BETWEEN THE LINES Lincoln’s Approach Thoughtful

By Brenda Blagg

Posted: November 25, 2009 at 3:46 a.m.

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U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s vote on Saturday to advance debate on a Senate bill for health care reform did not count for any more than any of the other senators’ votes; but her delay in deciding how to vote made hers the 60th, and decisive, vote necessary for passage.

That’s why she and another straggler to the Democratic fold, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., were so much in the news last week and why there was so much more speculation about why each might vote one way or the other on the cloture issue.

Lincoln is, of course, Arkansas’ senior senator and is seeking a third term next year, a fact that has fueled a lot of the speculation about her vote. Her pending re-election campaign has certainly caused her to be targeted by many different interest groups trying to sway her votes on health care.

“For months now, groups from outside my state have assigned various motives to my deliberations on health care and tried to define the meaning of my vote,” Lincoln said last week, as she explained her cloture vote in a Senate floor speech.

So far, she said, groups from outside Arkansas had spent more than $3.3 million on media ads related to the issue, most of them mentioning her name. That doesn’t even take into account the “free” attacks that have been launched by e-mail and on the Internet.

“These outside groups seem to think this is all about my re-election. I don’t think they know me very well. I am focused on my opportunity to influence the final version of health care reform legislation in a way thatmost helps my state.

“I’ve avoided the extremist claims from the left and the right and tried to pull the common sense solutions from among all the policy options so that we get health care reform that benefits Arkansas.”

Believe her or not, she sounded like the centrist Southern Democrat she’s always been, a middle of the roader trying to keep her job in a state where so many voters lean even more conservatively than she does.

Were she only listening to the noisiest of her constituents or paying too much attention to outside influences, she might have voted with the Republicans in the Senate to shut down this debate.

Politically, that might have been easier.

There’s no apparent gain for her on the re-election front in holding out so long to signal she’d help push the debate to the Senate floor. Or in her flat-footed opposition to a “government-run, public option” for health insurance, which is in the bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid successfully advanced.

She must have disappointed constituents on both ends of the health care debate with hercloture vote and her ultimatum about a public option. She certainly fired up another round of criticism from both extremes inside and outside of Arkansas.

She why did she do this?

Maybe the answer is in that speech she made to her colleagues and directed to her constituents.

“Put simply, those who vote yes on this first vote,” she said, “believe our nation’s health care system needs reforming and are ready to have an honest and open debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate about how to best achieve that reform ...

“The fact is, I am serious about changing our health care system, as most Arkansans and most Americans are.”

Give her that much consideration, at least.

Lincoln played an influential role in the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a different bill than the one that will be debated. She favors its approach and she said again on Saturday that she expects to have “legitimate opportunities to influence” the final Senate bill.

That’s the point. Reid’s bill is not “the” Senate bill. But it is the vehicle, thanks to this cloture vote, for expanded debate.

Saturday’s vote, as Lincoln said, marked the beginning of consideration of the health reform bill by the full U.S.

Senate, not the end.

Nor, as Lincoln knows, is it the end of the end of the assault on her motives and her re-election campaign. That, too, is only beginning.

BLAGG IS A COLUMNIST FOR NORTHWEST ARKANSAS NEWSPAPERS LLC.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/25/2009

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