What does health care have to do with foreign policy?
Not much, one might think. But there was a paragraph in President Obama’s speech last night that drew a connection between the two in a way that was at best troubling and at worst demagogic. It appeared in the context of the President’s attempt to provide his audience with an intuitive grasp of the cost of his plan. His words bear quotation in full:
“Now, add it all up and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years, less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.”
What is one to make of this passage? It could be read, I suppose, as a good faith effort to let Americans know what they will be asked to pay for, although one is hard-pressed to know whether his implication is that the plan is relatively manageable (after all we have somehow “managed” to pay for these wars) or massively expensive. But it seems that the real point of selecting these examples to illustrate the point, at least for anyone who has listened to political rhetoric of the last few years, is the “moral” one. The standard position of those on the Left has been that the “expenditures” on the wars or on tax cuts for the rich are unconscionable, especially given the pressing social welfare needs for which this money could have been used.
Democrats have employed variants of this rhetorical formula so often that it practically enjoys the status of a political trope, one designed to invoke an automatic response (disgust). How many times, for example, did Barack Obama as candidate use just this kind rhetoric? Here is one instance:
“For what folks in this state [West Virginia] have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students. We could be fighting to put the American dream within reach for every American…” (University of Charleston, March 20, 2008)
All of this still “works” for Barack Obama, except for one thing. He is President of the United States and he strongly supports the War in Afghanistan, asking soldiers daily to sacrifice their lives for that cause. Less than a month ago he rousingly defended the policy before the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars not as “a war of choice” but as “a war of necessity.” True enough, during the campaign as well, Obama always gave his support to the Afghan war, in contrast to the Iraq War, which was the “war of choice.” The question now, however, is why he would include Afghanistan inside of a rhetorical appeal that rests on the implicit notion, at least to his own partisans, of the scandal of wasting funds. And why he would do this at the very point when he is calling on Americans to make greater sacrifices for that venture? A President who is a serious war-time President, a position he has embraced for himself, might wish to think twice before evoking sentiments that raise doubts about his own policies.
September 10th, 2009 | 2:14 pm
My immediate response is that Obama does not have to be consistent because of the very “moral position” to which you refer. One can easily forgive specific inconsistencies (i.e. “policies”) with reference to the broader moral commitments (i.e. “speeches”). Because Obama professes the moral position, to criticize him is to identify oneself as opposed to that position, thereby disqualifying oneself from stating any opinion (because of the immorality implied in criticism). The corollary is that Obama’s position is the moral position because it is Obama’s position.
Even when Obama violates his own position, for instance indicating a willingness to compromise with Republicans on the public option, the criticism from the Left of Obama is not of his moral position but of Republicans. Critics state that the GOP members are exploiting Obama’s good faith by tempting him with a bipartisan effort in health care reform, one that Republicans will never, in the end, support. All Obama’s good will with the GOP will merely produce a compromised bill. The idea is to cut off the GOP altogether. Since they take the immoral position, why should they have a say in the first place?
But I no longer need to restate your point. As for the war, the Afghan war is the “good” war because it supposedly has more to do with the original issue of terrorism. However, Obama for a long time resisted wanting to send more troops and was recommending budget cuts to the military, hoping that the Afghans military could professionalize and replace NATO forces. Even as Obama fights the good war, he appears to be withdrawing from it, perhaps because the good war can only be good if it is almost over (whether or not there is “victory,” whatever that would be).
Charles Krauthammer likes to say that the Afghan war was just a smokescreen to make Obama look like a hawk on foreign policy, thus giving Obama cover to critique Iraq. With Obama’s dovish foreign policy toward Iran and Venezuela, the commitment to close Guantanamo, and the several restrictions placed on combat in Afghanistan, Krauthammer appears to be right in describing the position’s effect on public opinion if not the secret intent behind the policy. Moreover, those three dovish policies are more in line with the moral position Obama articulates and, for some, personifies. These policies are not very popular with the public or the agencies immediately affected by them, which is just more evidence that the GOP is attempting to subvert Obama’s presidency. At least, that’s what it looks like from the moral position.
When the moral position works, it’s because it’s moral. When it does not work, it’s because the GOP subverts it. Considering how little moral policies have worked (so far), it seems the GOP, despite their minority status in Congress and unpopularity in the general public, remains so powerful a force that their influence cannot even be detected.
September 10th, 2009 | 5:12 pm
Yes – I thought the same thing. I also thought, if Obama had really been more consistent with his promises, he’d be able to ride the wave of withdrawal straight into health care reform success. It would also be nice (for Obama at least) to be able to say – look how much money we’re saving by not being in Iraq or Afghanistan! We can use this money to revamp health care for Americans, veterans, etc. etc.
September 10th, 2009 | 7:40 pm
I had a wonderful moment in class today concerning Obama’s speech. We watched a clip provided by msn.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32773972#32773972). This particular report captures snippets of Obama’s address, the outburst of Representative Wilson, an overview of the Obama plan for reform, and a nod to the Republicans in the Senate who will be critical to the success of the health care reform effort.
Just after Rep. Wilson is chastised for calling the president a “liar” (most obviously by a disapproving Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Biden), the clip shows President Obama calling out Sarah Palin for warning of “death panels” under the new health care regime. In the words of Obama, Palin’s comments were irresponsible, cynical, and a lie.
As a class we discussed the difference between these two charges. Why is it that Rep. Wilson is universally condemned, but President Obama can make a similar charge against a public official who is not even present to defend herself? We had a great discussion of congressional comity and civility as well as the respect owed to the president as president.
September 10th, 2009 | 8:05 pm
[...] Comments Two of my favorite bloggers — Jim Ceaser of the University of Virginia, and Sarah Palin of the University of Real America — were particuarly struck by one line in [...]
September 10th, 2009 | 9:32 pm
[...] of my favorite bloggers — Jim Ceaser of the University of Virginia, and Sarah Palin of the University of Real America — were particuarly struck by one line in [...]
September 11th, 2009 | 3:22 pm
Oh, well, I guess he doesn’t fit your image of a serious war-time president. And isn’t that terrible.
September 11th, 2009 | 3:40 pm
This is the great service perpetual warfare provides to both its supporters and detractors. It stands there as the object of derision validating all the much smaller expenditures desired on the one hand or is trotted out as a a great sacrifice we must all make , even normally chaste Republicans. Nothing serves the ongoing Bunko like this bipartisan cash cow.
September 15th, 2009 | 8:59 pm
“As a class we discussed the difference between these two charges. Why is it that Rep. Wilson is universally condemned, but President Obama can make a similar charge against a public official who is not even present to defend herself?”
1) I hope you got a good discussion out of this, because it isn’t a very incisive question for any other purpose than to get your students to unpack issues that arise from our peculiar arrangement of combining the positions of “head of state” and “head of government” in a single office.
2) I particularly hope you got a good discussion out of this because:
a) Sarah Palin hasn’t been a public official since July; and
b) Only one of the parties involved constituted lying, and, whatever else I may think of him, I can’t say it was POTUS.
September 30th, 2009 | 5:21 pm
Help out this debate. Liberals are overwhelming: Should Americans have equal access to health care? Good or Bad?. – What do you think? http://budurl.com/publichealthcare
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