Obama wants a healthcare bill with a public option by October. His chances are: A) good B) slim C) non-existent

If the Obama Administration is not thinking that health care reform, politically speaking, is not the equivalent of where they were just before the Iowa caucus, then health care reform with a public option is already dead. As with Iowa then, if you don’t win that one, you can’t go on to do anything else. But it’s at precisely this point in 2009 in the development of competing Congressional health care bills that a prediction is almost impossible to make especially, as the American philosopher Yogi Berra has said, if it has to do with the future. So, to rephrase the question, what does President Obama need to do politically to enact health care reform that includes a public option? Answer: Go back to Iowa. 

The Republican position on television and in Congress is essentially akin to waving their arms wildly saying “Stop!” to a herd of donkeys. Surely Republicans know or at least can imagine how many millions of people still miss the text messages and e-mail updates they used to get almost hourly from the Obama campaign and during the transition. 

Surely Republicans know that President Obama’s supporters are waiting to be called to action on health reform. Surely Republicans know not to under-estimate the president’s connection with the public and in particular his connection with his supporters and they are waiting to mobilize.. And surely Republicans know that not since Ronald Reagan have we had a president who holds as much personal connection with his supporters–or they feel such personal connection to him, that is.

When President Reagan asked his supporters to contact their Congressional representatives and let them hear their–meaning, his– views on a political issue, they did, and switchboards in Washington, DC lit up then broke down they were so overloaded. That’s what Republicans know is possible if they don’t get an anti-public option zeitgeist set into place right now. 

But only President Obama can mobilize his supporters, to re-inspire them to become, right now, this year, “the change you seek” on the public option for health care. The debate is not a policy one entirely; it’s substantively a political one, too. As for the White House political staff, if they’re not strategizing the political campaign side of the health bill like it’s November 10, 2007 and not June 10, 2009 they’re less vaunted than they are said to be. Because it was on November 2007 that then-Senator Obama upturned the stakes in the Iowa caucuses with his defining speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Des Moines–in which he asked “What’s next for America?” 

One thing that’s next for America today is health care reform. The Republican party is determined to be the party of status quo. Go for it. How’s that been working for you? That leaves room and lots of daylight for the Democratic party (not that you can fully trust the Democratic party to be united on anything) to be the party of “What’s next for America?” Message to the White House: The health care debate is not going to be won in halls of the Cannon House Office Building. 

It’s going to be won in the American heartland. Get the president out of town.

The credit card (and concealed weapons) bill of 2009: Yea or Nay? Bonus: Are some long-powerful Washington powers no longer so powerful?

On the credit card bill: The next person who tells me that corporations have a good track record regulating their worst consumer practices and impulses, I’ll need to do no more than point to the necessity of this bill as my reply. My own experience is instructive: On the eve of this bill’s passage, in fact exactly two days ago, I received a poorly mimeographed notification from Bank of America, with whom I’ve been banking for decades, that the bank was making changes to my credit card accounts–and that these changes would apply even to accounts that might already be closed. This, after I recently paid off the very small balance on one card and now only carry a tinier balance on another card, and after the bank recently rescinded a card that I had not yet even used.

What are these changes? Increased fees for ATM advances, cash transfers, balance transfers, minimum payments, and other new changes that affect additional sections of the agreement in–and I quote–”Sections 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 30, and 33.” I’m not making this up; naturally, descriptions of these sections were not provided with the letter. That it took a stick-it-to-the-banks karma in Congress to achieve passage of credit card reform only illustrates how comatose bipartisanship is in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, looking ahead: Banks would win approval from the public if they treat the new disclosure requirements the way food companies label nutrition information as pull-quoted and uniform.

On the gun amendment: I’ve camped in countless National Parks. Never once faced a threatening situation in which I’d wished I had a pistol. I didn’t realize there was such a crises in Yosemite or Shenandoah. We regulate gun ownership all the time, Americans have plenty of routes and access to purchase guns and get them permitted, that the National Parks provision hardly seems a constitutional infringement. I’m sure that the good folks on family vacations,  Deadhead backpackers, Miller High Life partiers,  and quiet poets can all pack heat and feel safer. Knowing that there will be more guns in National Parks, however, makes me feel less safe in fact.

Compared to the urgency of the credit card bill, this provision is like a parasite attached to a host. It hardly seems urgent. But, really, it does no harm. Come on, Yogi Bear, let’s lock and load. 

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

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On a separate issue, denying funding to close Guantanamo

This left-over Bush administration problem needs to be resolved. 

First, we should stop holding enemy combatants indefinitely and get on with charging them with a crime. In general, we should imprison enemy combatants in federal corrections institutions where today we have already some 200,000 offenders behind bars. 

