Why Liberals and Conservatives Alike Should be Rooting for the Death of Obamacare

            With Obamacare now under the Supreme Court’s review, there is the very real possibility that the law, in entirety or in part, could be struck down as unconstitutional. Most pundits previously speculated that the most controversial part of the law, the mandate, would be upheld 7-2. Now, after three days of oral arguments, many are speculating that the mandate will be struck down as unconstitutional. If this happens, the whole edifice of Obamacare falls apart. Congress would have to revisit healthcare reform. The difference from 2010 is that Congress would likely be under the control of the Republicans (a Republican pickup of the Senate is looking incredibly likely), thus the law would be very different from the one passed by the Democratic controlled Congress of 2010.

            For conservatives, unified in their opposition to this law, a Supreme Court ruling that part, or all, of Obamacare is unconstitutional is a dream come true. The clock would be reset. No messy and difficult political action would have to be taken to repeal Obamacare. Repeal through Congress would require Republican control of the House, Senate, AND the Presidency, which though looking possible is nonetheless still difficult to achieve. Even if only part of Obamacare were declared unconstitutional, it would still be a major victory for conservatives. The law would have to be revisited, but this time with Republican input. Additionally, a Supreme Court ruling in conservatives' favor would place strict limits on government power.

            All of this is pretty obvious. But what I think is less obvious is that a Supreme Court ruling against Obamacare would be, in some ways, a victory for liberals as well. In fact, were I a leftist with a goal for a single payer system, I would be rooting for the Supreme Court to knock down the entirety of the Obamacare law. I say this for two reasons. First, if the Supreme Court were to grant the federal government the power of mandates to private consumers, then that would open up an entirely new sector of potential corruption and abuses by the federal government. Second, if mandates were to be declared unconstitutional, the only avenue to universal health care would be through a single payer system, i.e. Medicare for all, something that is far neater and far more effective in accomplishing the liberal objective of enshrining health care as a right.

I’ll explain more of each of these reasons in the next two paragraphs.

            To explain this first point, I think it is necessary to describe how Obamacare works and what is primarily in question in the current Supreme Court debates. Obamacare, or officially “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” is a several thousand page law that includes a multitude of reforms and regulations of the health care and insurance markets. The act, contrary to popular belief, did not nationalize health care, or at least not yet. Rather, it decided to expand access to health care through the insurance market, rather than an outright nationalization of the medical field (as Britain did with their creation of the NHS). It created a mandate that all individuals and families within the country, except for certain exceptions such as Native Americans and the Amish, have to buy health care insurance. If they couldn’t afford to, the government would grant them subsidies. If they chose not to, the government would implement a penalty on them, costing a few thousand dollars. In essence the federal government, for the first time in history, is mandating that all consumers must purchase a particular good (in this case, insurance) on the private market or face punishment. The lawyers representing the law argue that since all people must at some point in time entire into the healthcare market (we all require healthcare inevitably) then this market is uniquely subject to mandate powers. But the government has never before claimed this power. If the government can mandate the purchase of healthcare insurance because it improves the efficiency and efficacy of the health insurance market, then why stop there. Mandate the purchasing of vegetables and fruits, since those would improve health outcomes. Mandate the purchasing of a gun, dog, and security equipment, since we are all in the security market. Mandate the purchasing of fire alarms, since we are all in the fire emergency market. Mandate the purchasing of rifles and self-defense classes, since we are all in the national security market. Of course, these examples are all absurd, but so too is the notion of government power stemming from some warped and cynical version of market based utilitarianism.

            The potential for abuse should be pretty clear. Imagine a dystopian future whereby corporations and cabals lobby Congress for federal government mandates in their chosen fields. The agricultural industry would lobby Congress to get a federal government mandate of the purchasing of vegetables. The cell phone industry would lobby to mandate the purchasing of a cell phone, so that everyone has one in case of an emergency. And so on and so on. To a liberal, really to anyone, this would be hell! It’s a scene from one of their worst dystopian nightmares, whereby powerful corporations and the government collude to screw over the little guy. And yet, by arguing for the constitutionality of a mandate, they advance it ever closer to reality. Of course, I don’t think anyone intends for or expects this to happen. But the one lesson to be gained from the expansion of government power and prerogatives is that there are always unintended and unforeseen consequences.

