A Paradigm Of Leadership: Obama Versus Romney On Health Care Reform

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/a-paradigm-of-leadership-obama-versus-romney-on-health-care-reform/

A Paradigm Of Leadership: Obama Versus Romney On Health Care Reform
June 28th, 2012 1:39 am Joe Conason


Having upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act under the Congressional taxation power, by a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court has also delivered a personal vindication to Barack Obama – and given the lie to Mitt Romney’s accusations about the president’s lack of “leadership.” The irony of the court’s majority decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is its exposure of Romney’s own leadership deficit.

For the Republican candidate, the Supreme Court decision does more than merely shut down the Tea Party arguments he has echoed over the past several months. Regardless of the details — not all of which are salutary, especially concerning Medicaid — the conclusion of this episode in law and politics is a grave wound to Romney’s image and, if he still possesses any, his self-respect. Here is a man who imposed a mandate on his own state’s citizens, in order to achieve universal coverage, and then ran away from his own actions for pure political expediency.

Now the Obama administration must do what it should have done over the past three years: Persuade the American people that the act’s survival is a victory for them. Had the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority vacated all or part of the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional, said Mitt Romney, then the president would have “wasted” his term in the White House. “If… Obamacare is not deemed constitutional, then the first three and a half years of this president’s term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people,” the Republican candidate told supporters at a rally in Virginia on Wednesday. “If it is deemed to stand, then I’ll tell you one thing. Then we’ll have to have a president, and I’m that one, that’s gonna get rid of Obamacare,” he vowed.

Well, whatever Romney means by “Obamacare,” he no doubt assumes that to most Americans it represents ill-advised and even oppressive legislation – and never mind its well-documented paternity in his own Massachusetts health care plan. Having once embraced the objective of universal coverage and the mandate as its means, he evidently believes that he can abandon principle without consequence. Yet he and his fellow Republicans, who have vowed to uproot health care reform, will surely discover, along with the American people, that its benefits are indeed popular – and that its would-be killers may pay a heavy political price.

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The struggle for decent universal health care is a moral imperative and anything but a waste of effort, regardless of Romney’s pandering to the Tea Party crackpots (who cherish their “socialist” Medicare, according to other polling data). Ultimately the painful process of reform and reaction should educate Americans about the real choices before us. When that happens, the Republicans on Capitol Hill may still seek to strike down “Obamacare” in their hatred, only to see it become a more powerful force they can possibly imagine.