But the dysfunction is only growing stronger. What’s really happening is that Obama is all but explicitly washing his hands of democratic politics. He doth protest his commitment to the chaotic business of governing—i.e. playing hardball when the other side won’t play ball at all—too much. For the umpteenth time in public, he told his Republican audience that he welcomed debate: “that kind of vigorous back and forth—that imperfect but well-founded process, messy as it often is—is at the heart of our democracy.” But the messy, vigorous back and forth between Democrats and Republicans has been going on almost since his inauguration; it’s just that, after expecting the awfulness of the Bush years to create a consensus for liberal change during the Obama years, Obama has been stunned to find that he cannot govern without making all the people who didn’t vote for him, and by now some that did, unhappy. As he did in the State of the Union, he’s once again invoking the messiness of democracy only to implore his adversaries to rise above its stink.
On February 25, under the pretext of transcending messy politics, Obama will plunge into the stink with intensified vigor. Rather than truly delivering on his (impractical) promise to finally make the legislative process of health-care reform transparent, Obama will be daring the Republicans to start playing politics on his turf. What will be at stake is not health care—you cannot reconcile John Boehner’s weaseling demand for “step-by-step improvements” with genuine overhaul—but the fate of Democrats in the midterm elections. They will be angling to portray the Republicans as stonewalling villains; the Republicans will be angling to portray the Democrats as tyrannical monomaniacs. At the televised summit, the portraying will eclipse the talking.
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