Bout Time

Obama’s principal task tonight before Congress was to recast the way we discuss changing our health care system. He did that.

Three quarters through the speech, it looked like a rehash of policy arcana that even a fairly knowledgeable policy wonk such as myself could barely follow. Had he continued in that vein, he might have rallied the troops for another round but probably not reversed the momentum.

But then Obama did the thing that made him president. He marshaled his rhetorical resources, played shamelessly on Teddy Kennedy’s death, picked out Kennedy’s long-time Republican working buddies one by one with reminders of how they had worked together for the common good—and then kicked their party’s ass across the chamber.

I suspect this speech will be an object of study for a long time. Obama avoided harsh polemics (disappointing me and several others at the Harlem political club where I watched it). Instead, he steadily built himself up into the reasonable, caring adult in stark contrast to the tinfoil-hat brigade and those engaged in ‘partisan bickering’. He appealed to traditional, small-town, Republican values like a healthy wariness of government and a willingness to extend helping hands to a troubled neighbor while also recalling the need for reasoned, democratic debate on concrete issues.

At long last, Obama shamed the Republican reactionaries for their selfish complicity in turning the last three months from a debate on issues into a vulgar shouting match and empowering the craziest and most dangerous wackos. In the final ten minutes of his address, as the emotional content built, the room was hushed. The grumpy white males bizarrely waving their little copies of a bill were reduced to grim silence as he accused them of placing their desire to kill his initiative over the well-being of the people—an accusation that has to resonate with anyone who has been paying attention.

Hard to say where the speech will take us next, but I sense the possibility of a shift in tone and a renewed esprit de caucus among the erstwhile buckling Democrats.

There were things in the speech that I didn’t like: turning the exclusion of abortion from federal funding into an applause line, ditto for refusing health services to the ‘illegal immigrant’ whipping boy. Tortured syntax and far too much policy wonkery. Placing himself in the oh-so-reasonable middle opposed by ‘the right’ and ‘the left’, the latter being people who support his original proposals and poured into the streets to get him elected. Referring the public plan as something we can rather than will do.

But I’ll reserve my annoyance and wait for the results. Meanwhile, it may be a whole new ball game.