Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation

Massachusetts: Obama's health warning

This article is more than 14 years old
Editorial

One of the ironies of the political blow that Massachusetts has delivered both to a Democratic president and his prime piece of legislation, healthcare reform, is that the state already has a mandatory health insurance programme of its own. When it was passed in 2006, the New York Times said that Massachusetts deserved credit for tackling a problem that Washington was failing to address. Yesterday that formula was almost wholly reversed. Massachusetts was taking credit for ditching a problem Washington was trying to address. Scott Brown, the winning Republican candidate, is pledging to overturn a national health deal, even though he supports a similar health programme that operates locally. Mr Brown will take his seat in the Senate as the man whose vote breaks the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority and with it the chances of getting national healthcare reform through. Letting a Republican snatch a seat once occupied by John F Kennedy and Ted Kennedy may be regarded as a misfortune. Allowing the parvenu to imperil a whole year's work looks like – in Lady Bracknell's dictum – carelessness.

There are local reasons for this upset – a poor Democrat candidate, who ran a complacent and fitful campaign, and an unpopular governor. But there are national ones too: anger over declining wages, rising unemployment, the bankers, and a federal capital prey to special interests. The same mood of frustration which Barack Obama tapped as presidential candidate is now in danger of turning against him as president. The White House wheeled out its big guns yesterday to explain that the Massachusetts vote was not just about healthcare, that the first year's work could only be judged at the end of a first term, and that change takes time to reap political dividends. There is much in what they said. But at some point they have also to admit there has also been a failure of presidential leadership.

Exactly a year after he stood on the steps of Capitol Hill for his inauguration, Barack Obama now presides over a party in some disarray. A candidate who soared above party political constraints to seize the mood of the nation has allowed himself as president to become thoroughly entangled in them. Bipartisanship is finished, a worthy effort which proved a complete waste of time. He lost three months trying to court Republican senators, who in the end had no intention of breaking ranks. And the longer the backroom negotiations went on, the worse it got. The blame game, the pointed fingers that emerged yesterday, are all evidence of the same phenomenon – a president who could move vast crowds in Washington a year ago, but who failed to move a limited number of senators in his own party.

So while David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, and the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, were right to say the Massachusetts vote was not just about healthcare reform, it is here that Mr Obama's current woes are distilling and it is on this issue that he now has to act. He can not back away from the reform because, by his own analysis, the mounting injustices and costs of the system as it is are only set to get worse, and he can not tackle the nation's budgetary problems without tackling healthcare. He is stuck in forward gear, so the only question is which speed to select. Two of the procedural devices – ramming the bill through before the incumbent had time to take his seat, or trying to get House Democrats to vote on a Senate bill – were both ruled out yesterday. Other options, like passing the reform in two steps, or in bits, and challenging the Republicans to filibuster each one, remain in play.

One thing neither Mr Obama nor the Democratic party can afford to do is to go into November's midterm elections without healthcare reform in place. One way or another, it is now time for Mr Obama to drum up his own populist swell and get the job done.

Most viewed

Most viewed