What Passes For Courage

The Economist calls Rep. Paul Ryan "a brave man" for his deficit reduction plan. I'm astonished by what passes for courage among pundits. The accolades he received when he died notwithstanding, Sen. Ted Kennedy wasn't brave for voting for massive government spending as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. What would've been risky for Ryan, as a tea party-supported congressman from a conservative district, would've been backing entitlement reform with means testing, prudent post-Cold War defense procurement cuts, and some new revenues, if only by closing appalling loopholes -- in other words, by supporting Simpson-Bowles. But no. As the Economist itself writes:

Mr Ryan was...wrong to vote against the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, which he did on the grounds that it wanted to close the deficit partly through an increase in tax revenues. He believes that the gap should be closed wholly through spending cuts. Because Mr Ryan, in true Republican fashion, wants to increase spending on defence, everything else—poverty relief, transport infrastructure, environmental protection and education, for instance—will have to be squeezed intolerably.

Playing to the GOP's stingy base, which demands cuts for the poor and uninterrupted federal goodies for itself, is about as edgy as wearing a Yankees jersey in the Bronx. Of course Barack Obama didn't have the guts to accept the commission's recommendations, either, and it was his commission. At the moment there appears to be more courage at the weekly meeting of the St. John's Boy Scout troop than on the major parties' tickets.

Ted Kennedy's Legacy

The Economist sums up the arguments being presented before the Supreme Court this week for and against the individual mandate, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's health care reform:

The challengers have simplicity on their side. They argue that Congress cannot compel individuals to buy something. Its powers are only those enumerated in the constitution. Let Congress regulate inactivity, challengers say, and there will be no limit to its meddling.

Mr Obama’s lawyers must rely on a more complex chain of reasoning. America’s huge health sector, they point out, is dysfunctional. People with pre-existing health conditions pay extortionate rates for their insurance, if they can get it at all. In part because of this, some 50m people have no insurance cover; yet many of them receive emergency care they cannot pay for. This raises the cost to everyone else; by an average of about $1,000 each year per family, the government argues.

The health law attempts to remedy these failings by requiring insurers to cover the sick without raising their fees. The mandate, by insuring more healthy people, would help offset these costs and fix the problem of uncompensated care. The mandate is constitutional for two reasons, says the government. The penalty falls within Congress’s power to tax (though Mr Obama has denied the mandate is any such thing). And the constitution’s “commerce clause” authorizes Congress to regulate interstate activity. Not buying insurance is a decision to pay for your own care, the reasoning goes. This has a big effect on interstate commerce, though arguably by similar logic one might oblige people to buy gym memberships or broccoli....

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision by the end of June. By then the Republicans will probably have chosen a presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who signed a mandate of his own in Massachusetts (he says it is fine for states to do this but not Washington). However the court rules, the political consequences will be huge. Even more important, for the long term, will be the court’s articulation of congressional power. Washington subsists on hyperbole. But this time it is all true.

If the mandate is overturned, and especially if the court junks the rest of the bill, too, health care reform could end up being radioactive for a generation. The tragedy would be that near-universal health insurance coverage, and the resulting more rational distribution of costs, could have been achieved without a federal individual mandate. Richard Nixon proposed requiring employers to share or pay employees' premiums for private insurance. Credits and subsidies would have enabled coverage for the self-employed and unemployed. The relative few who would have opted out and used the ER when they got sick wouldn't have caused anything like that $1,000-per-family distortion and the resulting spike in premiums and pricing anomalies such as $1,500 blood panels.

Ted Kennedy, who crusaded for health reform throughout his Senate career, blocked the Nixon plan because it relied on private insurance instead of a single-payer system. Nixon wanted the same outcome for people as Kennedy did but without creating vast new federal powers. If Barack Obama's bill dies because he overreached as well (in his case by failing to anticipate the intervention of the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s), he could end up sharing Kennedy's legacy of 50 million semi-permanent uninsured. In politics, having your heart in the right place doesn't excuse poor tactics.

