WE'RE ONLY MIDWAY THROUGH THE TRAJECTORY:

What Happened to Obama's Middle Path on Health Reform? (Michael Gerson, 3/10/10, Real Clear Politics)

Whatever the legislative fate of health reform -- now in the hands of a few besieged House Democrats -- the health reformers have failed in their argument. Their proposal has divided Democrats while uniting Republicans, returned American politics to well-worn ideological ruts, employed legislative tactics that smack of corruption, squandered the president's public standing, lowered public regard for Congress to French revolutionary levels, sucked the oxygen from other agenda items, re-engaged the abortion battle, produced freaks and prodigies of nature such as a Republican senator from Massachusetts, raised questions about the continued governability of America and caused the White House chief of staff to distance himself from the president's ambitions.

It is quite an accomplishment. [...]

The final reason for Obama's failed argument on health reform is neither structural nor strategic. It is psychological. As the evidence mounted that the body politic was rejecting Obama's health system transplant, Obama faced a choice about the nature of his presidency. He could retreat toward incrementalism or insist on transformation. Obama had previewed his impatience with incrementalism during the campaign. Similar to his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama turned hard against the Clinton model. "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America," he said, "in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it."

Just as Nixon was a liberal in the FDR tradition and Bill Clinton a conservative in the Reagan tradition, the UR needs to go with the flow.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2010 5:18 PM