Below is a letter I penned last night to the President. As indicated below, I have been a strong supporter and defender of the President until this week but he has shown that he is only interested in marginal change insufficient to address the large problems of our day. Below the fold is my letter.
Dear President Obama,
I write this letter with a great skepticism about whether it will be read by anyone who has power or authority or cares to heed my concerns. I have been a huge supporter of yours after I first heard you speak at the Democratic convention in 2004. Among a field of so many great Democratic candidates, I finally decided to support you after I saw you speak in Atlanta in August of 2007. I followed every aspect of the primary and general campaign, travelled to South Carolina to work on your campaign and spent many a night or weekend making calls with enthusiasm on your behalf. I truly believed we finally had a leader who understood the complexities of the many issues this country (and the world) faced and who possessed a heart which renders him genuinely open to the real concerns of the American people.
Last November (of 2008) was a time of great joy and pride as I watched America elect you as our President. Since that time I have spent countless hours defending you from detractors on both the right and the left. I defended you from those on the left who said that the stimulus was too small by pointing out that, as money is a fungible item, getting 85% of what you need in such a bill was still a big victory for the American people. I defended you from those on the right who said you were spending too much by pointing out how, during the prior administration there was no regard for fiscal restraint. On matters such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and repeal of The Defense of Marriage Act, I argued that, while they are of great importance in themselves, they represent endeavors which should only be undertaken after the pillars of your agenda concerning health care, global warming ( I know for political reasons you confine yourself to using the term "energy" and focusing on its economic upside not the even more compelling environmental rationales) and education are moved forward. I have defended Secretary Geithner on the basis that he understands economics better than most of his critics and that saving the banks can ensure we avoid disaster.
I defended you just last week in an argument with my brother who opposes your troop increase in Afghanistan. And I defended you on Saturday over the Nobel Peace Prize which I stated was not something you sought at this particular juncture in your term. I have even remarkably argued that, while 17% reductions in carbon emissions by 2020 are clearly insufficient to avert likely disaster, the inception of a cap-and-trade system will show that we should not fear, for the sake of the economy, the measures necessary to address this daunting critical problem. I have believed (and yes dreamed) as recently as two weeks ago that you could be the greatest President this country has ever had. But I must say after the events of the last week, I question whether I should even continue to support you in 2012 or support the Democratic candidates in the midterms. Your leadership on health care reform has been abysmal and reached a new low this past week after Senator Lieberman went on Face The Nation. Prior to that time, you and Senator Reid have not missed an opportunity to bend over backwards to get 60 senators to support health care reform. Let me be clear. In the best of circumstances, I have believed a single-payer system would be the best. But I have always been sympathetic to the argument that trying to get there would be more change than is possible at this juncture. Also it would be unfair to the many middle-class employees of insurance companies just trying to earn a living to take that route. So the public option is a fair accommodation. I fully understand that health care reform involves much more than just the public option and have argued as much with my friends on the left. I personally believe global warming (because of its temporal urgency) and the economic crisis should have been your major priorities this year and that it was a strategic mistake to shift it to health care reform this year particularly as the bills in question postpone much of its applicability to 2013 after the next Presidential election. But that bus left the station many months ago. Since then you have expended great political capital and now you appear to be on the verge of agreeing to a bill in the Senate which does little more than ban the practice for denial of coverage for pre-existing coverage and imposition of annual or lifetime caps and subsidize mandatory coverage in contravention to your campaign position against mandates.