            My second argument is a bit more conventional. The long held liberal goal with regard to healthcare is to create a single payer system. Under such a system, there wouldn’t be any messy mandates, taxes, and penalties. Instead, anybody who wanted to would be able to join a public healthcare plan, similar to Medicare. Over time, this would inevitably eliminate the private health insurance market, but that’s an intended side effect. There are serious problems with this plan, but that is neither here nor there. It is in many ways a far simpler system than Obamacare or system of private markets. In fact, it’s far closer to the ideal Obama advocated in the campaign. An aside, but Obama hated, and still hates, the mandate. He criticized Hillary for advocating it, and rightfully so. With the mandate dead, there are only three paths ahead of us. One is to return to the status quo. But if, as liberals argue, the status quo is unsustainable, then this should eventually collapse as the pressures for reform mount. The second path is an extremely privatized market, something akin to what Paul Ryan is advocating. If you are a liberal and you believe that such a system is unsustainable, then you are again faced with the possibility of reform in your direction. This leads me to the third path, a public option. If Obamacare continues to survive it becomes the single greatest obstacle to a public option. In many ways, it’s a worst of both worlds situation for liberals. It keeps the private market, and with it barriers to access of the healthcare market. Yet it also prevents further reforms along a more equitable line. It is a partially public, partially private system of healthcare, with the worst excesses of each internalized. Moreover, it may do just enough to prevent the system from collapsing, permanently locking in this system.

            It’s all a bit more detailed than I originally imagined. The point is, I don’t think liberals or conservatives should be hoping for the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare. For liberals, it opens up the government to further abuses and it prevents further progress on their goal of achieving universal healthcare. 

Political Tribalism for Me, but Not for Thee

This really isn’t related to Super Tuesday, but I thought I’d post about it while it was floating about in my mind. Why is it acceptable for blacks and Hispanics to all vote overwhelmingly for one political party, but if whites were to do the same thing, they’d be called racists? To put the question in another way, if pundits accuse the GOP of being an increasingly white only party, why is that a problem? Why is it wrong for the GOP to be accused of working for white’s interests, while it is perfectly fine for the Democratic Party to work for black and Hispanic interests?

Imagine this hypothetical conversation:

Why is it ok for blacks to vote overwhelmingly (90%) for the Democrats? How is that not racist on their part?

It’s not racist because the Democratic Party actively helps black interests. The Democratic Party seeks to address problems faced by blacks and cares about their concerns.

Would it be right for the Republican Party, or any other party, to exclusively address white people problems and issues?

No, that would be racist. White people’s problems are diverse, differing according to socio-economic status, geography, etc.

So white people have diverse ideologies and interests, but black people don’t. Isn’t that kind of insulting.

No. Being black forces you to face unique problems and challenges that white people don’t have to face.

But there are no collective challenges for being white?

Not really.

Shouldn’t we move to a system where party loyal is not based on ethnicity, but ideology? Isn’t that a superior and far more cohesive system?

Sure.

End conversation.

The point is, I don’t think it’s right that you can justify a race’s support for a particular party based on the logic, “well they take care of that race.” Parties should not be about what they can do for members of particular ethnicities, creeds, or races. Rather, parties should be advancing their version of a universal public good. Parties should compete on ideology, which is irrespective of human particularities and is open to all. If you say, rightfully so in my opinion, that it’s wrong for a party to look after white’s and their interests, then you should also say, based on consistency and fairness, that it’s wrong for a party to look after blacks, Hispanics, etc and their respective interests. This is even assuming that racial groups have collective needs or wants, an assumption I think is A) wrong, B) insulting to those groups, and C) far too collectivist for American society. 