Nixoncare

The AP's Calvin Woodward on the roots of Obama- and Romneycare in Richard Nixon's 1974 health care initiative, torpedoed in Congress by Ted Kennedy:

Nixon's initiative was bold for its time — and even bolder now — because it contained measures that have become anathema to the Republican mainstream, including a requirement that all employers offer coverage to their workers. To his everlasting regret, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, his party's broker on health care, chose not to seal a deal with Nixon along those lines, reasoning that a Democratic president down the road could achieve a single-payer government system like Canada's.

"You never know how the thing would have played out," said [Stuart] Altman, an architect of Nixon's initiative and author of a new book on the century-long struggle for expanded medical care, "Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care." ''There was no question that the stars were aligned in 1974 for the passage of something important."

Nixon declared, "The time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high-quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it."

With the Watergate scandal soon to destroy Nixon's presidency, health care was surely a topic he preferred to talk about. It's just not one that Romney or Obama want to talk about now.

The Great Debate

William McGurn says liberals have won the arguments about whether less advantaged people deserve help. The remaining debate with conservatives, and it's a big one, is how it's done. The GOP's proposed Medicare reforms are an example:

[Rep. Paul] Ryan proposes a simple but dramatic shift: helping people afford private coverage. Under this reformed system, seniors would have their private premiums subsidized, and the poorest would get the largest subsidies. The hope is that over time it would have the opposite effect of the present system. Instead of increasing the dependence of the middle class, it would help make all seniors consumers.

Same with Richard Nixon's health care proposals in the 1970s, which would have enabled virtually all workers to purchase private health insurance. They were torpedoed by Ted Kennedy, who held out all his life for for a single-payer system.
Hat tip to Buddy Lang

Carter The Conseservative

A Cato Institute (read libertarian) expert writes:

Conservatives condemn Carter's ineffectual foreign policy, but his successful stewardship of the Camp David Accords made him the best presidential friend Israel's ever had. At home, by serially deregulating airlines, trucking and railroads, the man from Plains broke special-interest strangleholds over transportation, helping usher in the dynamic, competitive economy of the '80s.

To tame soaring inflation, Carter appointed tight-money man Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman, and, at great political risk, grit his teeth through the deepening recession.

"Because of Carter's fear of exacerbating inflation," [author Ivan] Eland adds, "he courageously refused to support an expensive proposal by Senator Edward Kennedy to provide federally funded national health insurance for all Americans."

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

Bipartisan Embitterment

A former Ted Kennedy aide calls Jimmy Carter "embittered" for saying this in a "60 Minutes" interview that will be broadcast Sunday:

“The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed,” Mr. Carter told Leslie Stahl. “It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill.”

I'd be happy to take some of the heat off the former president by saying that it was also Kennedy's fault that we didn't have nearly universal health insurance coverage when Richard Nixon proposed it in 1971. Kennedy even admitted it.

U.S. Right Is Soft On Terrorists And Traitors

Forty-three conservative bloggers discern that Richard Nixon was worse than Alger Hiss, Ted Kennedy than John Wilkes Booth, and Woodrow Wilson than Timothy McVeigh. Lee Harvey Oswald doesn't even make the list. Worst person ever in U.S., they say: Jimmy Carter.

Tit For Tat

Chris Matthews: RN dogged Ted Kennedy after Chappaquiddick. Kennedy dogged RN after Watergate. And so it goes.

Bobby Kennedy Sought Vietnam Peace Mission

A peek at Sen. Kennedy's soon-to-be-published memoirs:

Mr. Kennedy tells of a secret meeting in the spring of 1967 between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy, whose increasingly outspoken criticism of the war in Southeast Asia was becoming a political threat to Mr. Johnson. According to the book, Robert Kennedy proposed that Mr. Johnson gave him authority to personally negotiate a peace treaty in Vietnam. This, implicitly, would have kept Mr. Kennedy out of the 1968 race for the Democratic nomination, a prospect that Mr. Johnson had come to worry greatly about.

