The Laughable, Tragic Howard Dean
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
And so now, after months of tedious, tendentious argument, after riotous town meetings and the hysteria over non-existent death squads, after the Palin moment and the Lieberman moment, passage of historic legislation a hair’s breadth away, and here comes Howard Dean to say that the whole thing isn’t worth a damn thing. Bag it, says Governor Doctor Chairman Dean on every cable news program that will have him. Let’s start the whole thing over.
This raises an interesting question: is Howard Dean a comic figure or a tragic figure? Certainly it’s easy to see the comedy: imagine National Lampoon’s Washington Vacation, with Barack Obama in the role of Clark Griswold. Clark has, after hilariously strenuous effort, packed up the car, the kids, the dog, and is about to back out of the driveway when along comes the well-meaning neighbor Howard, to tell Clark how he’s packed the car all wrong, how he should have used a slipknot instead of a granny knot to tie up the bags, how putting the American Tourister on top of the wife’s overnight bag is going to squash everything, and how giving the kids a snack of pretzels is just going to make them thirsty and that’s eventually going to pay off in more time-wasting rest stops. And what makes him so infuriating is that he’s right. Or rightish. Or only possibly right. Or he’s wrong, but now the wife has doubts.
So we have to say that Howard Dean is good for a laugh. But Dean is also a tragic figure, too, because he’s one of those seriously brilliant men with seriously limited political skills. These are men who always have an answer and who are positive not just of its correctness but of its absolute brilliance, and who cannot help themselves from letting you know that no answer is better than theirs. These are men (and I don’t know why, but we seem to get more versions of this man from New England than from anywhere else–Tsongas, Dukakis, Kerrey, Dean) who lack basic political intelligence. They cannot see that half a loaf is better than none, or that the best is the enemy of the good, or that you can accomplish a lot if you don’t mind who gets the credit.
Or that Rome wasn’t built in a day. None of the great federal programs arrived fully formed. They all had holes and contradictions, and they were all amended and expanded and modified and improved. Somehow that’s not good enough for the smartest guy in the room.
Want to know how dumb the smartest guy in the room is? Today on Morning Joe, he said that the administration should bag this proposal and start over. Imagine–the administration that has taken health care reform deeper though the process than any predecessor since Truman should bag it and start over. Scarborough doubted that the adminstration could go back to the issue. “Sure they will,” Dean said. “It’s a crisis.”
Yes, Mr. Governor Doctor Chairman, it’s a crisis. Which is why someone who is truly smart and not just egotistical would shut up and get with the program.
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Sorry, Mr. Malanowski, but you are wrong on this one. Mr. Dean may be both tragic and laughable from time to time; but he has perfectly identified this moment in the health reform saga as the point at which it is no longer of any benefit to anyone other than the insurers and pharmaceuticals to continue.
You might try getting with the program yourself, i.e., speaking a bit of truth rather than simply toeing the party line. You could start by pointing out that single payer is the reform that makes complete sense; that only a fully functional and unlimited public option makes this even a worthwhile exercise; that the short-lived expansion of medicare down to 55 would have only shifted the typically more expensive set of patients to the government while benefiting insurers by the bonanza of forcing young, typically less expensive set into their arms.
Dean is absolutely correct: the “reform” as it stands now is less than nothing, worse than the status quo, and should be torn up and re-written from scratch.
Mr. Malanowski,
You wrote that the “passage of historic legislation [is] a hair’s breadth away”. What exactly is “historic” about the proposed bill? It seems something slightly above a perfectly ordinary bill. It provides some improvements in how people who already have health insurance are covered. It does not expand health care coverage to people not currently covered.
Further, it is hardly unprecedented for a bill to take several tries to get through Congress. Mind you it took almost ten years to get the original Medicare bill passed.
Maybe a little too rough on Howard.
Dean serves a certain purpose. He is never likely to be the voice of legislative reason that works towards compromise to get bills passed. This is pretty much why he was never going to become president.
But, he is a voice that can be heard and represents a particular point of view. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. Nobody believes that the Senate is going to throw out the health care reform bill because Dean wants them to – I suspect, least of all Gov. Dean. But it is good to have his voice in the debate, whipping up progressives to exert as much political influence as they can. At the end of the day, the bill will be what it will be.
Should Howard have a voice in the debate? Absolutely! But what he has said at this point is pure mischief.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m glad to have Dean’s “impolitic” comments out there. A lot of people aren’t happy with the end product of this effort, and I’m glad he gives voice to it. Without his work on the 50 State Initiative, there might not have been enough Democratic congressmen now to even have come this far.
The perfect may be the enemy of the good. But the good has an enemy in the feasible.
I’m glad to have Dean’s “impolitic” comments out there. A lot of people aren’t happy with the end product of this effort, and I’m glad he gives voice to it. Without his work on the 50 State Initiative, there might not have been enough Democratic congressmen now to even have come this far.
