Obama Has Amassed Enormous Political Capital, But He Doesn't Know What to Do with It

By Robert Kuttner, Huffington Post. Posted April 28, 2009.

So what is afoot here? A rare break with the politics of accommodation? Or a more baroque form of consensus-building? We'll have to see, but there are signs that the use of the budget resolution for health reform is simply being used as early leverage rather than a nuclear option to sidetrack the filibuster.

In policy terms, it is inconceivable that a health reform law that enjoyed both Republican support and industry buy-in would be worth having. The first element to be tossed overboard would be the one instrument of real reform--a benchmark public plan that would give citizens a choice of public or private insurance as well as a tutorial in the superiority of the public plan. But the industry and its Republican allies were not born yesterday. They are well aware that the whole point of the public plan is the gradual dwindling of the private part of the industry. They will no more support this key element than they would support single payer.

The default position, "reform" without a public option would just add more government-subsidized subscribers to a crazily inefficient system with inflationary tendencies. The relentless cost-inflation, in turn, keeps being capped by limits on needed care and by increased burdens on primary care doctors to see more patients and reduce services. The Administration's widely advertised bromide of better use of computerized medical records hardly puts a dent in the private system's deeper inefficiencies.

If Obama and the Democratic leadership truly mean to scrap the filibuster on health reform in order to legislate a sweeping reform bill, we should break out the champagne. But Republican outrage has been oddly tempered--suggesting that assurances have been given that the administration still intends to proceed by consensus.

Obama's flirtation with a commission to investigate his predecessor's torture policy gave us a brief glimpse of what more robust leadership on his part might look like. In releasing the memos, he opposed prosecutions but seemed to be open to some kind of formal reckoning process. He caught Republican right piteously off guard, and forced them to defend the indefensible. A commission would make clear once and for all that the professionals opposed the torture policy, that it backfired as an interrogation technique, that it set back national security efforts by making allies more reluctant to collaborate. It would put reform of the CIA's black activities on much more durable footing. During the brief period when Obama opened the door to all this, there was no popular backlash, only the usual squawks from the far right, and praise for the president's principled leadership.

I remember thinking, At last! Here was the Obama whose intuitions, ideals and audacity we so admired early on. And if Obama can stare down the right on a subject as risky and dear to his constitutional heart as his revulsion against torture, maybe he can even stare down Wall Street and the health insurance industry.

But then, political prudence intervened, and the door was shut. Too bad.

When Lyndon Johnson advised his aides, just days after President Kennedy was assassinated, that he intended to use his presidency to enact landmark civil rights laws, he was warned that it was far too early to risk the nation's support on something so controversial. "Hell," Johnson replied, "What's the presidency for?"

Barack Obama, after nearly a hundred days, enjoys a huge reservoir of popular good will. He has managed to charm even his detractors, while his supporters are still cutting him a lot of slack. In a national crisis, that initial support is a huge asset but it will not last forever. Public approval of a president is not like a stock of savings. It needs to be invested in great deeds, and earned. Obama has yet to decide what his presidency is for.

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Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. He is author of "Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency."

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