Paul Begala: Progress Over Perfection

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081202575.html

Progress Over Perfection

By Paul Begala
Thursday, August 13, 2009

snip//

Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.

Our history teaches us otherwise. No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farmworkers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't.

Baucus and the others working on health care have earned the right to take their best shot, and we progressives should hold them to a high standard. I carry a heavy burden of regret from my role in setting the bar too high the last time we tried fundamental health reform. I was one of the people who advised President Bill Clinton to wave his pen at Congress in 1994 and declare: "If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we'll come right back here and start all over again." I helped set the bar at 100 percent -- "guarantee every American" -- and after our failure it's taken us 15 years to start all over again.

So I am trying to find the right blend of principle and pragmatism -- ever mindful that, aside from race, health care is the most difficult domestic issue of the past century. FDR couldn't pass it. Nor could Truman, nor Nixon nor Carter nor Clinton. Lesser presidents like George W. Bush didn't even try.

The Founders gave us a standard: "a more perfect Union." It's an odd phrase; we don't generally speak of something becoming "more perfect." I believe it means that we have a duty, every generation, to make progress. For a dozen generations we have done that, in our imperfect way. Let's hope those writing the new health-reform bill can give us something that represents historic progress -- and that those of us most passionately committed to fundamental reform can celebrate progress, not lament a lack of perfection.

[Doctor_J]

1. Or maybe

appeasement over confrontation

[babylonsister]

2. Don't you think there's enough confrontation out there now?

I'm getting sick of it, because it equates to hatred and potential violence. But maybe that's what you want.

[Doctor_J]

3. There's pretty much none coming from our side

at least that I can see.

Tea bagger at town hall: Obama's bill will require euthanizing old people
Arlen Specter: I'll look into that

:wtf:

And continually backing down from bullies does not make them go away.

And what I want is to get my country back from hate radio, the corporatists, and the brain dead teabaggers.

[DJ13]

4. You progressives need to just settle for what we'll give you

And please, just shut up.

[babylonsister]

5. Keep whining. That will accomplish a lot. nt

[burning rain]

6. Yay for Begala. Love that guy.

Democrats often deliver a baloney sandwich when they've promised filet mignon, but it's a damn sight better than the shit sandwich Republicans offer.

[Berry Cool]

7. At least it's an edible sandwich...better than starving.

You know what killed me about last night's district forum held by my congresswoman, Marcia Fudge? The few teabaggers who could control themselves with enough propriety to stand in line at the mic to have their say, and express it in normal human tones, said things like "I agree that health care needs reform, but WHY THE RUSH?? I have learned from experience that RUSHING to get something done usually ends up badly."

Fortunately she had the right answers: First of all, a health care bill isn't going to be "rushed" even now; whatever is enacted even this year will take years to have any effect. Second, we have been trying to do this for SIXTY YEARS. How does that constitute a "rush"?

But that's going to be their new talking point, you know. After all the wackadoodle ones fail...you know, the pull-the-plug-on-Grandma, free-taxpayer-funded-abortions-for-illegal-aliens talking points are finally defeated...they'll start turning palms up and querying innocently: "Why the RUSH?" :shrug:

[burning rain]

8. "Why the rush?"

The cagier activists know that the longer the delay, the more time big insurance, big pharma, and the witless ragemobs have to pound healthcare reform proponents into submission. The less cagey drones may just want more time for their gurus Rush, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones to explain to them what's going on. Maybe next they'll claim that the gummint's gonna implant chips in your ass to track you -- or in your head to control you! Actually, I think mediocre healthcare reform would be better likened to a foundation than a sandwich: a foundation is something to build on even though it's not the finished edifice.

[MasonJar]

9. My favorite part is his placing Bush, squarely where he belongs, as

lesser than Nixon. Forget the Baucus plan; it is worse than nothing. Public option or as Clinton said start over.

[pscot]

10. Take a cue from the logging industry

They never ask if they can clearcut the whole forest. Give us 10 percent, they say. The owls can keep the rest. Then a few years later they're back saying, give us 10 percent and we'll leave the rest for the bears. And they come back again and again, until before you know it they've clearcut a whole mountain range and left a fringe of trees along the road to hide what they've done. Incrementalism works. Let's take what we can get right now, and come back for another bite when we get things sorted out.

[Larkspur]

11. The Public Option is Incrementalism

without it, the healthcare reform bill is nothing more than welfare for the health insurance industry. Baucus works for the healthcare insurance industry, not the people of Montana.