It goes beyond this. Look at this:

http://www.barackobama.com/african-americans/

Obama has an entire section of his site dedicated to African Americans. Where's the section for whites? If it's wrong to have a section for whites, then why is it not also wrong to have a section for blacks? They also have a pdf that's entitled, "The Obama Administration's Accomplishments for the African-American Community." Now imagine a fact sheet entitled, "The Bush Administration's Accomplishments for Whites" or "The Romney's Plan for White Americans." There would be unceasing moral outrage, and rightfully so. But why?

Super Tuesday In A Nutshell

One fact that I think a lot of people aren’t actively aware of is that the media, far from being objective presenters of news and information, are private businesses with their own views and goals. News companies, whether they take the form of local news stations, newspapers, or cable news channels such as Fox News or MSNBC, have to make a profit. To make this profit, they need readers or viewers. Thus, it is in the interest of the media to make every story as interesting and dramatic as possible. This little recognized fact applies especially for political campaigns.

A presidential election in which one candidate has an insurmountable lead would be of little interest to the average person, and thus bad news for media companies. A presidential election that was neck and neck would be of far greater interest to the average person. Why? In such a scenario, the average person is now the average voter as well. With this in mind, the typical person pays more attention to the race (by consuming more news) in the hope that his or her vote carries a greater weight. In general, media companies of all political persuasions have it within their interest to portray, or through their coverage make, elections far closer than they should be.

With this in mind, let’s look at the Republican primary. Today is Super Tuesday, the one day where the stars and primaries align. The largest amount of delegates are awarded today (I’m too lazy to find the exact amount) and the results of today’s elections will be extremely important in setting tone and pace for the rest of the 2012 primary race. That said, I think the Republican primary is largely over, and the question remaining is not a question of who, but of when.

Mitt Romney, since the beginning of the Republican primary, has had the organization, money, and support network to create a truly national and sustained campaign. Despite the Republican base (and now independents) general feelings of apathy, or in some cases, dislike toward Romney, he has been the only candidate with the organization necessary to run a serious campaign. The other candidates lack the internal organization and discipline of the Romney campaign. Romney’s bet, which is looking like it will pay off, was to build an election machine first, beating the other competitors through sheer attrition. The only question in the Republican primary race was whether conservatives and the anti-Romney crowd could coalesce before it was too late behind a not-Romney candidate. I say too late, because as I just mentioned, organization matters. The non-Romney candidate would have to be the consensus choice for a while in order to build up the staff, money, and organization necessary to beat back the Romney machine.

But this didn’t happen. Or rather, it happened too late. The rise of Santorum came far too late in the game for him to become a credible not-Romney. Gingrich’s continued anemic presence in the race prevents Santorum from making up for a deficit in organization with a majority of anti-Romney votes. Instead, Romney is able to cobble together a plurality, with the anti-Romney majority split between Santorum and Gingrich.

As I said before, the question now is not who, since I think that question has largely been settled in favor of Romney, but when. By when, I mean when is this primary going to be over. If Santorum wins today in Ohio (and Ohio is the main state you should be watching tonight), then the primary gets dragged out even more. Romney still wins, but he becomes even more bloodied, even more weak. If Romney can win Ohio, it destroys the narrative for Santorum (that he can win among blue collar, Midwestern voters) which will result in a far sooner effective end to the primary.

Either way, the main question of the primary, who do we nominate, has been settled. Why then are we hearing so much about a concluded primary that never seems to end? Well, for that answer, I refer you back to the beginning of this post.                                                                              

Lent in the Real World

            As a cradle Catholic, this is my 23^rd Lent.  You might rightly think that at this point I would be pretty familiar with the routine.  Yet, this Ash Wednesday was something of a shock to my system.  You see, I spent the previous four Lents in Catholic Disneyland, also known as Notre Dame.  Prior to that, I attended a Catholic High School, and prior to that, a Catholic Elementary School.  Without intending or realizing it, I had been living in a sort of Catholic social bubble my entire life.  This Lent, my 23^rd, is my first as a fully integrated member of secular society, or “the real world” as it is known among college students. 

