There is a darkly humorous scene in the film, The History of Violence, where the main gangster, played by William Hurt, arranges for the murder of his brother, played by Viggo Mortensen. One of Hurt’s henchman is to sneak up behind Mortensen, wind the garrote around his neck and strangle him. But the tables are turned, and Mortensen escapes.
“How can you f**k that up?” exclaims and exasperated William Hurt. He then shoots the henchman to punctuate his case.
This is how I feel about the Democratic Party and its attempt to reform healthcare. I am aware you can argue intelligently for healthcare reform and variations on that healthcare reform, or you could against it. There are credible opinions, for sure. There are options that may be worth considering. But that is not what I am talking about here. That on one hand is too simple and argument and too mired in knee jerk doctrine to warrant my adding my two cents on the matter.
First off, healthcare is not what I consider a philosophical issue. Abortion. Same sex marriage. These can be philosophical issues. Not healthcare. People get sick. People need healthcare. Many people don’t have healthcare. Even more can barely afford the healthcare they have. I pay a fortune every year in healthcare. I pay more for healthcare than a fair amount of people make as take home pay, annually. And every January my premiums go up. Last January it went up 40-something percent. That’s a big increase. I have no idea what will be extorted from me this January. And I am lucky. Why? Because I am in a group, so I am not confronted with the big, bad bugaboo, preexisting conditions.
As for our “choice.” That’s almost funny. Our choice is to face rejection for different procedures or fight like hell for months on end with the health insurance people. Luckily, we have good doctors with whom we have established long term relationships. I can only imagine how it would go down if our doctors just got here last Wednesday and had no personal investment in our general well being. And that is what most people are facing.
So we need healthcare. And we need healthcare reform. What gets me is the Democrats and the remarkable way, to paraphrase William Hurt, they managed to f**k this up. How when you have any number of options to clarify your healthcare initiative do you choose to lead with your chin? In fact this desultory attempt at convincing America that healthcare reform is necessary and is being implemented with the best intentions is so lame, so lacking in clear information, that the Democrats risk having any meaningful healthcare reform being kicked down their throat. They could lose their advantage in both houses of Congress in the forthcoming elections. They could face disaster and render what should have been a shoo-in eight year Presidential term into a four-year Jimmy Carter extravaganza.
Amazing. It is so amazing that one friend of mine believes the inept way the Democrats, in general, and the White House, specifically handled this healthcare initiative, they must have a secret plan. They must be sandbagging the opposition. They must know something that we don’t, but like any secret weapon they are only waiting for the right moment to unleash it on their opponents. I can understand why he would think that way. Hoping against hope that they are not that incompetent. Unh uh. Not happening.
We have done nothing during the past couple of decades or so if not turn every smart strategic act, politically, socially, and otherwise into some slick term that is used to identify its application. We are homogenized that way, very precise with all of our modeling, studies, surveys, statistics, pigeonholing. There is little allowance for random and unpredictable action. There is little allowance for gullibility that can border on insanity. But things do fall randomly, and even the most cogent proposition can lead to chaos. And, indeed, the road to hell has often been paved by good intentions.
Among the first things you learn in media management is to conceive of your message. Keep it concise, make it clear, and be damn sure the language is such that the average Joe Public out there can grasp what you are getting at. Introduce your message way ahead of time. Test market that message. Take it for a spin. Kick the tires, looking under the hood. If it’s a clunker, modify it in a hurry.
Repeat the message as if it was a Sunday prayer. Make sure all your primaries, secondaries, and surrogates understand that message. Make sure they can translate it, repeat it to large crowds and as a talking head on news shows. Like any good sales pitch, preach all the good stuff in easy language. Don’t allow for confusion. If you have too many facts, realize you are not in a fact finding nation. Reduce those facts to the three or four things that will resonate with the crowds. And if all that fails, hire a brilliant guy like Frank Luntz to make sure you can stay on point and deliver your message.
In the case of the Democrats, they believed people were hurting in a bad economy and would be open to change in their healthcare system. They probably would. The Democrats believe that there is a matter of moral consciousness, that there are far too many people without healthcare. Very true. The Democrats believe that economically speaking we are in big trouble with our present healthcare system, and in the very near future with costs soaring more and more people will not have a viable healthcare plan. No argument there.
But so much for beliefs when they translate to message that is supposed to lead to action. Democrats have approached this vital initiative, believing because it may be so you won’t have your ass handed to you by the financial interests concerned with preserving the private healthcare system just the way it is? We’re talking big bucks adversaries who have no interest in reform, really, not when they are raking in the money. And some of that profit goes to a fair share of legislators, local, national and statewide, in the lovely guise of campaign contributions. Maybe so. But certainly these campaign contributions, which total in the tens and maybe hundreds of millions, are not crossing palms to encourage reform that would detract from the bottom line. These campaign contributions, all right, you can call them bribes, are being paid out to keep things just the way they are, or close enough.
