Yesterday in an opinion piece, the Washington Post's editorial editor, Fred Hiatt, wondered if the country's political processes have become stuck. This whole health care debate has been particularly ugly. Republicans have, in no uncertain terms, declared they're not going to vote for any Democratic health care bill. They've used easily refuted lies and juvenile scare tactics to try to run the reform measure off the tracks. Democrats, on the other hand, have been completely ham handed; unorganized and unable (or unwilling) to adequately defend and sell their reform measures. Barack Obama was elected a year ago with a mandate to reform health care. By the time the Democrats get done marshaling the reform it will be a miracle if a third of the country still supports it.
Hiatt's essay does a good job at summarizing the contributors to a paralysis:
Or maybe the country isn't all that divided -- most of us would welcome common-sense improvements in health-care delivery and insurance -- but the system feeds on and exacerbates our differences. The advent of the 60-vote rule in the Senate has magnified the already formidable checks and balances built into the Constitution, with the disproportionate blocking power it awards small and rural states. Cable television and the Internet have empowered those with the greatest intensity of feeling. The self-serving redistricting habits of the political elite, designed to protect incumbents, have left most legislators vulnerable only to primary challenges from the extremes of their respective parties.
But it's Hiatt's final point that's particularly important; that the perceived paralysis of the system makes it all the more important that a truly reforming health care reform bill pass through Congress and the U.S. assert to the world it's still capable of doing some heavy lifting.
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