COMMENTARY: Back And Forth Hurting Lincoln

By DAVID J. SANDERS <a href="mailto:davidjsanders@aol

Posted: November 8, 2009 at 4:25 a.m.

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LITTLE ROCK — U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., may fully understand how incredibly unpopular the Democratic plan for overhauling the nation’s health care system is back home. But it’s obvious the state’s senior senator, who faces re-election next year, doesn’t entirely grasp the damage she is doing to herself as she appears to vacillate back and forth on the issue.

The ability to avoid taking a position on an issue, particularly a divisive one, while simultaneously making the public feel that you are listening and openminded is what some would call a delicate art form.

Political obfuscation as art requires the artist to make careful and precise brush strokes, but in Mrs. Lincoln’ case, her precision has resembled finger painting - sloppy, impatient and certainly not pleasing to the eye.

This continued Tuesday, when after her private Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama Lincoln told reporters that she had not committed to vote one way or another, either to pass a bill or to end a possible Republican filibuster. This was after she said she had voicedconcerns to Obama that the so-called public option Democrats are pushing unfairly puts taxpayers and the U.S. Treasury at risk.

But just last week, while participating in a video conference with members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, she sounded like her mind was made up as far as a public option was concerned. She told the group that policymakers needed to get things straightened out with the other government-run, health care entitlement programs before they created another one.

After all, she made those statements just one day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid signaled he would push a Senate floor vote on a governmentbacked public option that contained an opt-out provision that would allow the nation’s governors and lawmakers to decide if theirindividual states should participate in the plan.

Lincoln appeared to go back on her word a few weeks ago when she voted to support the “doc fix” legislation that congressional scorers estimated will add $250 billion to the budget deficit. She has maintained throughout the public debate on health care reform that she would only support legislation that was “deficit neutral.”

But before that vote, and despite intense pressure from her party, Lincoln famously opposed the public option with income triggers, a compromise offered by Maine Republican Sen.

Olympia Snowe, when it came up for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee.

Best anyone can tell, before that particular vote, she had gone back and forth three other times in public statements about whether she would support or oppose a public option.

The voting public doesn’t appear to be impressed.

This week, Talk Business Quarterly released the results from an October poll that showed a steady decline for the senator.

According to the poll, which sampled 600 likely voters, she had a favorable rating of 42 percent and an unfavorable rating of46 percent - 10 percent had no opinion. Just three months earlier, Lincoln had a favorable rating of 49 percent and an unfavorable rating of 40 percent.

Had she, like some of her colleagues, been measured in her public comments or remained altogether silent about her thoughts about the various proposals or the decision-making process she would use to make up her mind, it’s conceivable that she could have weathered the health care storm.

Not only is Lincoln’s closely watched vacillating hurting her image with voters, but in the case of Stanley Reed, the former president of the state Farm Bureau and wealthy Marianna farmer, she literally is turning a former Republican supporter into a potential political opponent.

At best, she is writing the scripts for the 30-second television and radio advertisements that her eventual Republican opponent, along with other third-party groups, will use against her next fall.

Unfortunately for Lincoln, her careless contortionist games appear to have caught up with her.

DAVID J. SANDERS IS A COLUMNIST IN LITTLE ROCK

Opinion, Pages 9 on 11/08/2009

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