Obam-over-it

Flipping through my cell phone, deleting old--very old--text messages, I came across the texts from Election Day last November. Although I was not an Obama supporter at the level of many of my friends, among whom there was a lot of Hoping and Believing and Can-Doing, I was rather proud that the U.S. had pulled it together and voted for a black man with a funny name. The Republicans made it easier, of course, by nominating McGrumpy and the Wasillabilly (so, thanks!).

I knew that Obama was not going to be the second coming of FDR, and that if we were lucky, he would land one-cigar's-width to the left of Clinton and hang out. But--and here's where I was standing in my own puddle of lukewarm hope--I did think that maybe he would be assertive in his leadership. Okay, okay, actually, of course what I wanted was for him to kick the Republicans in the teeth, a la Preznit "I just won 50.9% of the vote? That's a mandate, dammit! Let's invade another country! Whatsay, Dick?" [Cheney: "Sure, George. Here's your little wooden horsey. Giddyap."]

Instead, it's all "We definitely will have universal health care...or maybe that's a little strong...maybe we'll just have a public plan people can pay for themselves, on the market...maybe we'll just give children doctor's visits every other Thursday in November...well, perhaps we can just mail out coupons for free thermometers, and some band-aids"* or "Stockbrokers should definitely not do this!...or, okay, well, so they shouldn't have done that, but we will talk very sternly to them about it and ask them to count to at least ten the next time they decide to tank our economy. Okay, count to three. Can we just count to three?"

I saw Strobe Talbott, of the Brookings Institution, give a talk last week. He said that it was crucial that Obama win the vote on health care, so that he can claim it as a victory and then move on to other pieces of legislation that are pressing--climate change and arms control. These two issues--global warming and the proliferation of nuclear weapons--were, he felt, the two threats that endanger the future of humanity. I certainly agree with the second assertion; I'm less convinced about the first. Is something better than nothing? If the bill is bloated, and costly, and doesn't give many people a tangible benefit, I fear we will lose not only 2010 but possibly the White House in 2012. Not only will the Obama administration be tagged with all of the failures of the bill, but they will also be painted as wishy-washy, the party, once again, that can't seem to engage all of its gears at once. Or even any of its gears at all. If Obama does pass a weak bill, something like the Baucus bill, then he better hope that he can get through cap-and-trade in a hurry, before the midterm punishment happens.

*Cf.: ""I favor a public option. We're going to do our very best to have a public option. But remember, a public option is a relative term," Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday."