Obama Struggles to Regain Early Momentum

The United States Congress returns to work Tuesday after a turbulent summer recess that has raised doubts over President Barack Obama’s ability to face down domestic opposition from Republicans and enforce party cohesion on issues ranging from healthcare reform to troop commitments in the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.

Expectations are high for Obama’s address to a joint session of the House and Senate on Wednesday night, when Democrats hope he will push back against attacks from Republicans and moderate Democrats and provide a more cohesive argument for the necessity of health reform and how he intends to deliver it.

Obama has spent the better part of the summer trying to explain his plan for healthcare reform in the face of opposition which claims that the plan smacks of government intervention into the private lives of citizens.

The noisy protests at town hall meetings - and the much-publicised (if unfounded) allegations by prominent Republicans that the healthcare plan would create “death panels” to promote euthanasia - came to dominate media coverage of the healthcare debate.

The White House has been seemingly blindsided by opposition from both Democrats in the Senate - some of whom have come out against a ‘public option’ in healthcare reform and others who have started to voice increasing concern about war in Afghanistan - and Republicans who have opposed almost every initiative Obama has put forward except for a stepped-up war effort in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the administration seemed to be under attack for every policy proposal it made this summer. The trend reached a height last week, when the administration was forced to spend a great deal of time and energy defending Obama’s superficially uncontroversial decision to deliver a televised address to schoolchildren on their first day back at school.

To many political analysts, the ‘’schoolchildren address” controversy showed both the willingness of the administration’s opponents to offer opposition to even the most innocuous actions taken by Obama as well as the administration’s seeming inability to shrug off attacks or hit back against critics.

A number of Democrats have expressed frustration about the White House’s inability or unwillingness to actively promote its domestic and foreign policy agenda in the face of opposition. Many suggest that the administration has allowed centrist Democrats in Congress (the so-called “Blue Dogs”) to wield too much power in shaping the president’s agenda.

”We all lose as a party if we allow the moderates and the Blue Dogs to continue,” said Obama’s former deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, at a gathering in San Diego.

“The Republicans are loving it, and they should. When are we going to start standing up to these people? Tell [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid] to start leading and holding the 52 Blue Dogs accountable,” he said.

While the health care debate has dominated the airwaves this summer, the summer has also been rocky for the administration in terms of foreign policy.

Public support for the war in Afghanistan - widely seen as Obama’s most important foreign policy initiative - has been slipping dramatically.

A recent McClatchy poll found that 54 percent of U.S. citizens believe the U.S. is not winning in Afghanistan and 56 percent oppose sending more combat troops.

While the Pentagon is expected to request as many as 45,000 additional U.S. troops to join the 68,000 already committed to Afghanistan, Democratic support for a larger troop commitment is lukewarm, and even some prominent conservatives - such as Washington Post columnist George Will - have turned against the war.

In a sign of the continued turmoil within Afghanistan, the Afghan electoral commission announced Tuesday that it had found “clear and convincing evidence” of fraud in last month’s presidential elections and demanded a recount - a further blow to the unpopular U.S.-backed incumbent, President Hamid Karzai.

The most ardent support for the war in Afghanistan comes from Republican and neo-conservative circles. On Monday, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) - a neo-conservative group widely seen as the successor to the defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which played a pivotal role in pushing for war in Iraq - issued a statement urging Obama to “fully resource” the war in Afghanistan.

In an illustration of the topsy-turvy state of the Afghanistan debate, one notable signatory was former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin - who attracted controversy for propagating the “death panels” myth about Obama’s healthcare plan.

Other foreign policy challenges loom as well - most notably, a likely showdown this month on Capitol Hill over Iran.

In the wake of public outcry over Iran’s disputed Jun. 12 presidential elections and its subsequent repression of demonstrators, the Obama administration gave Tehran a September deadline to respond to diplomatic outreach concerning its nuclear programme, which critics allege is intended for military purposes.

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited members of the so-called “P5+1″ group - comprising the U.S., Britain, China, Russia, France, and Germany - to Tehran for talks, but stated that discussion on the nuclear issue is “finished”, the Washington Post reported.

Many experts argue that the continued political disarray within Iran following the election crisis makes it virtually impossible for Tehran to respond to engagement in the near future, and that the U.S. should stand back for the moment to let the Iranian political situation play out.

However, hawks within Congress are pushing the administration to institute harsher sanctions against Tehran. Hardline and influential “Israel lobby” organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations are preparing a major lobbying push this month in support of sanctions legislation, according to the Forward.

On another signature foreign policy item, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the administration has also run into obstacles.

The right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted U.S. demands to cease settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the administration intended to pave the way for final-status negotiations regarding a two-state solution. The latest flare-up came last week, when the administration criticised Netanyahu’s approval of the construction of hundreds of new West Bank housing units.

While the Obama administration reportedly plans to unveil plans for new peace negotiations this fall, some analysts fear that its peace plans have gotten bogged down in what journalist Tony Karon labeled “roadmapolis” – a reference to the George W. Bush administration’s two failed Middle East peace initiatives, the 2002 “road map for peace” and the 2007 Annapolis conference.

While it remains far too early to write the administration’s political obituary, and much of the media commentary proclaiming Obama a failure has come from ideological opponents eager to make this image into a reality, it is becoming clear that the White House must take a new tack if it is going to keep its most high-profile domestic and international goals alive.

Wednesday’s address to Congress on health care will be a start, as the president attempts to regain possession of a health care debate that slipped out of his control over the course of the summer.

Only time will tell whether this fall will be remembered as a time when the administration recovered its footing - as Obama did last fall during the 2008 presidential campaign - or as a period of continued decline in its political fortunes.

