My Man-Crushes Collide

Ezra Klein deconstructs Obama's announced health care plan in the pages of The American Prospect. His review of Obama's plan, and also his personality, is less than favorable. Since Ezra is my personal hero on the subject of health care, and the only guy whose opinion I might respect more than Jon Cohn of The New Republic (who incidentally gave the plan a more positive review, although still declaring it to be overcautious), I am forced into taking a pause as well.

This is one of those points where I think Obama's inherent caution is a drawback. One of the ways in which conservatives have been very effective on the legislative stage, since '94, is that they come to the table with completely over-the-top proposals (eliminate the estate tax! and the department of education!) so that, when they meet the liberals' less extreme proposal halfway, the conservatives end up getting much more of what they want in the eventual compromise bill.

Once again, Obama, like so many Democrats before him, is ceding too much ground in his initial proposal, which means that come time to negotiate with the nutjobs in the House, he will have to yield too far to get something passed in a 'bipartisan fashion.'

As Ezra points out, it's early in the campaign, and there's still lots of time for movement. And as Jon points out, this proposal is a massive improvement over the system that is in place right now. I think it's more a political problem than a policy problem. I'm very much still an Obamanian, for the reasons I outlined earlier. I just hope that he manages to live up to his promise, rather than failing to meet his lofty goals.