully. Hence the "hardly" in the title of the post.)