Why Obamacare Will Fail and the Media Will Fail to Notice Its Flaws

To the vast majority of Americans, the purpose of health care is to protect, improve, and lengthen life. Life is the primary goal; issues of health care financing are secondary.

Everything you need to know about the unmovable obstacles that Barack Obama’s big health care speech to Congress will face on Wednesday–and why the mainstream media can’t figure it out–was encapsulated this week in a  news story on the front page of Monday’s Washington Post.   The headline reads, “Obama Readies Reform Specifics/In Health-Care Address, President Is Expected to Take Firmer Positions.”

The article takes a serious, but optimistic tone: Summer is over, and the President is back from his vacation, rested and ready.  He has learned from his mistakes–not being “firm” enough–and is now poised to push ahead with his agenda.

By way of providing context, The Post notes, “From the earliest days of his presidency, Obama has made a top priority of twin goals: to extend coverage to millions of Americans and to slow the fast-rising rate of inflation for medical care.”  Yes, that’s the Obamacare agenda in a nutshell.

But as I have argued at SeriousMedicineStrategy.org, what the American people really want is an all-out effort–a war, not to put too fine a point on it– against illness and incapacitation. To declare, for example, with John F. Kennedy-esque moonshot-like resolve, “We are going to cure Alzheimer’s” is, I think, a much more popular goal than “health insurance reform.” And if conquering Alzheimer’s–or cancer, or strokes–is not cheap, well, I don’t think the American people would object to spending money on Serious Medicine to vanquish those killers and extend their own lives.

But in Monday’s newspaper, after reciting Obama’s twin goals, “extending coverage” and “slowing costs,” The Post adds its own take on what went wrong this summer for Obamacare.  The Post’s account, strangely enough, completely meshes with the liberal Obama-ish line: “In August, opponents seized control of the discussion, elevating side issues such as abortion and end-of-life counseling.” [emphasis added.]

But let’s not just add emphasis to those two words, “side issues.”   Let’s really dwell on them: “elevating side issues such as abortion and end-of-life counseling.”  To Right to Lifers, is abortion a side issue? Uh, no. And since 51 percent of Americans count themselves as pro-life,  according to a Gallup Poll released in May, concern over abortion is hardly on the side–it is front and center. Indeed, it’s fair to say that plenty of Americans who see themselves as pro-choice still have mixed feelings about including abortion in taxpayer-funded health-insurance plans.

And let’s take a look at the other alleged “side issue” cited in The Post: “end-of-life counseling.” Is that a “side issue” to the elderly?  Or to those with serious illnesses or disabilities? Sarah Palin caused a firestorm last month when she accused the Obama administration of wanting to set up  “death panels”; while the words “death panels” do not appear in the legislation, it’s obvious that there’s more than a little bit of “nudge” toward death in the legislation that came forth from Capitol Hill.

That was the point made by Jim Towey, a former Bush 43 administration official, in a landmark op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last month, “The Death Book for Veterans,” in which Towey quoted from a 52-page booklet published by the Veterans Administration during Bill Clinton’s presidency–and revived under President Obama–which suggests to vets, if they fear that they might be a “financial burden,” or fear becoming “a vegetable,” or if they just can’t “shake the blues,” well, maybe it’s time for them to go.  And the V.A. can help.

If the government will do that to veterans, then how could the rest of us be safe?

Meanwhile, overseas, in countries that American liberals and leftists look to for political  inspiration, the scary stories keep coming.   Last week, for example, the London-based Telegraph newspaper reported on euthanasia in Britain’s National Health Service;  the story was headlined, “Sentenced to death on the NHS/Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.”

Which is to say, abortion and end-of-life-counseling are not “side issues” at all. They are central to the debate.  And that’s why Obamacare opponents “seized control of the discussion,” as The Post put it, because the majority of Americans were on their side. That’s why it was easy for the opponents to seize control. After all majority rules. And to the vast majority of Americans, the purpose of health care is to protect, improve, and lengthen life. Life is the primary goal; issues of health care financing are secondary.

But for the political left, “universal coverage” is an end in itself. Everything else is to the side, by definition. Liberal-leftists don’t seem really to care what kind of coverage is offered, so long as everyone is covered. It’s the neo-socialist principle that we should all be part of the same plan, part of the same big thing, that seems to be paramount in their minds.

And if there’s element of power-grabbing, whereby politicians of a certain party get more money and power–and whereby “bioethicists” burrowed into the bureaucracy get to make the most profound decisions of life and death over others–well, that’s OK, too.

Lost completely in all such politics, of course, is the fundamental point of medicine–life. Medicine is about cures.  That’s what the Hippocratic Oath is all about; the doctor swears that he or she will do everything possible to help the patient. There’s no mention, in that sacred text, of politics.

The American people can’t recite verbatim the Hippocratic Oath, but they know it and revere its essential message.  That’s why most folks feel affection for doctors and medicine; they certainly like docs and meds more than they like politicians.

But don’t expect to hear about the Hippocratic Oath from Obama on Wednesday night.  Expect to hear instead, again, about “extending coverage” and “controlling costs.”

And as for those “side issues”?  You know, abortion and end-of-life-counseling?   And other concerns, such as involuntary organ harvesting? And coverage of illegal aliens? Don’t expect to hear much about those concerns, other than, of course, a few carefully focus-grouped weasel words.

And that’s why Obamacare will fail–because the American people are on to it.   And they oppose it.

But The Washington Post will probably hail the speech, and that will be yet another indicator that the MSM just doesn’t get it.

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