I have been frankly taken aback by the celerity with which your Chief of Staff ran to accommodate Senator Lieberman, a man whose conflicting statements on the subject should make anyone question whether he is someone with whom honest negotiations can be fairly engaged. (I understand how a former political operative in the Clinton administration is reflexively scared that the failure to achieve health care reform spells political disaster in the next midterms; however, I have maintained that the 2010 midterms will be judged not on the basis of whether the American people get some reform in the health care arena – as in 1994- but rather how the economy is doing and how many jobs are being created nationwide. I suspect that any bill without either a robust public option or a reasonable surrogate will be deemed a failure by the main stream media and that such meme will become dominant among voters’ attitudes.) It was precisely at this moment that you have should have indicated how far you have already accommodated those who were negotiating with you in good faith and that perhaps the time had come to consider the alternate process of reconciliation. I have never subscribed to the belief that a great leader beats his chest and draws lines in the sand. Nor have I discounted the maxim that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But enough is enough. Eventually that maxim ceases to be a valid defense and instead serves merely as a lame excuse for failure. You have compromised yourself to the point of looking puny. You have shown throughout this year that you are willing to work on a multitude of issues for the American people but rarely fight when it really counts for them. The American people overwhelmingly support a public option because the verdict has been that the insurance companies’ protection of their own self-interest conflicts with the interests of the American people. This is not a dogma of the left but a centrist view held by most. But you refuse to fight for this. You refuse to take a stand when the people that elected you expect you to do so. Since your election, you may have intellectually convinced yourself that the public option is only a "sliver" of the answer to the problem. But first of all, you ran on the platform and repeatedly distinguished yourself from your competitors on that score. Second, the American people do not want a merely adequate solution to the health care problems facing the country. They do not expect a silver bullet either. But they certainly do not want to be hoodwinked into believing that all we get as "change we can believe in" are some minimal measures that all civilized societies view as a baseline starting point for a health care system. By showing that you will accept anything for the sake of getting a bill through the Senate, you show that you are not really interested in taking this opportunity to maximize the things that can be done to address this problem that has been daunting us for years. You evidence rather a mere desire to be able to check this off your list as a campaign promise technically met. Let the American people fend for themselves ten or twenty years down the road when this reform is proven to be wholly inadequate.
You also exhibit an appalling lack of leadership. Let me again be clear. I fully understand you face an array of issues as difficult as any previous President. I know the decision on Afghanistan was heart-wrenching and intellectually treacherous as well. Global warming is as unique as any global challenge our planet has had to address collectively. But the consequences of your leadership style on health care reform will not only jeopardize the quality of this legislative package but also render you as a weakling who can be pushed around. Its becoming no secret that the CEOs of Wall Street banks do not mind getting a tongue-lashing so long as they know that the President will never push a legislative agenda to stop them. Likewise, your capitulation to moderate Democrats and Republicans (like Olympia Snowe for whom I have great respect) shows you are an easy pushover who will always opt for the patina of bipartisanship rather than standing strong in defense of intensely-held principles. This will inure to your detriment in future negotiations, domestic and foreign, where your adversaries and allies alike will offer a symbolic hand in friendship but deny you the utility or advantage of any real help requiring real sacrifice on their part.
It is with great sadness and disillusionment I write this letter. I have believed in your message of hope even as late as last week. I have exhausted myself in your defense and thought your critics on the left to be expecting too much or those on the right to be assigning to you the blame for problems created before your time. Now I can no longer hide from the conclusion that, while you seek to achieve accommodation on almost all issues, you seek to avoid controversy when the decision-making process is a shared one; i.e. domestic matters where the commander-in-chief cannot dominate the topic. The American people want to see someone who will not only work hard for them but, when necessary, fight for them. By capitulating unreasonably to Senator Lieberman on health care reform, you show you are not a fighter; you are willing to accept the mediocre even after expending a huge amount of political capital. You show Republicans that you are a pushover and that once you commit to a course of action you will compromise to the point that the original purpose underlying that course of action is itself defeated.
It pains me to say these things. I truly believed you could lead us to a better politics, rooted in merit not entrenched power structures. That is precisely why I feel even more disillusioned than I did during the Bush years or when I look back on the Nixon era (during which time I was a young child). For once, I, a Democrat, have been bamboozled, hoodwinked. Sold a shiny bill of goods. In the 80’s during college, I worked for the ADA (Americans For Democratic Action) in 1988; while in law school, worked for the first of many candidates when I volunteered for the senatorial campaign of Wyche Fowler, a very good public servant in Georgia. But nothing inspired me more than working on your behalf. Unfortunately, despite your great talents and determination, my confidence appears to have been misplaced. I don’t blame you for the economic condition of this country. To do so would be unfair. But to watch you repeatedly compromise for the sake of a bill with merely nominal benefits to the American people is to watch a purported leader who confuses activity with progress. I wish with all my heart I could say differently but I must be true to myself, my country and to you. I fear my level of disillusionment with politics will harden. But much more importantly, the American people will reach a more insidious conclusion: that entrenched pecuniary interests and self-righteous political actors prevent them from living in a society where their full potential can be reached. I pray I am wrong but, absent strong shift in leadership from you at this critical point in history, I am afraid these fears will be realized.
I am copying David Axelrod on this letter as I believe him to be a man of great integrity and one who can remind you why you entered into politics: not to settle for the half-loaf but to achieve something meaningful for those who put you in power.
With Nothing But Absolute Sincerity,