The perfect may be the enemy of the good. But the good also has an enemy in the feasible.
I too am glad Dean is speaking up. I hope you will pay more attention to what he is actually saying the next time you have an opportunity to listen to him.
Dean isn’t wrong. These smart guys are never wrong. But there’s a reason why some guys are in the room writing legislation while some other guys are standing outside throwing spitballs. Candidates who project an air of intellectual superiority seldom win elections. Remember what was said about FDR–second class intellect, first class temperment.
In response to another comment. See in context »Barack obama was elected precisely because he projected an air of intellectual superiority. John Dean lost the 2004 primaries because a) he ran a poor Iowa campaign, & b) the MSM turned on him at the earliest opportunity. FDR, in fact, had a pretty damn good intellect.
In response to another comment. See in context »Your “smart guy” wisecrack (I thought you were a smart guy, too) was not very smart. If representatives of the “center” like yourself keep up with the contemptuous remarks & actions directed at your left, you’re gonna have a brawl on your hands. In case you haven’t noticed, or posters like myself & others haven’t made clear, Progressives are angry at the Obama administration, & will soon be unwilling to offer it any further trust or cooperation, damn the cost.
(oops. Howard, not John. Freudian? Hope not.)
In response to another comment. See in context »I’d rather have Dean than Obama and all of the conservadems and Republicans in his administration.
In your previous post, you called for the head of Joe liebermam. Was that purely pro forma? Because we both know that that’s not going to happen- he will be allowed to use his Homeland Security chair as a Republican/Blue Dog soapbox for deficit-bashing, i.e. the cutting of entitlements & other non-military spending. In this administration Progressives get the ax, Progressives get the short end of any & all compromises, Progressives get the arm-twisting & ridicule when they don’t toe the party line. From Telecom Immunity on, Barack Obama has, without exception, sided with the establishment, pro-corporate wing of the party; Progressives can sit down, shut up, & do what they’re told. This Senate bill- which seems to be built around the Swiss model, minus all the parts that make the Swiss system work- might not be the final insult, but then again it just might. You centrists need to drop your contempt for the liberal wing, fast. They are right,& you are wrong; the Senate bill is a political failure, as well as a policy failure. It is far less than half a loaf; it is a gift to Big Insurance & Big Pharma. On the level of the purely political- which is the only level that the Beltway wing seems to care about, or even be aware of- it will blow up in the Democrats faces when it fails, as it will, to deliver for small business & the middle class. Dr. Dean is right- this administration needs a defeat, delivered by the left. If they don’t get it now, they will get it in 2012.
This is ridiculous. The bill, if passed, will hopefully be ruled unconstitutional. There is no way that the constitution permits the government to force its citizens to buy any private good. How is this good in any way? Although insurance companies are terrible and should be done away with, it does not attack the fundamental problems that result in such high health premiums. High insurance premiums are a symptom of a much greater problem and if we don’t go to the root of the problem this bill will do nothing but worsen our national debt. In short, Dean is right.
A start to solving this problem would be to end the agricultural subsidies that make happy meals so cheap. That, at the very least, would be a start.
“There is no way that the constitution permits the government to force its citizens to buy any private good. ”
States require motorists to purchase car insurance from private companies.
In response to another comment. See in context »Dean is absolutely right, and its about time a prominent figure on the left called out the democratic senate’s apparent corruption. As someone who is middle class yet uninsured, according to the CBO report this bill doesn’t lessen the cost of an insurance policy for me at all from what is already available. It would just force me to fork over a minimum of slightly more than 10% of my income to the insurance industry, for a policy which I could not afford to use due to the high deductible. I would still not be able to afford to go see the doctor, unless I had an extremely serious problem. And I would have to drastically cut down on all non-essential purchases, due to having to pay $100 a week for insurance…it might tank the economy further, depending on how many uninsured middle class there are.
I have to disagree with you. While you may disagree with Dean, that doesn’t make him laughable. This bill is a big fat mess, and it will provide more benefit to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies than it will for those in need of an insurance plan.
People can now be insured when they have pre-existing conditions – hooray! But the companies can ratchet up the cost high enough that it’s almost more affordable to just save your pennies and cross your fingers that there’s no catastrophe.
Did you listen to everything Dean had to say? This bill won’t even take ful effect for a few years, so starting over could be just what we need. Not only that,if we got a single payer bill (the dream) or a public option (doable, and the one thing the Dems should NOT have given up), more people would be covered, with better competition for insurance costs, and then the Dems and Obama could claim victory. Right now they could only claim a draw or concession of all points to the GOP and big business.
“Imagine–the administration that has taken health care reform deeper though the process than any predecessor since Truman should bag it and start over.”
He said on Meet The Press today that it should go to committee and then be fixed. As for the whole “deeper through the process than any predecessor,” I’d say LBJ and Medicare was a bit deeper than anything we’re seeing here.