Is it Spring or Fall?

Democrats are chirping, Republicans are sniping, healthcare plans are blooming, unemployment is rolling steadily in “bad,” and existing home sales have fallen for the third straight month in a row, taking the housing market down a further 1.8% from the same time last year. People, the economy is going the wrong way! Get real! And there is about to be an explosion of cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. Houston… and every other city and town in America… we have a big problem that requires our elected representatives to work together. Yeah, right!

Still the war rages on. Embittered factions lobbing blasts against the other side. Not Iraq or Afghanistan – Washington! On Main Street, casualties mount. Snipers take aim. Bodies fall. It’s a virtual bloodbath… Republicans completely rejecting any piece of significant legislation from the Democrats; Democrats figuring that their unpopularity in passing healthcare may be overcome by attacking Republicans as the “party of no.” We’re back-channeling with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we don’t seem to be able to get our government to channel anywhere to create a unified American vector for survival.

History tells us that sweeping change is almost always unpopular. “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” Machiavelli. Incumbents are always impacted the most by major shifts in policy; they have the most to lose since their interests are vested. They fight change for obvious reasons, often desperately. And the vast horde of “the rest of us” may or may not benefit from the change since they have no experience with “the new.” Fear is easiest to cultivate when the unknown looms. Mythology and dogmatic responses predominate. So let’s see, incumbents don’t like change and most of the populace is fearful of change… Who’s dumb enough to favor the “Big New”?

Wasn’t it Ronald Reagan who said that Medicare would foretell the end of American freedom? As liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman points out (March 21^st), “[H]ere’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, ‘They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years’ by passing civil rights legislation… Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality?” Okay, we know there are folks who continue to oppose racial equality.

So both Republicans and Democrats have made a big bet. The Dems have a few pre-midterm election months to convince their constituency that the healthcare program has real benefits for everyone. But there’s a catch: it’s going to take much more time to actually see that happen. The Republicans are doing everything they can to slow down the implementation of the new law (13 Republican state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against the federal government maintaining that the 10^th Amendment – see my earlier blog – reserves the relevant powers to the states). So Republicans are betting that the current distrust of the “big change” will sweep them into office and hoping that they can be seen as more than the party of negativity.

Republicans who clearly favored healthcare reform – Mitt Romney, for example, as governor of Massachusetts shepherded a healthcare package there that looks a lot like what was just passed by Congress – are now campaigning to repeal the legislation. Democrats are seeking to expand that program as time passes. The truth probably lies in the middle. Healthcare is probably here to stay in some form or another, but each new Congress and each new President will seek to amend, expand or contract sections of the law as their term in office applies. Anyone familiar with big change legislation is generally aware that the first pass at a major new policy is almost always “far from perfect.” It will require fine tuning for decades to find the functional stability that will make it work, and changing times will mandate additional tweaks… forever. But the biggest battle of all is to debunk the mythology and spread the truth about what just happened. If only there weren’t so many people, left and right, married to the propagation of mythology!

I’m Peter Dekom, and looking at historical perspectives is a valuable in times of change.