U.S. Health Care Reform is a Foreign
Policy Success
"A
president unable to realize what he himself declared to be his most important issue
would lose more than the respect of his voters. His reputation abroad would
also have been damaged, since his negotiating partners would have to assume that
he would be unable to get international agreements through Congress."
It's done. The law on the
reform of the American health care system is finally on Barack Obama’s desk. For
more than a year, the U.S. president fought for the project that before him defeated
Bill Clinton - against the bitter ideological resistance of his political
opposition and in the end, a majority of the population. To achieve this
reform, Barack Obama staked all of his political capital on one card. He almost
lost everything.
In the end, the bill squeaked
through. Late in the evening, with a slim majority of 219 over 212 votes, the
governing majority used a complicated procedure to get the bill that was
previously passed by the Senate through the House of Representatives. The
procedure was an unusual and controversial legislative maneuver that will
continue to provide the opposition with a wide target and live ammunition for
the Congressional elections in November. After this legislative trial, little
is left of Obama’s promise to seek bipartisan cooperation in Congress.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
But, the Democrats had no other
choice. After taking office promising change, their president, whose approval
ratings have fallen from an incredible 70 percent to under 50 percent, is
politically tarnished. If they had abandoned his most important project just
short of achieving success, the era of Obama would likely have been over. A
president unable to realize what he himself declared to be his most important issue
would lose more than the respect of his voters. His reputation abroad would
also have been damaged, since his negotiating partners would have to assume that
he would be unable to get international agreements through Congress.
Now America’s international
partners want to know what’s next for the climate change bill,which is
still stuck in Congress. They want to know whether the Obama Administration
will be in a position to make firm commitments at the Climate Summit in Cancun.
The growing Hispanic population in the United States wants to know what happened
to the promise of immigration reform, which is what motivated them to give
Obama their vote during his election campaign. But the prospects for all of
these projects are uncertain - now that the health reform debate has created a
gulf between the parties, opposition cooperation can no longer be counted
on.
Obama and his party still
have a lot of work to do. The Congressional election campaign begins in
November. The population’s loss of confidence in the Democrats must be restored by
then, if Democrats want to minimize their losses and ensure that the Obama Administration
can continue to act effectively during the second half of its term. In order to
do this, they need to regain control of the health care reform debate - control
that was seized in recent months by critics. In particular, Democrats from
conservative areas of the country have very little time to explain to constituents
why they voted “yes” - and why giving the population access to health insurance
not only doesn’t lead directly to socialism, but increases competitiveness
for an industrialized country. The most substantial American social
legislation in many decades has been passed. The struggle to interpret it has therefore
only just begun.
