by Jules Witcover

It's said that hindsight has 20-20 vision, and that's certainly the case in recognizing that President Obama made the right call in deciding to fight rather than switch in the recent health-care reform battle.

Had he yielded to faint-hearted Democrats who thought he should abandon or trim down his objectives, he might not have had a second chance now to deliver on his other 2008 promises to bring real change to the country.

Beyond the specific provisions of the new law that will extend health insurance to 32 million more Americans, passage of the reforms has restored some of Obama's aura as an inspirational agent of change as he moves ahead with his ambitious agenda.

Significant in his victory was that it was scored on a key item of his own 2008 campaign vision, rather than in dealing with inherited challenges that demanded his attention when he took office.

From the start of his presidency, Obama's first imperative was slowing the economic meltdown and Wall Street collapse left on his doorstep. The bank bailouts and stimulus package that commanded most of his early attention were unforeseen tasks requiring immediate precedence to the "change you can believe in" candidate Obama had promised.

With the full plate of leftovers before him, the new president willingly let his congressional leaders put together much of the Democratic health-care reform package through his first year. Part of that decision also was motivated by the failed reform effort of Hillary Clinton, whose closed-door approach in her husband's first term had so irritated and even antagonized many in Congress.

But when the loss of the Democratic supermajority in the Senate threatened to bury health-care reform again, Obama finally joined the fray with energy and commitment. He got personally involved in the congressional negotiations and took the fight to the country himself, campaign style.

In so doing, he injected a spark and leadership that had been conspicuously missing on the issue, or at least diminished, as he was consumed by the leftover agenda of economic rescue and recovery. Not only did his performance revive his own troops. By relentlessly seeking bipartisan support -- or at least appearing to do so -- he reinforced the image of the Republicans as unyielding obstructionists in the drama.

Obama's own agenda of change continues to be handicapped by the need to address unfinished business from the previous Republican administration, most notably in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the war in Iraq appears finally moving toward some resolution, the recent elections indicate that even with the scheduled withdrawal of American troops, much diplomatic handholding remains in achieving a stable government in Baghdad.

As for Afghanistan, Obama's decision to mount his own surge of U.S. forces, strongly questioned by antiwar and other liberal Democrats in Congress, continues as a major distraction from his domestic policy objectives laid out in the 2008 campaign.

But with health-care reform enacted, Obama can now focus his energies on the nation's stubborn jobless rate of nearly 10 percent, which could imperil continued Democratic control of Congress in the November elections more than public discontent on health-care reform.

The fierce Republican rhetoric against the Obama bill on the House floor leading up to the narrow vote for it, and in the subsequent diehard efforts to derail it in the Senate, has spilled over into some very ugly insults and assaults on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading House Democrats.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, who fanned the flames in a heated and angry attack on the bill before passage, piously observed when the slurs and a few bricks started flying that this was "not the American way." Voters, he said, needed to "take that energy and channel it into positive change," meaning joining the GOP effort to repeal the bill just passed.

Accordingly, Obama cannot afford to move on entirely to his own agenda just yet. As he did in Iowa last week, he must continue to defend and explain the health-care reforms as part of the midterm fight for control of Congress that is now well underway.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

Receive our political analysis by email by subscribing here



Obama's Self-Vindication | Jules Witcover - Politics Today

© Tribune Media Services