Politics of decline

We're psyched to listen to President Obama explain cogently and concisely tonight why health-care reform is needed and why his plan is the way to go. I'll bet he says "yes we can'' once or twice. That seemed to work for him back when he was popular. Who knows? Maybe a few people will be listening with open minds.

I'm finding being as casual observer to the issue to be increasingly frustrating. It doesn't seem likely that our political system is flexible enough to deal with a real crisis like this, instead just pushing it off into the future as we've been doing for decades. And intelligent debate of the pros and cons seems hard to find.

David Brooks had a depressing column in The NY Times yesterday about the fact that while there is no doubt we need to control spending since we have made so many promises (Medicare and Social Security are the best examples) that we can't pay for we aren't making progress on dealing with them. The issue seems to be, do we just keep borrowing until the rest of the world finally decides we aren't a good credit risk any more or do we somehow stop ourselves from spending so much?

The way Brooks looks at it, there are at least two of the models to try to govern ourselves: one is to give the people as much direct power as possible, and the other is to concentrateauthority in the hands of experts.

Trouble is, he says, neither works. Californians have more direct sayr over their state and local budgets than most other Americans. But they have used it is "to tax themselves like libertarians and subsidize themselves like socialists,'' he says. That system has empowered special interests. Teachers there are among the best paid and can't be fired, even if found with pot or pornography in school because of union power. But the California schools are among the worst and the state is in fiscal meltdown, with problems that dwarf even New York's.

But giving power to experts doesn't work either, he says, because they seem eventually to climb into bed with special interests. For example, he points out out that bankers talked Congress and federal regulators into changes in financial rules that helped lead to the financial crisis that started about a year ago.

Closer to home, Eliot Spitzer, (who is now teaching at CUNY) seemed like the ideal guy to shake up Albany when he was elected NY governor in 2006 - bright, aggrressive, principled and almost bristling with energy. But Spitzer's personal weaknesses and need for power undermined his better instincts, and he quickly flamed out.

Obama seemed like the latest savior, but how his approval rating is middling at best. At least on TV tonight, while he's talking nobody will be screaming about taking the government out of Medicare or our slide towards socialism or death panels (thanks Betsy McCaughey). That won't start for at least a few seconds after he's finished.