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