Sometimes it takes a look at what the opposition thinks of Obama to really understand what a great moment in history we are in with President Obama. In his review of last night's sppech Krauthammer concludes what I have felt all along. Obama wants to fundamentally transform the way the American economy to be more like the European model. While Krauthammer obviously disagrees with Obama's approach his column reads like a simple stating of Obama goals rather than the normal blather of right wing talking points.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Obama will create the middle step that will lead ultimately and inevitably to single-payer. The way to do it is to establish a reformed system that retains a private health-insurance sector but offers a new government-run plan (based on benefits open to members of Congress) so relatively attractive that people voluntarily move out of the private sector, thereby starving it. The ultimate result is a system of fully socialized medicine. This will likely not happen until long after Obama leaves office. But he will be rightly recognized as its father.
These revolutions in health care, education and energy are not just abstract hopes. They have already taken life in Obama's massive $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Obama's plan for remaking the American social contract.
Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.
We will have our disappointments along the way but our moment is now. We will never have this opportunity again in our life times.