THE BROADER VIEW Politics predominates Is bipartisanship possible?

By Hoyt Purvis <a href="mailto:email@nwarktimes.com">

Posted: August 9, 2009 at 5:53 a.m.

• Print item
• E-mail
• Share
• Tweet

Politics permeates policy-making and government.

There's nothing startling about that.

However, there's an exceptionally high level of crassness, misinformation, and disinformation pervading the present political environment.

This is most obviously apparent in the "debate" over health care legislation. But it is by no means limited to that topic.

It was evident in the consideration of the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, where much of the opposition to her appeared to be of the knee-jerk variety, even though Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham and Kit Bond said that she is clearly well qualified to sit on the high court and voted for her, despite disagreements they may have with her judicial philosophy. Bond says he hopes his vote bodes well for a future with less polarization and less confrontation. Partisanship should not infect every facet of our political life, he said. Bond reminded his colleagues that as a senator, Barack Obama opposed President George W. Bush's nominees.

Bond says it's time to put politics aside when it comes to judicial nominees and he hopes liberal senators will do so "when another qualified nominee is before the Senate who is conservative." Bond, Graham, and seven other Republicans who supported Sotomayor didn't succumb to the reflexive reaction that anyone nominated by President Obama should be opposed. While Bond deserves credit for stepping above pure partisanship, it has been noted that he doesn't plan to run for re-election next year and perhaps that enables him to be somewhat more independent.

Politics was also apparent in some of the commentary about former President Clinton's humanitarian mission to North Korea to gain release of two American reporters who had been imprisoned and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. John Bolton, a former Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations and a fierce opponent of talking to adversaries, blasted Clinton's trip and called it "gesture politics."

Put aside the point that the two journalists should have known they were courting danger by venturing so close to apparently crossing into North Korean territory, even if accidentally. Whether the Clinton visit leads to improving U.S.-North Korean communications or to further complicating nuclear diplomacy, forgoing an opportunity to gain freedom for the two women would have been foolhardy and hard-hearted. And, yes, the Obama administration wants to get some credit for this "unofficial" mission which has some feel-good political reward.

However, it is on the health care issue that we see politics truly running amuck.

Some weeks ago, I wrote that as long as we treat health care as a political issue, meaningful advancement on legislation and policy would be difficult. But in many respects that's exactly what we have seen: The health care issue has become inflamed with exaggerated rhetoric and politicized posturing. Valid and accurate information about what is under consideration and what the impact would be has been in short supply and has too often been swamped by a torrent of misleading data and false claims. It is difficult for a rational debate to take place in an atmosphere such as this.

Let's stipulate two undeniable points: (1) there are many legitimate and unanswered questions about what is being considered in Washington; (2) the issue and the legislation are highly complex.

The complexity of the issue and of the legislative proposals does not lead to easy summarizing by the media, particularly on television. It's much easier to cover a subject such as the Gates-Crowley contretemps and subsequent "beer summit," or the endless round of stories related to Michael Jackson's death.

President Obama has spoken at great length about health care and the general principles and goals he supports, and at other times has focused on more specific components. However, we have a variety of different health care bills under consideration by congressional committees, none of which are yet near final approval. Obama made a calculated choice not to send Congress a specific bill, as President Clinton had done in 1994, and to let the committees work out specific details. In the long run that may prove to have been the right strategy, but in the meantime we have political mayhem.

We hear vastly differing claims about what is involved. President Obama says there are 47 million Americans without health insurance. In its news pages, the Wall Street Journal reports that there 46 million Americans (about 16 percent) uninsured, while a Journal analysis suggests that number may be inflated by several million, and Karl Rove, who accuses Obama of practicing the "politics of fear" in a Journal opinion column, says that 91 percent of all Americans have insurance.

Then there are the absurd claims about the effects the health care legislation would have. One of the more extreme examples came on the talk-radio show of former senator Fred Thompson. Political gadfly Betsy McCaughey said that the health-care overhaul would require elderly citizens to be instructed on "how to end their lives sooner" and how to "decline nutrition ... and cut your life short." That this is totally false did not prevent a flurry of Internet blogs and e-mails from joining talk radio in saying that the proposal, which actually involved voluntary counseling sessions about living wills and preferences for late-life medical interventions, was intended to promote "euthanasia" and "guiding you in how to die." Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) suggested that Democratic-backed plans would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.

Some of these claims come from the same crowd as the "birthers," that band of zealots who are determined not to let documented truth and election results stand in their way of insisting that President Obama was born in Kenya and is not an American citizen and ineligible to be president.

Many of the points of contention in the health care debate revolve around projected costs and the governmental role. Part of the problem here, again, is that we don't yet have a consensus version. However, assertions that the measures under consideration would add a trillion dollars to the federal deficit are not accurate. It is true that the costs would be upward of $1 trillion over 10 years, but those costs would be partly offset by other spending cuts and tax and revenue increases. As for the "government takeover," yes, there would be a public option, but citizens would retain the choices they have now about health care.

Although there are exceptions, including some members of the Senate Finance Committee, many congressional Republicans seem intent on blocking passage of any significant overhaul of health care. They were determined to slow down legislative progress before the current congressional recess so as to help build opposition among the public, as momentum for change appeared to be dwindling. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said the issue could become Obama's "Waterloo." Some Blue Dog Democrats, led by Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross and with particular concerns about costs, also wanted to delay action to increase their opportunity to influence the process.

During the recess period, legislators are having town-hall meetings and other public events and finding in some cases considerable anger and apprehension about the health care proposals. Some of that concern is based on genuine doubts about the direction the health-care overhaul may take. Some of it, however, consists of bellicose, politically based and unsubstantiated claims.

Is significant bipartisan legislation still possible? We'll know more when Congress returns to Washington next month, with the Senate (which may consider nonprofit health cooperatives as an alternative to a public plan) likely to be the determining factor. Overcoming the politicization of the process will not be easy, however.

Hoyt Purvis is a journalism and international relations professor and served as press secretary to Sen. J. William Fulbright, foreign/defense policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, and as chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. His column appears on Sundays.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 08/09/2009

Comments

To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Please read our comment policy.

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.