Russell Arben Fox is unhappy:
Poulos’s ridiculous, Tea-Partier rhetoric about a bill that has been sent back and forth through the legislative wringer more times over the past year that the great majority of bills ever experience (how does ten months of constant debate and scrutiny add up to governing by “fiat”?) simply reveals him, beneath his philosophy, to be Mansfieldian at heart: someone so disbelieving that any kind of collective action or positive reforms can contribute to political liberty as to lead him to assume that anything which smacks of “reform” is by definition the undemocratic work of a Lawgiver, and therefore sees the “process” behind such as invalidating any and all claims that might be made on behalf of, for instance, insuring people, and regulating insurers, and maybe even lowering costs.
Leaving Harvey Mansfield out of this, I am stumped as to where this ungenerous read came from. My post certainly did not claim that Obama was impatient or unwilling to tolerate nuts and bolts negotiations at the Congressional level. Indeed, Obama, as I pointed out, was quite willing to let things get positively “ugly” as the Congress wrestled with, and wrestled over, the monster bill. That’s because he seems not to care how ugly it gets because only the result counts, and the result that counts is the law he wants. Buyoffs, backroom deals, sops to the insurance companies he demonizes — whatever works.
I doubt any of my regular readers, right, left, or center, could possibly agree that I am the kind of conservative who stands reflexively against reform. Something — in what I took to be my obvious subtext — is occasionally better than nothing, and one of the purposes of a nondysfunctional politics is to adjudicate well when that’s so and when it isn’t. My point, which I believe stands, is that this bill is not something that is better than nothing, and that elevating the something-over-nothing idea to the level of a guiding legal philosophy is a triumph of dangerous abstraction over — yes — the viability of real, responsible reform.
As far as communitarian conservatism goes, I am one of the most sympathetic non-communitarian conservatives I know, so this dispute seems especially unfortunate. But the basis of my sympathy is rooted in my appreciation for the possibility of bottom-up change, on a micro, pluralistic level, in the way many Americans live their lives. Some top-down change is inevitable, and some is necessary and even good — I’m sympathetic to David Brooks, too, remember — but Obamacare is not change I can believe in, and it is not better than nothing. I say this, of course, as a person who shares the near-universal opinion of intelligent Americans everywhere, which is that we have to do something. I also share the opinion of the relatively few conservative commentators who rue the failure of Republicans in Congress, especially in the Bush Congress, to effectively tap into their own idea base and prioritize the promotion of a reform package of their own.
March 23rd, 2010 | 8:25 am
James,
Fair enough–my reading of your post was on the ungenerous side, and for that I apologize. It came in a the concluding paragraph of a post with a different focus, and your comment probably deserved a post all its own. If I gave it the full consideration it deserves, however, I would still take issue which your characterization of the situation. The connections in your thinking in that post are demonstrated again in your response here: you move from seeing Obama’s approach to health care reform as “seem[ing] not to care how ugly it gets because only the result counts, and the result that counts is the law he wants,” to concluding that he “elevat[es] the something-over-nothing idea to the level of a guiding legal philosophy.” How do the latter necessarily follow from the former?
Like any politician elected to office in a representative democracy, he had an agenda which he campaigned upon–and, like any politician elected to office in a polity as cumbersome and plagued by a dumbed-down mass media as ours, that agenda consisted primarily of a list of promises and intentions, with policies and plans playing a secondary role. Once in office, he assesses the situation (a situation that included his own fired-up players, and an opposition that, despite long negotiations–remember Senator Baucus!–quickly became implacable), and moves towards his goal accordingly. You see in this, as I read you, as a fiat-driven mindset: Something Will Be Done! But isn’t it just as reasonable to see it as democratic accountability: responsibly seeing how much of his promises to the portion of the electorate which supported him could be achieved by this means, or perhaps by that means, given the shifting nature of the political terrain?
Perhaps the root of our disagreement over Obama’s motivations through health care reform are rooted on which policy expertise we carry with us–or rather, which policy experts we are inclined to believe: you argued that “honest commentators on both sides know and agree that this bill breaks the system further”; I could argue, of course, that “honest commentators on both sides” would dispute that observation thoroughly. But the thrust of your post doesn’t appear to rest on policy assumptions, but rather a moral assessment. And on this point I am confused. You speak of Obama’s apparent lack of “fervent moral passion” on behalf on the uninsured (another observation that at least a few who have attended to his speeches might dispute). On the one hand, you seem to appreciate that, expressing thanks that he “is not playing John Brown on health care reform.” But on the other hand, you seem to fault it as a poorer kind of disposition, because it would be preferable to the disposition you do attribute to the president: his apparent belief that “legislating itself is a moral act–one which legislatures like ours seem incapable of performing properly.” That seems to warrant two responses. Regarding the first part, I would assert that legislation does, in fact, constitute a kind of moral action, because it articulates and brings into practicable, collective existence norms and convictions held by the people. (This is arguable, of course, and such an argument would take us in the direction of my fondness for Rousseau or Obama’s experience with community organizing, and the criticisms and limitations of such. It is, nonetheless, a separate argument, which I do not think should be assumed.) And regarding the second part…why do you assume that Obama believes that “legislatures like ours” cannot act morally–that is, cannot in fact properly legislate? Because he used the word “ugly” in describing the process? Well, is it not? Can’t that be read as a legitimate empirical description? Paging Otto von Bismark here…
My apologies for going on at length, but perhaps this comment makes up for merely doing a drive-by on your post earlier. For whatever number of reasons, we seem to view this legislation differently: you see it as embodying the “triumph of dangerous abstraction over…the viability of real, responsible reform,” whereas I see as a practically and seriously compromised act which was passed because a window of opportunity was opened by the electorate, which nonetheless will provide goods which are both real and responsible. If our differences come down to a disagreement or condemnation of the governing institutions in our country…well, we can turn to the way Megan McArdle approaches the situation and, as I read her, implicitly start yearning for a parliamentary democracy…
Russell
March 23rd, 2010 | 2:48 pm
Thanks, Russell. When I have the time, which will be soon, I will respond in kind to your deeper remarks here!
April 3rd, 2010 | 11:44 am
Agreed. It’s shocking to look back at the Bush years now and realize how little of any good Republicans actually accomplished, despite eight years of leadership!
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