Notre Dame is not a monastery.  The students get up to the usual college shenanigans, and break the rules just as frequently as they are broken anywhere else.  In fact, your typical Notre Dame student may break more rules than the average college student, just because Notre Dame has a few more rules that can be broken with typical student behavior.  Despite this, Notre Dame has an astronomically high number of actively practicing Catholics for a modern University.  Every dorm has a chapel which hosts a weekly mass, and probably around 75% of the students attend these masses.  Religious participation at Notre Dame crosses political divides, gender differences, and geographic background.  

So, when Ash Wednesday rolls around, you can be pretty well assured that at least half of the people you see walking around campus or in class will have the tell-tale black cross smudged across their foreheads (especially by the evening, as a sizable percentage of college students of all faiths find it difficult to wake up before 10 a.m.).   When you eventually make it over to the Dining hall (which is actually quite good) for dinner, they go out of their way to facilitate the Catholic abstention from eating meat on Ash Wednesday and Friday’s during Lent by presenting you with a vast array of seafood and vegetarian options, and offering no meat dishes of any kind.  It may be harder to slip up and eat meat on Ash Wednesday at Notre Dame than anywhere else in America.

This Ash Wednesday, I informed my boss I would be in a bit late, woke up early, and attended Mass, where I let a priest smear the remains of burnt palm leaves onto my forehead in the shape of a cross, just as I had every previous Ash Wednesday, Then, as soon as I arrived at work, I realized that the vast majority of foreheads there were clean of ash.  My first thought might have been, “Well, I guess everybody must be getting their ashes in the evening”, except that befuddled stare I received from every third person I encountered made it clear that here, in the real world, having an ashen cross drawn on your forehead like an extra from “Braveheart” was not normal behavior.   

Further compounding my feeling of “otherness” was the fact that Wednesday is chicken quesadilla day at the office cafeteria.  Words cannot express the deliciousness of these quesadillas.  They bring light and meaning into what would otherwise be an almost unbearably dull job.  On three separate occasions, people came by my office and cheerily asked, “Quesadilla day! You coming?”  When I did tag along with some of my coworkers to the cafeteria, I discovered that everything on offer had meat in it, except for a rather small tuna sandwich.  When I selected a pathetic little tuna sandwich over a filling, succulent quesadilla, it naturally raised some questions among my astonished coworkers.  I’d like to tell you I answered their questions with a well thought out explanation and defense of Catholic tradition, but I didn’t.  The best I could come up with was, “It’s Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and Catholics don’t eat meat today”.  Why? “It’s tradition”.  There’s some brilliant insight if ever I’ve seen it.

Finally, that night, at a restaurant which I had selected specifically because of its excellent mussels, all of the specials were meat specials.  This didn’t affect my order at all, but I did find it slightly surprising.  It was not the fact that they were serving meat on Ash Wednesday that I found surprising, but rather the fact that of the three specials on offer, all of them were meat dishes.  It really reinforced the fact that here in the real world, there was something a little bit unusual about being a practicing Catholic.  That might be the point of Ash Wednesday in the modern world, to remind Catholics that while we are members of society and live by society’s rules, we are also a bit different, and have to abide by another set of rules as well.  We’re not necessarily better than anybody else, and the purpose of Ash Wednesday is definitely not to produce a “holier than thou” attitude, but we are definitely a bit different.  Yet, I hesitate to say that this was the most productive Ash Wednesday of my life, because while this one definitely reminded me that Catholics are a bit different, the four Ash Wednesday’s I experienced at Notre Dame gave me a great sense of camaraderie with my fellow Catholics, and enabled to me to really appreciate Lent in the real world.

