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| 9/1/2009 8:15:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Feingold's fiasco, Kennedy's death: What they mean for health care reform
Richard Moore
Investigative Reporter
Surely U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, had no idea that he was about to create an international firestorm when he walked into the Mercer Community Center Aug. 19 and started to mouth off about the current condition of health care reform.
There won't be a vote on reform legislation before Christmas, Feingold told a passionate crowd. Not only that, the senator quipped, there might not be any reform legislation, period.
Zero. None. Zip. Nada. Goose egg. See ya later.
Well, OK, those are my words, mostly lifted from the hyperbolic Dan Rather, but you get the picture. And even if a bill came to the floor, Feingold went on, it might be so watered down it wouldn't be worth supporting.
The senator's words brought applause from the crowd, but the liberal Feingold seemed rather depressed. We're headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, he said, and it's unfortunate.
In a way, Feingold's missive was both remarkable and unremarkable.
Unremarkable because there, in a packed hall, was our U.S. senator delivering a frank assessment of what was happening in Washington on a critical issue, which is the way the democratic world is supposed to work.
It was also remarkable because there, in a packed hall, was our U.S. senator delivering a frank assessment of what was happening in Washington on a critical issue, which U.S. senators do not usually do, and are certainly not supposed to do, at least in the eyes of their lobbyists and stage managers.
But his words reported out like a shot, as different in political form and fashion as you can get about the timeline of health care reform, unmatched by any other utterances from leading lawmakers, especially Democrats.
Not before Christmas! Maybe never! Holy Democratic nightmare!
Feingold's message spread like wildfire. Hours after his remarks appeared in The Lakeland Times, both the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh had them, and Limbaugh was reading them. From there, the senator's words went to Salon and Politico and across the sea to the British BBC.
A few days later, Feingold issued a statement retreating from his Mercer remarks. He was just frustrated because of all the public opposition to reform he had encountered, he suggested, and in the days since his Mercer appearance more supporters had shown up and bolstered his spirits.
"At the beginning of the August recess, most folks coming out were opposed to any sort of health care reform," Feingold said. "But in the last few I have held, I have noticed more and more reform proponents coming out and being heard. . . . I've been saying for weeks that it will probably be right before Christmas before we have a health care reform bill to vote on. I will continue working to make sure we do and it is one with a strong public option."
That was exactly six days after his Waterloo, er, Mercer shindig. Suddenly the senator would have us believe there was a groundswell of support for Obamacare, but we all knew nothing could be further from the truth.
Equally important, in Mercer, Feingold's assessment was as much about the prospects of passing reform among his colleagues as it was about public opinion. There's no question the senator thought it was going to be a tough sell on the Senate floor.
Certainly, in the six days before he retreated, nothing changed in that arena; if anything, the prospects grew worse.
Here's what almost certainly did happen in those six days: The Democratic congressional leadership (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi) and the Obama administration gave the senator, as John Lennon might put it, a damn good whacking, and told him to make things right.
And so he issued his "walkback" statement, as weak as it was. In politics a walkback occurs after you have spoken an inconvenient truth that you can't take back, so you walk back to it and try to somehow explain it away.
Feingold's "somehow" was to say an eternity had passed in six days, and anything can and did miraculously happen in an eternity. The world was remade in Feingold's image, apparently, and on the seventh day he rested.
No doubt those six days were an eternity for Feingold.
Then Sen. Ted Kennedy died. That could not have been pleasant personally for Sen. Feingold - it certainly wasn't for me - but it did give him an opportunity. It deflected attention from his Mercer remarks, and gave him the chance, in his statement on Kennedy's death, to strengthen the optimistic tone he struck in his walkback.
"Children are healthier and young Americans have more educational opportunities because of Sen. Kennedy's decades of service," Feingold said. "And we will achieve real health care reform thanks to the groundwork he laid."
And so, just like that, all that was said in Mercer was forgotten. 'Maybe not' became 'will achieve' in a heartbeat.
The truth is, taken together, Feingold's fiasco in Mercer and Ted Kennedy's death are very revealing about what faces America as Congress gets set to return from its summer recess.
During the past week, as lawmakers and others memorialized Kennedy, two different messages emerged. The first came from liberal Democrats such as Feingold, and President Barack Obama himself, who pointed to Kennedy's long quest for health care reform, and pledged to carry the torch to victory this year in his name.
In effect, these liberals took Kennedy's name hostage before his body was in the ground.
Others, including Republicans such as Orrin Hatch and John McCain, bemoaned Kennedy's absence from the negotiations. Kennedy may have been the liberal lion with whom they disagreed most of the time, they said, but he was a keen negotiator and compromiser who time and again brokered deals with Republicans to win legislative battles he considered important.
