In a fawning piece in the Wall Street Journal, presidential historian Robert Dallek praises President Obama for what he describes as “political mastery” in securing Senate passage of the health care bill.
Let us briefly tackle some of his points:
The hundred years' war over national health insurance is coming to an end. Or is it? Even if Congress passes a bill in January, as seems very likely, the fight won't end.
We keep hearing about this century-long struggle on health insurance. What struggle?
The federal government and state governments have been passing health insurance and healthcare-related legislation for many years. In point of fact, the government has been intruding in health care for the last 75 years, so much so that the government covers nearly 50 percent of total health care spending in the United States.
But Mr. Dallek is correct that the fight will not soon end, even with the passage of this legislation by Congress.
If the reform works as intended by expanding health insurance to an additional 30 million Americans and reducing the national debt, the Democrats will pillory the Republicans for the indefinite future. The GOP's uniform opposition—only one congressman and no Republican senators supported the bill—will make it vulnerable to charges of wrong-minded thinking about the suffering of fellow citizens on a scale with Herbert Hoover's failed response to the Great Depression. That cost his party five presidential elections.
Mr. Dallek’s knowledge of history is a bit rusty. He continues to trumpet that trite canard that Herbert Hoover simply did nothing in response to the economic slump.
Contrary to popular belief, President Hoover’s response to the depression was decisively favorable to an activist government role.
Hoover supported the Revenue Act of 1932 which raised taxes and compelled business leaders to keep wages artificially high during what was a deflationary period.
In what may come as a shock to some, Franklin Roosevelt attacked the Hoover administration in September 1932 for government spending: “I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peace times in all our history. It is an Administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs and the reduced earning power of the people.”
Nonetheless, Democrats will continue to enjoy their standing as the more compassionate advocates of needy Americans. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pronouncement—"Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference"—remains a standard of action that has sustained New Deal and Great Society laws for three quarters of a century.
If Herbert Hoover is to be recognized in a positive light, his record of compassionate charity as a private citizen should be noted above all else. That is the type of charity (the only real kind of charity) all should applaud and encourage. The big government approach to “charity,” while admired by Mr. Dallek, is an ineffectual means of security prosperity on both the individual and collective level.
In response to Dallek’s FDR quote, I offer another presidential quote. This one from Ronald Reagan:
“Believe me, you cannot create a desert, hand a person a cup of water, and call that compassion. You cannot pour billions of dollars into make-work jobs while destroying the economy that supports them and call that opportunity. And you cannot build up years of dependence on government and dare call that hope.”
However the political future unfolds, the Obama White House can take great satisfaction from winning passage of a reform on a par with Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 Social Security law, and with Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Civil Rights bill, and the 1965 Medicare and federal aid to education laws.
No offense to Mr. Dallek’s powers of clairvoyance, but Social Security and Medicare are financially unsustainable. One doubts even more government involvement in the health care sector can be seen as a positive development.
