German Newspapers Editorials on the passage of Health care Bill

[Ichingcarpenter]

German commentators are unanimous in their praise of President Obama and the Democrats for pushing through massive health care reforms. But some feel Obama's tough-guy tactics dispel the earlier nice-guy, 'postpartisan' image and worry that it might be the biggest -- and last -- success of his presidency.

Most commentators in Germany seem pleased by the passage of health care reform in the United States on Sunday, hailing the legislation as a massive leap for the Western world's only nation that doesn't offer its people basic, universal health care. The health care overhaul that President Barack Obama will sign into law on Tuesday is meant to extend coverage to 32 of the almost 50 million Americans currently living without it.

This being Germany, though, the land of Sturm und Drang, editorialists are also quick to find dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Many fear the political costs for Obama -- who entered office just over a year ago on a message of hope both for the US and the world -- will be staggering. Many commentators worry that the victory will lead to Republican majorities in both houses of Congress following November's midterm elections -- and a de facto halt to any further Democratic Party reform measures. They also believe that the bare-knuckled manner in which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders muscled the legislation through has stripped the president of his magic aura. The fact that Obama's efforts at bipartisanship backfired and that health care reform was pushed through without a single Republican vote also shows that, even after a year in office, the president has still failed to reconcile a deeply divided America.
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"In recent years, the world has lived through enough of these extremes: a congressional majority's mercilessness with a president who had a relationship with an intern; Congress's deafness to torture and a war waged on false pretenses; the regeneration of a political system within a single electoral cycle; and, now, a legislative process leading to a new health care system that the congressional minority has received as a sort of tyranny. This is the most important social reform that America has experienced in the last 50 years."

"Barack Obama has now accomplished his political masterpiece. It is his first and perhaps most significant achievement in office -- and it might also be the only one with any real staying power. With this vote in the House of Representatives, Obama has abandoned his role as the reconciler."

"This president will no longer be the father of the nation who is above party politics. Nor was it really a matter of choice. Obama needs to use authoritarian power to make it clear to his party how a majority acts. It's either with him or against him. Obama's decision was about his own political survival. If he had abandoned the reform effort or kept on trying to get a majority that included members from both parties, he would have looked weak and incapable of making a decision. But Americans don't elect weak presidents anymore."

"Health care reform is a major political achievement, an edifice that will be stabilized over the course of several years, after new elections and many legal decisions. In political terms, it has brought the president back into the Democratic camp and lent a hard foundation to his rhetorical openness and broad-mindedness. ... At the same time, Obama has pushed through a social reform in the US that he probably won't benefit from himself. The people who will benefit from it -- the majority of whom are currently uninsured -- tend not to vote. The congressional tour de force has cost him a year, many votes and his sacred aura."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"In the last few weeks, Obama has laid aside the final remnants of his disguise, that new style that brought him into office in Washington. At least in terms of domestic politics, this president is not the egghead idealist that many of the people who voted for him thought he was. Obama is a power politician who was willing to employ the very means that he denounced as detrimental to American democracy during his successful campaign to push through the most significant project of his term in office. Fickle Democrats were either cajoled or pressured using so-called Chicago rules. And some in the minority have even gone so far as to question the constitutionality of some of the methods that were employed."

"Given the climate of public opinion, Obama has a lot of work ahead of him in terms of convincing voters of the benefits of this 'historic' reform, particularly with the swing voters who played a role in getting him into office and who have now turned away from him in large numbers. But nothing is impossible, and nothing breeds success like success. At least Obama didn't pour oil on the fire and act triumphantly after his success with the vote. That was the right thing to do, especially because the battle over health care reform in particular has laid bare the deep ideological and political chasm that runs though American politics and society. The country is completely split, and all attempts to mend this divide have failed."

The conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"More than a century after US President Theodore Roosevelt reached for the stars and dreamed of giving his people universal health insurance, Barack Obama has achieved something like a lunar landing in terms of social reforms in the United States. ... MORE PAPERS HERE

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,685256,00.html

[FrenchieCat]

1. He's damned no matter,

so we'll just chalk this up as just more opinions,
since everyone has them.

As for being divided, we may be, but I think there are more
on one side than on the other, and I think that is something
that because of the trauma known as George Bush, many...even here,
don't realize this just yet. These pronouncements as made
by the German Opinies should be held until after the next election,
because till then, one can't say any of what they say in those articles.
Too, I'm amazed that those in the foreign press aren't willing to
admit the complicity of the Corporate owned American press here
and how it influences the polarization of this country, which makes
their assessment less than honest.

[depakid]

2. The other side of the coin is that he's praised no matter

Eventually, that sort of thing becomes a detriment- and a drag on broader credibility.

[get the red out]

3. Do they have a clue?

Do they have a clue what the Republican Party has become and that there is no way to reconcile with that? They don't realize that if the President had lost on this the world would have been facing another war-mongering Republican as President soon for sure, not just possibly. This country is a victim of non-stop propaganda that threatens more people than just in the United States.

They are upset we can't have bi-partisanship with corporate owned absolutists, whose minions are blindly driven by the fear (and racism) promoted by their media and their right-wing Churches. The rationality gap in this country is STAGGERING, I wish our German friends would take that into consideration when they discuss "the political divide", the divide is between those who permit themselves to think and those who dare not to.

[Doctor_J]

4. Muscled it through?

There were 200 Repuke amendments in the bill.