Winning
“Just Win Baby” – Al Davis – Oakland Raiders
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” – Henry “Red” Sanders – UCLA
“I’ve got a lot on my plate, and it’s very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don’t all just crash at the same time” – Barack Obama
I know I have said it before, but does anyone recall a President of the United States that consistently opened his statements regarding what needs to be done by complaining about his work load like this President of Hope and Change? This constant whining about all that he has to do has become a daily lament and his default answer to any question. It’s almost as if he is surprised that being President is a hard job.
It shows in stark detail just how completely unprepared this community activist turned ghost writing autobiographer turned leader of the free world is when it comes to being judged on accomplishments rather than patronizing partisan rhetoric and enigmatic promises.
It was Karl Rove who cautioned Obama prior to his taking office that being President is “Like drinking from a fire house 24 hours a day”. Obviously Rove’s words fell on deaf, even though remarkably impressive, ears.
Obama came into his reign in the White House with a whopping 515 promises of hope and change. He has won a few and he has lost a few, but according to PolitiFact.com, 7 months into his historic administration he has kept 34 promises, broken 7, compromised on 11, stalled 12, has 77 in the works and has taken no action on 374 of his ardent pledges.
But where he goes from here seems to be riding in large part on his success in passing ObamaCare, at least in some form. It has become far more about winning than it is about actually creating a health care reform program that is both affordable and actually beneficial.
Some of Obama’s victories have included such insignificant items as signing the UN Convention on rights for persons with disabilities and the installation of the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer. Yawn. Another victory or promise fulfilled is the supposed closing of Guantanamo Bay, but much like ObamaCare, here is a perfect example of victory at any cost with suspect benefit.
Even GW Bush stated that Guantanamo would one day need to be closed. But Obama continues to race forward, without a suitable plan as to where these dangerous killers will be housed, what will happen if they are brought onto American soil or how much it will cost. Most importantly the Obama administration has been completely incapable of showing any benefit to changing these detainees’ zip code from Guantanamo Bay to anywhere else.
It has become apparent with the Obama’s newfound willingness to drop the public option in his health care plan that he is willing to forgo this alleged insurance cost control for something to call a win at any price. The public option was an absolute cornerstone of this new socialist healthcare insurance system. While I am not the least bit sorry to see it being cut, in reality it was no more flawed than the rest of the unworkable and eminently dangerous ObamaCare plan.
The benefit to its removal is that, at least temporarily, citizens will be allowed to continue to pick their own health insurance plan. The downside is that it being removed will do nothing to reduce the untenable $1 trillion fiasco known as ObamaCare and the dramatic reduction in actual healthcare that will come with it.
Watch the coming negotiations closely regarding getting some kind of bill passed and you will see that this is not about providing the nation with better healthcare, not that it ever was, but is about winning something, anything. Democrats are desperate to overcome the public pushback knowing that if they fail to do so on this one it will likely be a long 3 years with a lame duck president.
Republicans have the ball in their court. If they can defeat Obama’s oneiric vision of socialized medicine, or at least make an impactful unified stand against it, they will have something to run on in 2010. If they don’t they will be as doomed as the sick and elderly depending on them.
“There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that lost by not trying” – Sir Francis Bacon
