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Blogs by Erik Hare
Bright Light
10/5/2007 6:40:01 AM
I am rarely interested in current events. I believe that more often than not they are a shadow of what is actually going on in the world, and that it is better to look in the other direction, towards the light, to know the score. Looking into a bright light may seem better suited to an interrogation than being informed about the world, but life is something of a grilling. What do you value? What will you do?
Bush’s recent veto of a 35B$ 5 year plan to provide health care coverage for 10M children for 5 years is one of these moments. It is not the plan or the merits of it that I find interesting, it’s the incredible uproar that this veto has caused which will change our political landscape.
I’m not denying that this is an admirable place to start as we do something about our healthcare "system". It’s not that I’m against universal coverage. I’ve even gone as far as to say that everyone in the current "system" should be lined up against the wall and shot – not killed, mind you. I simply believe that walking into an emergency room with a gunshot wound would change their minds about "the system" forever.
But this is so much bigger than the issue at hand.
No less than 5 people now have told me that co-workers, strangers, and casual internet acquaintances who never "talk politics" have mentioned what a terrible thing the veto was. I’ve seen it written up in blogs that never mention anything remotely political. It’s made its way to casual conversation, as bitter as a day of rain. What was Bush thinking?
What we now know is where "the line" is. Politicians stopped talking about ending Social Security long ago, once it became clear that they would be unceremoniously unelected if they said that stuff. Likewise, no one has seriously proposed cutting the military since it became too easy to bounce any such politico as weak on defense This event appears to have created one of those lines.
It remains unclear how this will effect anything else. Do people suddenly have an appetite for universal coverage, more or less asking Hillary to come back now that we understand? I doubt it, but we will see. Is it time for more children’s initiatives, in schools and other places? More likely, I think.
Once we see that a social program captures the public’s imagination it is hard to tell what will come next. This simply hasn’t happened for a long time, possibly since the 1970s. SCHIP is not remarkable in itself, and what was vetoed was far from new. What is new here is the attitude that people have. What is new may be the momentum.
This veto will probably be overridden, and that will be that. The real story is in the other direction, towards the light. What else does the public have an appetite for? Ah, yes, it’s still an interrogation technique first and foremost. But if people are talking, I think we’ll get some answers. Soon.
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