The “Escape of the Giant Jihadist” hysteria is absurd. Anyone who knows anything about the real life of federal prisons knows that there is more than an adequate amount of prisoner-led self-policing going on inside those walls, in addition to professional guards. In fact, given how many prisons we have in this country of all kinds, it’s shocking how little the American public knows about the actual experiences of those whom we incarcerate. Gitmo has been a failure. I know it can’t be done by lunch, but we need to put that unfortunate chapter in American “justice” behind us.

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Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation responds

David, excuse me if it feels like I’m targeting you this week, but I would like to address a couple of your points. First, you have correctly identified a major difference between conservatives and liberals, and the liberal belief that the enemy combatants at Gitmo are part of the “justice” system. They are not. They are terrorists who declared war on the United States who do not represent a flag nation, as we became accustomed to in previous wars.

It is absurd to think that the only concern is that the terrorist might break out, which trivializes the issue. The question is, if you put them in Colorado’s SuperMax, is Colorado now a target for terrorism by men we have not caught yet? Or are they automatically entered into the U.S. judicial system? Since that would be highly inappropriate given that evidence against them was gathered in classified military processes, where would you prosecute them? In a military tribunal as Presidents Bush and Obama both supported.

So if they’re being tried in a military tribunal, why not keep them imprisoned on a military base. Where is the most secure facility for this? Guantanamo Bay. The men and women who serve our country at Gitmo are amazing soldiers who watch over these murderous thugs with integrity and responsibility and to move them out of that facility to improve the window dressing of this issue is naïve. I recommend you watch the National Geographic Channel’s (super non-partisan) documentary “Inside Gitmo” for a look at this facility that is hailed as exemplary from both sides of the aisle. Most agree it was unfortunate that President Obama chose to sign an executive order closing Gitmo on his second day in office before knowing the facts, or having a plan. And as America regains its senses, I hope we can now all agree that fighting terrorism is priority #1, not fighting a public relations battle from 2003.

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Fred Barbash, Politico’s Arena moderator responds

Pardon my interruption…but if they were all terrorists we wouldn’t be having this problem, which is the more-than-semantic problem with the discussion of this issue generally. The Bush and Obama administrations have been struggling to come up with a process-acceptable to the Supreme Court–precisely to determine which of those in custody are, in fact, terrorists.

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My response

Rory, no offense taken. Call me a liberal or, hey, like yesterday, call me poetic, but I do in fact support due process for Guantanamo prisoners, as well as closing the prison camp there. If recent polling is to be believed, so too does a majority of the American public.

For some time now military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials have been investigating public, private, or military prisons to take Guantanomo prisoners (and struggling in the effort because of a U.S. law preventing mixing Guantanomo detainees with domestic inmates). This process, of course, was begun during the Bush administration. There is a precedent, meanwhile, for terrorist detentions in American jails: The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, is in the SuperMax in Colorado; Zarcarias Moussaoui is incarcerated there also.

As of February of this year, 500 enemy combatants, including some alleged to be the so-called “worst of the worst,” have actually been released already from Guantanomo. So it’s unclear who is a terrorist thug and who isn’t–that’s why we should be charging them and trying them. And, then, we can call them murderous thugs if that’s, in fact, what they are. Also, it’s from this lot (of the 500, I mean) that the allegations that several dozen of them are back in the field come from–including Abdullah Zakir, a militant whom the Bush administration released from Guantanamo two years ago and who is now a leader among the Afghan Taliban.

About 200-some prisoners remain. A third of these have been cleared some time ago to be sent home without charges. Another third are being kept because the military believes there is evidence to try them–whether in military or in federal courts, where, by the way, there is precedent for shielding the public from classified evidence–though only two dozen have actually been charged and of these only three have been brought to trial. Finally, of the other third, there lacks evidence to charge these individuals with anything–although intelligence officials insist these prisoners are too risky to set free. They’re the ones who have to be dealt with, and they were going to have to be dealt with whether Guantanomo is kept open or not.

Re: Colorado SuperMax as a potential site of terrorist attacks. Rory, we might be able to agree on this point: It makes no difference who is president or who controls the U.S. Congress or how well or poorly we treat enemy combatants, or even what policies of defense, what uses of hard or soft power get employed for us to be realists about the following fact. Jihadists don’t need motivation to attack civilians. So let’s not ascribe to them any special care for the our national drama about domestic security.

I’ll check out your movie. Re: yesterday’s debate. By now you surely know that “excessivement sensible” means overly sensitive.

This post originally appeared on Politico’s Arena.

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