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So now President Obama is the one delivering the healthcare message. Sort of. Finally. This tactical decision only comes after the Republican leadership and the private healthcare industry takes the Democrat’s discombobulated message and turns it on its fanny. But the damage has been done. People love to buy into groundless information, it would seem. Thanks to the Democratic stumble step, a fair percentage of this country believes the Democrats are planning to kill grandma and the government is climbing into your underwear.
No matter that in the Bush administration, civil rights were abrogated, voluntarily surrendered, and intruded upon without so much as a peep from this crowd. No matter that we are still taking off our shoes in the airport and being forced to carry a gnat’s worth of shampoo on a seven day business trip. Forget you have nineteen different agencies listening on your phone, monitoring the books you read and checking out your toilet paper for secret code. It’s the healthcare reform that will ruin our country. In fact, in some circles the message has been so distorted that some ardently believe it is a copy of Nazi policy.
Amazing. Again, let me repeat. There are intelligent ways to debate healthcare reform. There are civil and cogent perspectives that should be heard. There are people out there, on both sides, who are actually trying to be heard. But they cannot be heard above this ridiculous din of lunacy and ragged incompetency that has predicated this mess.
I watch not with shock, but a whole lot of dismay as the princes and peasants with pens and pitchforks descend on these alleged town hall meetings, to rant and rave, show their guns, and try to shout down what are far too many excuses for legislators who are tongue tied and brain twisted by the level of adversity and near-violence. With the notable exception of Barney Frank who offered the appropriate response to one programmed lunatic who termed the healthcare plan a play taken out of Hitler’s National Socialists, most other Senators and Congress Persons seem grossly incapable of dealing with adversity.
Yes, adversity. It does still happen in a world where we believe everyone should be safe. In a world where our more naive believe American citizens will not be subjected to any abuse, in spite of the more obvious atrocities in the world around them. These are the people who believe reason prevails. Well, like anything else, miracles included, sometimes it happens that way, and most often it doesn’t. Sometimes, if you want to reason with someone, you have to hit them with a two by four in order to get them to listen.
I am not suggesting actual violence. I can see already what would come of it, what with the nut jobs out there who are carrying their guns to Presidential rallies. I believe in gun ownership. Really. But I also believe that anyone carrying a gun within the proximity of a president or elected official is not confronting a rights issue. That person is confronting a security issue. It is dangerous in theory and even more dangerous in practices. It is incredible to me that this should be allowed to occur. It is amazing that any doofus carrying a gun to a political rally isn’t hauled off to the rubber room for a quick stay with the shrink of his choice. C ‘mon, people, haven’t we all seen “Taxi Driver?”
But I digress. The fact remains that the Democrats have muffed the healthcare initiative. They have screwed up. Now they are playing defense. A smart defense is a good offense. A good offense is one that works. If you want to get it passed perhaps it is best to forget bipartisan efforts, group hugs, and marshmallow roasts. Tear a page from the old Democratic Playbook when such pols as Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were not afraid to twist arms in their own party. Even Bill Clinton did that.
Tell your supposed Blue Dog Democrats, cute name, that if they don’t climb on the train here, they can forget about any National Party support in 2010. Tell him there were be no funding, no marquee value personalities showing up in support. There will be no support of any kind. Nothing. Hell, if this healthcare initiative fails, as the Democrats must realize, and the Republicans certainly do, they will be losing congressional seats anyway. They might as well lose the seats that didn’t do them any real good.
In other words, cowboy up and show some boldness. Do like the Republicans do. When they get in power, they have an agenda, and they follow it in lock step to see that agenda is realized. They don’t mess around, getting caught up in the facts or apple bobbing in their own confusion. The Republicans don’t apologize. They don’t hem and haw. They have a message, and they stick to it. They don’t want to hug. Whether their policies are right or wrong, they are there to do their job, and that is exactly what they do. Give them credit where it is due.
But not the Democrats. They mistake confusion and mixed messages as freedom of choice and personal expression. They believe like every obnoxious television series that everything will right itself in the end. It doesn’t. It often gets worse.
So, Democrats, if you are really concerned with healthcare reform, then act the part. Get tough. Be direct. Get your message straight. Get rid of a thousand page document. Tell the public the public option is Medicare, but only if you are younger than 65, then you have to pay for it. That’s it. If you like Medicare, then this is your chance to buy it. Simple. To the point. No confusion.
Am I making myself clear?