Ideological Tortoises and Hares

                Winston Churchill, that ceaseless font of quotable utterances, once said, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at
forty you have no brain”.  This quote is generally understood as a pithy statement of the inevitable disaffection that accompanies growing older and being disappointed by other people’s shortcomings.  But that interpretation of the quote fails to accurately describe the difference between liberals and conservatives.  Conservatives are not just embittered liberals who have been disappointed by the flaws of their fellow man.  There are several areas, including economic policy, where a conservative arguably has more faith in the individual and human nature than a liberal.  The real difference between a liberal and a conservative is revealed in their respective reflexive views on the government’s response to new problems.  When a liberal hears about a social problem, their instinct is to endorse immediate government action which directly addresses the problem at hand, and then addresses any further problems this action creates as they arise.  A conservative, on the other hand, thinks through the potential unintended knock on effects of any action, and is wary of enacting any policy which may actually cause further harm.  This is not to say that Conservatives are unfeeling or heartless, or that they do not want to take action to remedy societal ills.  They just usually favor indirect solutions to these problems.  They favor these indirect solutions not because they are lazy, or feel that a direct solution would inconvenience them, but because they genuinely believe that the indirect solution is more effective than a direct solution, and produces greater benefits for all involved.  But these indirect solutions can still seem heartless or unfeeling, creating the appearance that conservatives are mean, nasty people who only care for themselves. 

            In the real world, a thoroughly liberal paradigm results in a series of government actions that are effective in the short term, but each of which creates a new set of unintended problems or governmental responsibilities (think of the unintended clash between Obama and Catholic universities caused by healthcare reform) which in turn generate more governmental programs, responsibilities, and powers.  Eventually the Government will begin to run short of funds for these programs, and they will have to raise revenue through taxation.  So the government increases the tax burden on corporations and those at the top who can “afford” to pay a little bit more.  However, when the government increases the tax burden on corporations past a certain point, corporations begin to look elsewhere for a more hospitable business climate, and they take their jobs and capital with them.  This leads to increased dependency on government programs, and the price of those programs rises again.  As corporations move abroad and the cost of government rises, the tax burden is shifted even more profoundly onto the wealthy and successful in society.  Eventually, the tax burden begins to discourage the wealthy from investing their capital in new ventures, and may even lead some of the less patriotic in their ranks to take their wealth and leave the country.  The country is ultimately left with a stagnant economy, vast and expensive government machinery, and no resources left with which to dig themselves out of trouble. 

            While this is admittedly an extreme example, almost a reductio ad absurdum, of the results of unbridled liberal policies, it serves to demonstrate how a series of government actions, all of which directly address the immediate problems at hand, can have negative consequences.   As the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.  It also needs to be noted that a government which does absolutely nothing would be every bit as bad as a government which does everything.  There are problems which naturally occur in society, and they won’t simply go away if we ignore them or leave them alone.  Direct government action cannot possibly solve all of society’s problems, but perhaps, if the government can enact limited policies which create an environment in which fair play and hard work are well rewarded and people are provided with the most basic tools they need to reach their potential, life will begin to improve for everyone.  A libertarian believes government should do nothing, a true liberal that it should do everything it can think of, and a conservative that government must do some things to address the needs and welfare of the people, but that it should act carefully and prudently.  And here we arrive at the real essence of the Churchill quote with which we began, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at
forty you have no brain”.  The heart of the forty year old is no less compassionate than the heart of the twenty year old, but his actions are tempered by wisdom and less rash.  Similarly, conservatives are not less compassionate than liberals, they simply place a higher value on wisdom and temperance in government action. 

            This abstract, ideological difference between conservatives and liberals has concrete consequences in American electoral politics.  The indirect, restrained approach to government problem solving favored by the conservative mind is more difficult to sell to the public than the direct, immediate government solutions favored by liberals.  A liberal can point to an immediate action and say, “there’s your answer”, whereas a conservative has to have both the time and the skill to make a longer, subtler argument in order not to be perceived as heartless or clueless.  Conservatives can take heart from the fact that historically they have been able to find candidates able to make these arguments and electorates willing to give them the time and attention to do so.  However, it is currently unclear whether or not there is a candidate capable of making a compelling argument for restrained government in the current Republican Presidential field, or if the majority of the American people have the patience or mind frame to be receptive to that argument.