What Makes A Man, Mister Lebowski?

Greg Sargent parses some numbers on public opinion and health care today over The Plum Line, noting,

The poll finds that an overwhelming majority of 64% think Republicans are opposing Obama’s health care plans mostly for political reasons. But it also finds that an equally large number, 65%, say Democrats shouldn’t pass a bill without Republicans — even if they think it’s right for the country — and should instead compromise to win over some GOPers.

About which, Sargent concludes,

This shows, I think, that Democrats have convinced the public that the GOP wants Obama and Dems to fail at all costs. But they’ve failed to make the case to the public that GOP obstructionism may leave them no choice but to go it alone in order to realize reform.

Which is right, I guess.

But it leaves this sort of… empty feeling on my pallet. It’s not fair to say that Democrats have no obligation to make their case to the public, nor is it to say that it goes without saying that Democrats should leave Republicans at the door over health care.

But I can’t help thinking that there is a certain gutlessness that has come to pervade much of the political process — an inability to act when acting is the right thing to do that seems to be a kind of runt of the litter progeny of the permanent campaign mentality that is all the more ubiquitous due to it’s impish stature.

Though it might get me run out of town around these parts, there is a George W. Bush quote that has stuck with me (emphasis mine),

I made some decisions that have caused people to not understand the great values of our country. I recognize that taking Saddam out was unpopular. But I made the decision because I thought it was in the right interests of our security. I made some decisions on Israel that’s unpopular. I made a decision not to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is where our troops can be brought in front of a judge, an unaccounted judge. I don’t think we ought to join that. That was unpopular. And so what I’m telling you is that sometimes in this world you make unpopular decision because you think they’re right.

There is, I think, something to the sentiment that Bush is expressing in that comment made in the debate between he and Kerry. The idea that the leaders of one’s country need to steel themselves as discriminating minds who cut through the noise of a modern democracy and seek out the signal that provides a clear idea of the correct path for a nation. Sometimes that means ignoring the seesawing of popular winds.

It’s a noble and, in large regard, idealized notion of politicians and leaders, I know. I am, undoubtedly, due for a bit of a shellacking over my hopeless sentimentality for even bothering to express it. But it’s a goal to shoot for and I think we lose something important in the process when we simply give up on those goals as a matter of course.

And as suspicious of government as American culture generally is, I think there is a demonstrative historical narrative of people responding to leaders who exhibit strength in this regard.

Holding at least somewhat true to that notion of doing the right thing, come what may, also says something about the responsibilities of the electorate that might hope to elect such leaders. Because, as is often noted, folks generally get the leaders they deserve and if we want better leaders, if we want to stop grumbling about those “crooks and liars” in Washington, well there is a quantum leap in our own analysis whose initiation we can’t easily shuffle onto another doorstep.

Now it is a certain strain of irony that this quote should arise from a man who is roundly considered in many quarters to be the country’s worst President of all time. And, of course, George W. Bush’s problem was less that his decisions were unpopular and more that they were poorly reasoned and ill-considered. So, obviously, popularity isn’t the only metric we use in our calculus and Bush is an excellent example of how  one needs to be very careful in determining what is right vis-a-vis the blinders one uses in developing an analysis of and perspective on the world.

But, look, health care reform is roundly accepted as a necessary tonic on both sides of the ever fading spectrum and there is more than adequate debate within Democratic ranks  regarding what constitutes the right course of action in terms of health care reform to dispel most concerns about echo chamber decisions (a state of affairs that, I’ll note, stands in pretty stark contrast to the debate that occurred within Republican quarters around many of Bush’s biggest decisions). So while the public might be stuck on Obama and the Democrats playing tea party, that alone doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

And current opinion notwithstanding, we might thank them for it, in the end.

Tagged as: George W. Bush, Greg Sargent, health care, public opinion