“If the president had accepted his offer,” the book says, “Bobby certainly would have been too immersed in the peace process to become involved in presidential primary.” Mr. Johnson could not take the offer at face value, concerned that Robert Kennedy had ulterior motives.

Bipartisanly Nonnegotiable

Christine Russell on how Sen. Kennedy kept President Carter from enacting health care reform, too.

"To Not Judge": Sermon For 13 Pentecost

Ted Kennedy died on the day the Episcopal Church remembered Louis IX of France, 13th century namesake of St. Louis, Missouri, a pious and compassionate ruler who authorized the burning of Jewish manuscripts and participated in two Crusades. Imagine that: A good guy, and yet history's jury is still out. How do Christians judge a public person such as Sen. Kennedy? Perhaps on outcomes. (Does that mean he's no good if we don't agree with him?) On process, then. (Which effective politician has never been cynical, hypocritical, opportunistic, or demagogic?) Then at least we can judge them on how close they are to God. (Really? And how much do we really know about someone else's walk?) As it turns out, while we're certainly entitled to our opinion as citizens, our God in Christ doesn't give us a vocabulary for judgment. Instead, the gospel warns us explicitly against two impulses, pride and anger, that often lead to our harshest judgments of others. My Sunday sermon is here.

Health Care Reform's 1971 Death Panel

Reflecting on President Nixon's Ted Kennedy-scuttled national health insurance plan in 1971, Paul Krugman criticizes today's right-wing ideologues (for opposing such reforms now) with nary a word of direct criticism of yesterday's left wing ideologues (for making them impossible then). That crazy swinging pendulum! The San Jose Mercury News also weighed in on Kennedy's refusal to work with Nixon.

Iraq At the Water's Edge

A former Spanish ambassador to the U.S. recalls a gracious gesture by Sen. Kennedy:

Shortly after the Iraq war started I saw Senator Kennedy in a public session of the U.S. Supreme Court. As we were taking our seats he briefly took my arm and told me he greatly appreciated the attitude of the Spanish government regarding the decision taken by the White House because, he said, "although you know my position " -- he was one of the few senators to oppose the authorization for the war -- "I appreciate the solidarity with my country in times like this." "I would appreciate if you relay this to President Aznar," he added.

Edward The Confessor

A moving exchange of letters between a faithful penitent and the Holy Father.

Hat tip to Paul Arndt

Home Again

Three beautiful eulogies for Sen. Kennedy today, by sons Ted, Patrick, and (in a different sense) Barack. The President's critics should note that he spoke gracefully and without a TelePrompTer. The theme of suffering lay at the heart of his remarks:

Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others — the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed -- the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children’s health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act –all have a running thread. Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow.

Was Obama referring just to our societal sins or to Kennedy's as well? Melissa Lafsky had the honesty if the poor taste to write about the catalyst of Kennedy's self-empowerment. Weren't all those great initiatives worth one accidental drowning, she suggests? It still surprises me that he got the chance to try. Mark Steyn describes the British way of atonement for disgraced politicians:

Six years before Chappaquiddick, in the wake of Britain’s comparatively very minor “Profumo scandal,” the eponymous John Profumo, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War, resigned from the House of Commons and the Queen’s Privy Council, and disappeared amid the tenements of the East End to do good works washing dishes and helping with children’s playgroups, in anonymity, for the last 40 years of his life. With the exception of one newspaper article to mark the centenary of his charitable mission, he never uttered another word in public again.

While in British politics, redemption is generally much harder to come by, plenty of Americans have gotten the Profumo treatment. Richard Nixon of course comes to mind. One may wonder whether Kennedy could have roared back so effectively as a conservative, Vietnam- and Iraq-supporting, tax-cutting, anti-illegal immigration lion of the Senate. But Americans can be equal opportunity Puritans. Kennedy's former liberal Senate colleague John Edwards, despite his lessor transgressions, would at this point in his career probably have trouble getting Profumo's children's playgroup gig.

