Meanwhile, in her Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan is whistling past a graveyard:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, in creating Social Security in 1935, knew he had to get Republicans behind it and owning it, or America would see it as a Democratic project, not an American institution. In the end he persuaded 81 Republicans to join 284 Democrats in the House. So too with the creation of Medicare in 1965: Lyndon Johnson wrestled and cajoled Republicans and got a majority of their votes.
Every president until Barack Obama knew this. He bullied through ObamaCare with no Republican support, and he did it devilishly, too, in that he created a bill so deal-laden, so intricate, so embedding-of-its-tentacles into the insurance and health systems, that it would be almost impossible to undo. He was maximalist. His party got a maximal black eye, losing the House and eventually the Senate over the bill, which also contributed to its loss of the presidency.
Is it fair that both parties must fix a problem created by one party? No. But it would be wise and would work.
What she’s missing is that today’s politics isn’t merely about getting what you want it isn’t even mostly about getting what you want. It’s mostly about ensuring that your political opponents lose.
Democrats won’t accept anything that looks like repeal of the Affordable Care Act; a significant minority of Republican senators won’t accept anything less. That’s an impasse; there is no room for compromise there.
Peggy’s memory seems a bit off. The Democrats held over forty public hearings and debates on the ACA and lobbied the Republicans for six months to join the process by offering amendments. They refused because their explicitly stated strategy was to oppose Obama in every possible way.
Fast forward to today: who secretly wrote health legislation without any open debate or discussion?
“They refused because their explicitly stated strategy was to oppose Obama in every possible way.”
They refused because they realized the process was a sham. There, that’s better. And anyway, with policymaking in the capable hands of Dr Gruber who needs Republican legislators?
Not to be nasty but Peggy Noonan isn’t all that young anymore, and it’s possible her recollections of American politics are getting a little tenuous as the years go by. I’d not regard her as a paramount source for the Age of Obama.