Conventional Wisdom

Tas tweeted me this blog post from The Misanthropic Principle. Without hitting the link, guess which president signed this leftist legislation into law.

* imposed wage and price controls.
* indexed Social Security for inflation.
* created Supplemental Security Income.
* created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
* created Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
* promoted the Legacy of parks program.
* implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program.
* dramatically improved salaries for US federal employees worldwide.
* signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 miles per hour to conserve gasoline during the 1973 energy crisis.
* established the Office of Minority Business Enterprise.
* On February 6, 1974, he introduced the Comprehensive Health Insurance Act. Nixon’s plan would have mandated employers to purchase health insurance for their employees, and in addition provided a federal health plan like Medicaid that any American could join by paying on a sliding scale based on income.

If you guess Richard Nixon then you are correct. No one would accuse Nixon of being a progressive. If Obama backed an affirmative action program or the formation of the EPA, he would be called a racist by Glenn Beck, and an environmentalist wacko. This is how far the the Beltway conventional wisdom has moved. The problem with Beltway wisdom is that the people paid for political consulting are really fucking stupid.

The convention wisdom was that mandating that more Americans buy private health insurance would be more popular than universal health care. If Obama wasn't a corporatist and didn't care and about pleasing lobbyists; he would have pushed for universal health care. Republicans would have screamed Democrats want a Canadian health care system. If I was president, my response would have been, "If Republicans mean, I want a health care system that costs the taxpayers less and creates longer life expectancies, then the answer is yes." Obama's idea was to talk about cuts to Medicare Advantage (which I support) to pay for money going into state insurance exchanges. Republicans attacked Obama on making cuts to Medicare. Republicans for able to use Medicare cut fearmongering to get more senior citizens to vote against Democrats. Young people weren't excited about the prospect of being mandated to make health insurance companies richer.

The moral is people like socialized medicine. The conventional wisdom and Obama's neoliberal believes that corporations can do what the government does created the bad policy known as the Affordable Care Act. Name a progressive besides Ezra Klein that supports legislation that makes true health care reform harder. Remember, the argument by Obama supporters was that the health care bill must pass in order to get the health care reform progressives actually want.

Obama's executive order was one of the most anti-choice acts made by a President. Obama threw women's reproductive rights under the bus for his own political gain. Abortion rights is a health care matter and Obama has made no moves to back legislation to reaffirm abortion legality.

Nixon was a horrible president who actually managed to do good things because he took policy seriously. Nixon the candidate used the racist Southern Strategy won two elections. Nixon the President created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise by executive order. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg praised Nixon.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So am I. I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972, every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program. Every university had a contract, and Stan Pottinger would go around and ask, How are you doing on your affirmative-action plan? William McGill, who was then the president of Columbia, was asked by a reporter: How is Columbia doing with its affirmative action? He said, It’s no mistake that the two most recent appointments to the law school are a woman and an African-American man.

Nixon used many of his affirmative action programs in the Department of Labor to break up the welfare state he hated. The result was minorities being trained for construction jobs. Nixon used affirmative action for his own conservative ideological goals. The result was blacks getting job training and Ruth Bader Ginsberg becoming a tenured law professor. Obama's idea of job creation is the Make Work Pay middle class tax cuts his throw stimulus money at the private sector and hope that jobs are created. Obama is afraid that if he actually had the government hire people (like FDR) or train people (like Nixon) he would be called a socialist. Conventional wisdom told Obama to move right by continuing the ballouts, backing AIG bonuses, and increasing the customer base for the insurance industry. The result is Obama is called a socialist. That is the result when a President and opposition party places politics above policy.