In the end, politics, like life, is all about the story, and Ted Kennedy's was irresistible. The college-cheating, adulterous son survives the violent deaths of three seemingly worthier brothers. His family's influence and Americans' sadness over his family's serial tragedies enable him to survive his worst crisis. He grows into a loving father, uncle, and patriarch and is transfigured by the love of a good woman from Louisiana. That he writes 300 bills liberal commentators and biographers love doesn't hurt. His greatest gift to us may be that he so obviously enjoyed the life God gave him and showed how to earn the devotion of those closest to him, who, after all, knew him best. Anyway, aren't we supposed to party whenever the Prodigal returns? We each are he often enough.

Means Are Ends

Matthew Yglesias, self-described progressive, isn't progressive on political procedure as he not only justifies the likely move by the Massachusetts legislature to alter the plan for replacing Sen. Kennedy but ridicules those who say it's hypocritical. Up is down, black is white, war is peace.

Who Remembers Hot Pants?

The AP on the Nixon White House's surveillance of Ted and Joan Kennedy.

Kennedy-Nixon Debates

Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post:

Asked about his greatest regret as a legislator, Ted Kennedy would usually cite his refusal to cut a deal with Richard Nixon on health care.

There Was That One Thing

Hanna Rosin on Sen. Kennedy and women.

Young Man Blues

George Will turns a nice phrase about Sen. Kennedy:

In the Senate, as elsewhere, 80 percent of the important work is done by a talented 20 percent. And 95 percent of the work is done off the floor, away from committees, out of sight, where strong convictions leavened by good humor are the currency of accomplishment. There Ted Kennedy, who had the politics of the Boston Irish in his chromosomes, flourished.

Since I read newspapers on-line (and on-Kindle, where I proudly pay for content), I rarely see the marvelous way great papers still express themselves in page layout and headlines. Here in a Starbucks in San Diego, I caught a glimpse of a grandiloquent banner headline in the New York Times: "Senator Kennedy, Battle Lost, Is Hailed as a Leader."

I wonder who wrote that: A baby boomer authentically mourning the end of an era, or a younger editor who had gotten himself or herself into the spirit of the moment. While the "battle lost" bit is elevating, it's a battle many of us will join as well. I'm in San Diego to conduct a committal service for a less-well-known man who battled cancer no less bravely, as millions do and shall. So perhaps that element could have been skipped, at least in the headline.

As for Kennedy as a great leader, all notable people should be given their due in the wake of their deaths, as the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby does. But Jacoby's summary of Kennedy's foreign policy legacy is startling:

Abroad, he failed to take seriously the stakes in the Cold War. “Today, with the exception of East Germany, Russia has no more satellites,’’ he wrote in 1968, the year Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia. He hailed Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet dictator, as “a warm individual . . . completely committed to peace.’’ He fought to cut off aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 - aid that might have prevented a communist bloodbath. In recent years he was willing to consign millions to Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, opposing not only the 2003 liberation of Iraq but even the 1991 campaign to undo the occupation of Kuwait.

On domestic affairs, Kennedy used most of his influence promoting ways to spend other people's money. While Kennedy has been hailed this week for his courage, in politics, being a big spender is courageous only to the extent of sometimes exposing one to being voted out of office, which would have caused no meals to be missed in Kennedy's household.

As for the issue with which he is most closely associated, in 1971 he missed a chance to provide health insurance to virtually all Americans when he opposed President Nixon's national health insurance plan. His subsequent efforts amounted to de facto acts of expiation for failing as a young man to exhibit the bipartisan temperament for which he being so fulsomely if selectively praised today. The thing is, 38 years ago, he actually could've pulled it off. So whose fault is it that 43 million Americans remain uninsured?