Sen. Edward Moore("Ted") Kennedy (D.Mass.) was one of the true "masters of the Senate," like Johnson, Webster and Clay. He was a decent and honorable man, who quietly did things like contributing a lot of money to a group buying body armor for Soldiers serving in Iraq back in 2004 and 2005. He passed a lot of good legislation. He knew how to get things done and had a knack for reaching across the aisle, recently on the original version of "No Child Left Behind." (Subsequently butchered, but a good concept.)
He and his brothers were, to some degree, like the Grachii in Roman history, patrician men who felt a sense of noblis oblige towards the less fortunate. Like the Grachii, John and Robert were assassinated: John in part for what others thought he believed, Robert in part for what he actually did believe. Unlike them, Sen. Kennedy, due to his problems with alcohol and his . . . survivor's guilt? . . . in some ways assassinated his own presidential aspirations, while becoming a giant of the US Senate.
Health Care Reform, perhaps Sen. Kennedy's signature issue, is now much in the news. The remarkable failure of this current reform proposal illustrates how little resonance this type of centralized, one-size-fits- all, Second Wave reform has in the Third Wave world.
I attended Rep. Tonko's (New York 21st) Town Hall on August 24, 2009, hours before Sen. Kennedy's death.
The majority of those present opposed the "Public Option." They were informed and passionate. They could muster facts, and a detailed knowledge of economics and law. In contrast, all Rep. Tonko and his supporters could muster was lachrymose stories of past injustice with no functional plan to improve things going forward.
There is no way a "Public Option" can work financially. Rep. Tonko's attempt to explain how he would deal with the large outlays to fund a "Public Option," on top of an aggregate $40+ trillion Federal deficit, with about $48 billion in savings from anti-fraud measures in Medicare and some odds and ends of savings from common forms defines why Democrats have no credibility on this issue.
Rep. Tonko's attempts to talk Constitutional issues with his constituents were an utter embarrassment: all of them were far more informed on law and history than he.
Almost no one wants the Public Option. Some people want single payor and the majority want real, market-based reform.
During the Depression, when there was less hope and people were less educated and when there was some sign that collectivist solutions could work, people were willing to accept this kind of top-down, centralized change. However, after we saw that Mussolini did more than make the trains run on time; that the Soviets weren't the future and it did not work; and that Hitler was about more than the Autobahn, this kind of collectivism lost its charm and we began to ask what it would cost . . . in both dollars and freedom.
Karl Rove was wrong. It wasn't "a permanent Republican majority," but it could be a permanent Constitutional majority.
With the Internet, with the "Ownership Society," people will no longer be dictated to. Where the majority of US households own stock, either through a 401K or mutual funds, they don't see Wall Street as a villain. A reform proposal that would dump average people into a "Public Option," that our elected representatives conspicuously opted out of, was doomed to fail.
In contrast, legal reform that would allow people to come together in real Co-ops to purchase coverage from payors, with all the advantages that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA") and its implementing regulations gives large company plans, could be popular. This would be especially true where all such reform would do would be to implement and give legal form to the people's Tenth Amendment right to assert rights and powers not reserved to the Federal Government.
I think we need a new Centrist Party. I suspect that the Democrats will not be a national party after 2010. This summer has been the dictionary definition of "hubris." In contrast to where the Democratic Party has stood since the Depression, I think we need to focus on what best serves the commonweal, not what most advances the cause of centralized, Federal power.
As much good as "Tribunes of the People" like Ted Kennedy did, we need to let those same people be their own tribunes and return to the people and the states the power that is reserved to them under the Constitution.