In those battles, he did not get everything he wanted, but rather believed in winning justice in degrees.
Without Kennedy, McCain and Hatch both said, a health-care compromise was far less likely. That's too true, given the all-or-nothing stances of Democrats such as Pelosi, Obama, and Feingold, who used Kennedy's name to promote a process that would have been alien to him. The liberal icon most assuredly - and wrongly - supported the Feingold public-option position, but he would have abhorred the my-way-or-the-highway hammer threat, not to mention the walkback from the truth Feingold was beaten into giving.
And he would have been ready to bargain.
Indeed, Kennedy often said his biggest regret was rejecting a compromise from President Richard Nixon in which Nixon offered up a version of universal health care. Kennedy pulled a Pelosi and told Nixon he wanted all or nothing.
As a result, all these years it has been nothing, and Kennedy learned his lesson from it.
Of course, this year, Pelosi and Obama and Feingold may not have to compromise. They could choose just to barge ahead. They could get use a process known as reconciliation to thwart a potential filibuster and push through the most extreme and unpopular of bills, if they cobble together enough votes in their own party.
That would be a miscalculation of gigantic proportions.
For one thing, it would ignore Feingold's words in Mercer, which are still very resonant, no matter whether he was referring to his colleagues or the public.
Since he spoke, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) expressed doubts that any compromise could occur, and this week one of three Senate Republicans who had worked for compromise, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, told constituents the Democratic health-care proposals would harm the economy and interfere "in the relationship between a doctor and a patient."
Then, too, over this past weekend, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu said she did not support a public option. So it seems like the Russ we heard in Mercer was telling the truth.
As for the public, every poll shows a majority of Americans now opposing Obama's and the Democrats' plan. Even far-left liberals such as Dennis Kucinich recognize the public sentiment, again, just like Feingold did in Mercer.
On Nov. 27, Kucinich told Fox News' Neil Cavuto that Democrats should avoid "appropriating Kennedy's memory for a specific course of action" as he acknowledged slipping support for health care reform.
"I think that the polls that you talk about, Neil, really relate to the mishandling of a serious public issue, the attempt to try to force something towards the American people, without properly preparing the people or going to the people and saying, what do you think, instead of saying, this is what we in Washington think," Kucinich said. " . . . In addition to that, as you implied, there's broad economic problems in this country that I don't think Congress has adequately addressed yet, the unemployment, people losing their investments, their homes, their retirement security.
" . . . You know, right now, there's a great frustration with government. I understand it, and I think that the - the people are always right. And we have to be listening carefully to what the people are saying right now, and maybe realign our goals to the public awareness, and then take a step back and listen to the people again and what they are saying about their experience with health care. And, you know, we - we have to take a long-term view on this, Neil, not just try to force something at - trying to capitalize on the moment."
And so we have two choices, two courses of action, before us. Our lawmakers can recognize the public discontent, as Kucinich did, and Feingold did in Mercer, and recognize the disunity in Congress itself, as Feingold did in Mercer, and decide to take a long look, and pledge to work toward a compromise.
It exists, if each side gives a little.
The other course of action will be to follow the obstinate path of Pelosi and Obama and the Feingold of the walkback statement. Just push ahead, and call me Feinblind.
That would be a short-lived victory, reversed after next's years elections no doubt, but expensive and damaging in the meantime.
Ironically, when Congress returns from its recess, one of Ted Kennedy personas will return to the Senate in this latest health care reform battle, in the form of the Democratic Party. Will it be the obstinate younger Kennedy who refused Nixon's compromise and lost everything? Will the Democrats follow the younger Kennedy down his path of destruction?
Or will it be the Lion of the Senate, the consummate negotiator, flawed character and all, who, by giving here and there, by refusing to obey the unyielding and inflexible party line, won so many legislative battles? Will a Democrat seriously work again with the Republicans?
Russ Feingold, too, must return to Congress. It will be interesting to see which one of his personas he brings with him.
Will he be the legislator who has worked with McCain on so many issues, the legislative truth-teller he was in Mercer, or the Obama-pecked foot soldier we saw in the walkback statement? Here's hoping the walkback lapse was just that, and he won't follow Pelosi and Obama down the path to yet another Feingold fiasco.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Saturday, September 19, 2009
Article comment by:
not from here
The change was only noticed cause the rest of us that don't like the plan were working and too busy to sit and complain.
Posted: Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Article comment by:
Sharai
I think that Feingold did actually see a change on the ground. I attended two of his listening sessions after he made that remark, and there was better support among attendees. Also, most reliabel polls show that a large majority of Americans support a public option. Because we know when we're being ripped off by an industry that collect "health Insurance" premiums and uses them to pay their CES hundreds of millions of dollars. Profit is immoral in health care.
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