Failure to Lead

I remember the argument like it was yesterday. I was searching through the bins at Ace Hardware trying to find the right screws for the bathroom project. I was picking up boxes and discarding them with one hand and holding my phone with the other. It was late September 2008 and I was trying to convince my mom that Barack Obama was different, that voting for McCain was a mistake and that we needed to change direction. She was dismissive. She said she didn't trust any of them and that nothing would change. That's when she told me about her "wasted" vote. My mom, a life long Republican, voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

1976 was the Bicentennial year. The country was trying to forget it's economic troubles and trying to put the Nixon scandal behind us. The only thing I remember about the Presidential election was that a peanut farmer from Georgia was running and that he looked at Playboy. That night at dinner, my brothers and I asked mom and dad who they voted for and my mom was actually swooning over Carter. She kept saying that he's so smart and that he will take this country in a new direction and that he's so smart and he will change Washington and that he's so smart... For those too young to remember the late 70's stagflation (a period of slow economic growth and high unemployment with rising prices) was gripping the country, fuel prices were through the roof and Chrysler was heading for bankruptcy.

The savior from the south lasted one term, the Iran Hostage crisis did him in and Ronald Reagan was elected overwhelmingly in 1980. My mom was anti union and anti tax; my dad was an old school Democrat and pro-union his dad was in the union and they took care of him. Reagan was the cowboy riding in from the west to bust up the unions and clean up America. Even though I was just a teenager I knew Reagan was trouble but the country loved him and eventually we recovered from the malaise of the 70's and launched into the self-centered, coke-snorting, economic boom of the 80's...

Is Obama really that different? Will he become this generation's Carter? How can candidate Obama, a man so clear and articulate, so utterly fail to lead? His push for Health Care reconciliation isn't even an 11th hour push. It's 2:00am, last call and the lights are on. Frank Rich, in his op-ed column for 3/6/2010 so eloquently put it:

At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss — insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.

There was only one problem. This finest hour arrived hastily and tardily. At 1:45 p.m. Eastern time, who was watching? Of those who did watch or caught up later, how many bought the president’s vow to finish the job “in the next few weeks”?

But once again the Republicans are the master of the message and have cornered the conversation into talking points that start with ramming the legislation down the throats of the American voters and end with cries of socialism. What is lost in the battle are the costs. Today's Prime Number in the Times is 197: The amount, in thousands of dollars, that the typical married couple at age 65 should expect to spend on uninsured health care costs over the rest of their lives...

My parents lost their health care this fall. My Dad's pension went belly-up and they searched in earnest for a new prescription drug benefit but ended up with a band aid fix from Walgreens. Thankfully they are healthy but what happens if that changes. Will Medicare step in or will my brothers and I be saddled with the costs? I still find it amazing that Obama, with all his political capital and moral high ground has lost the argument to a few talking points and a few talking heads.