Last night I saw our
President in trouble. After nearly four years in office and the daily grind of
listening to advisors, reading position papers and newspapers and meeting
countless people, from those who are infatuated with the President and the
Presidency to those who have come to hear words of solace about the death of
their son in Afghanistan, it was time for Mr. Obama to fess up and say things
are bad and then present a clear and compelling rationale for how he is going
to fix it. He didn't do that. He stood there on stage, looked down, mouthed
answers and took a whooping.
Mr. Romney was ready, Mr.
Romney was eager and Mr. Romney prosecuted the last four years and took away
the President's ability to take responsibility not only for what has gone
wrong, but for all that is going right. The question that Jim Lehrer asked late
was the one I thought to be most important:
"Many
of the legislative functions of the federal government right now are in a state
of paralysis as a result of partisan gridlock. If elected, in your case, if
re-elected, in your case, what would you do about that?" http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81994_Page10.html#ixzz28KYRTfH6
Romney
got to answer first and went right to how he overcame partisan politics as the
Governor of Massachusetts while having a legislature that was 87% Democratic.
President
Obama won the election in 2008 on a platform of Hope and Change by offering to
end the partisan gridlock in Washington that he has not only not been able to end,
but has made demonstrably worse. After
making a joke the President went on to say; " I will take ideas from anybody." You can read the
whole exchange in the transcript provided above. But people have seen how ugly politics has become
and many have lost faith. The President, as smart as he is has not proven to be
good at schmoozing with Republicans and conducting all the old fashioned horse
trading necessary to make Capitol Hill work in 2012.
Obamacare is
not about finding a way to federalize U.S. Health Care and give the
responsibility for granny's care and its termination to a board of anonymous
medical advisors. It was enacted to fill the void and ensure that the
government responds to the urgent need to cover over 40 million Americans that
cannot afford care, do not get it in our current system and wait until they are
sick enough to wind up in an Emergency Room and draw many times the cost of preventative
care and a forward loaded system that is necessary in our country to care for
those who cannot care for themselves. Obamacare is the first National Health
Program enacted in the United States and the first step in the long term
requirement of the federal government to engineer a process that covers those
in need while retaining the private insurance industry and beginning to do it while
dealing with the overwhelming issue of cost containment.
The reason
must be crystal clear. We owe our best efforts to all Americans and
particularly those who are too sick or have a child or member of the family
that doesn't qualify for Medicaid and can't afford private insurance. We are a good people.
It is up to
our President to do something he doesn't like; call Republicans and Democrats
together and get his hands dirty making sausage. To gain the opportunity to get
the blessing of a majority of Americans to be re-elected President, he must
stand up and accept blame for a lot that has gone wrong and then draw people
together around his plan to fix the economy and defend the United States from
terror at home and abroad. The problems are enormous and the process requires
more than a single political cycle. But it also requires the President to level
with the American people, to take responsibility, to learn and apply the
lessons of his first term and to become a better politician in his second. He will not win by playing out the clock or
throwing enough mud to cover Mr. Romney. He must pivot and become a man not
only chastened by the challenges, but able to demonstrate that he is capable and
ready to deal effectively with the myriad of complex issues plaguing our economy
and conspiring against the security of our nation.
