The elusive genius of compromise

We are in danger of earthquakes touched off by the whines and bleats from the shills of the health insurance industry—oh sorry, the republican party—but equally high decibel complaints from what passes for a left wing* in this country. One knows why the republicans complain: first, health care was their last stand and they have, by their own definitions, lost. Second, they're paid to complain.

America's stand-in left complains because health insurance reform isn't perfect. This idea has brought a host of historical and literary reflections pouring into my mind. Richard Armour provided the literary one:

The bride, white of hair, is stooped over her cane
Her faltering footsteps need guiding.
While down the church aisle, with wan toothless smile,
The groom in a wheelchair comes riding.
And who is this elderly couple you ask?
You'll find, when you've closely explored it,
That here is that rare, most conservative pair,
Who waited 'til they could afford it.

We've waited over 100 years, and it's time to get something out there, perfect or not.

The historical ones come in order. The USA had its start only after a compromise, distasteful to nearly half the Continental Congress, sidestepped slavery, already the elephant in the room. The nation's Constitution was accepted, then ratified, only after a host of compromises. The slavery question was at least contained by a further succession of compromises, which put off an all but inevitable civil war until the nation was large enough to sustain such a trauma and survive.

Then my generation came along and, in its moment of greatest stupidity, declared that compromise is evil and got that destructive idea embedded in the national psyche.

Then there's the matter of emancipation. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is a fair equivalent of this health care reform legislation. I quote Bruce Catton (not because I think he's the be-all on the subject, but because that's the book at hand):

This proclamation was nothing much.... It declared slavery extinct in precisely the areas where the Federal government lacked all power to enforce its decrees....If the President was going to declare himself on slavery, this...was just about the least he could say.

Yet it...locked the Confederacy in with the anachronism that was [its] dreadful, fatal burden.... An ideal that might be humanly unattainable had been riveted in so that it could never, in all the years to come, be abandoned.

Your history classes probably never taught you that emancipation was, in its time, the most universally despised action ever taken by an American president. The government had to take active measures to ensure that the Federal army (much of it encamped within a day's march of Washington) would not rise, revolt, and take over the country. Much of the Federal union was not reconciled to the idea until nearly the end of the war. Jefferson Davis spoke for the whole white South when he called emancipation "the most exercrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man." (Nod if you think that sounds a bit like McCain's pandering sound bite today.)

The parallels just keep coming. It is interesting how much progressive scorn for this legislation and for the President sounds so much like that of extreme abolitionists toward Lincoln for most of his presidency.

This nation looks most like a nation when its people and politicians recall the compromises that created it and that have lighted many of its most significant moments. It looks least like one when public and elected officials become so carried away with their rhetoric and extreme politics that they forget to look for achievable objectives.

It may be that some republican angst is motivated by an understanding of how Catton's description applies here. They have allowed themselves to become a one-trick pony, locked in with the anachronism of capitalist health care. This least, hobbling, almost insignificant, piece of legislation is far short of perfect, but it is enough to turn the page, and perhaps begin the process that will prevent our own health care from ruining the nation.

We can now argue how we will manage to join the rest of the developed world, decades late, in recognising health care for all as both a right and as good economics. We can no longer argue whether we should. Because so many of the features with immediate benefits (to children and small businesses, amongst others) begin when the President's pen touches the paper, republican talk of repeal seems little short of delusional. Let them try. As David Axelrod said tonight on the News Hour, let them campaign on the promise of taking away the benefits this law, this slow-moving, minimal law, will have already provided by November. They will not only make many people very unhappy with them; they will find that this ideal too cannot ever be abandoned.

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* So far has discord gone that it's necessary to offer several disclaimers. The first is that scorn for a disorganised, just left-of-centre political party and for "leftists" about five degrees to the left of that does not mean the author is a conservative: Quite the contrary. There is a lot of underpopulated political real estate to the left of the conventional positions. Some of it (hallelujah) is occupied by pragmatists who want to keep the ball rolling.

Second, I consider all ideologies to be troubled substitutes for rational thinking. If you are an ideologue, you can get treatment.

Third, as a British-American, I have to wonder whether it might have been better if that first compromise (over independence and slavery) had failed. This land would still have become independent, just a bit later. It would now have universal health care without all this delay. It would have a parliamentary form of government, with all the incentives that form of government has for getting things done (like elected representatives keeping their jobs only when they deliver). It would have achieved emancipation without killing half a million people. And the beer would be better.