Obama shadow boxes with 'enemies' of health plan
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
September 9, 2009
Emmanuel Goldstein was the enemy of the state in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and the target of the "Two Minutes Hate," in which the citizens of Oceania -- at the cue of Big Brother -- would rage at those undermining the state and the party.
Within the novel, it's never clear if Goldstein is real or a fabricated whipping boy for party officials and angry citizens.
Unlike Big Brother, President Obama hasn't even deigned to give us a name for the enemy of "reform." He uses only ominous, vague epithets: "Opponents of health insurance reform," "well-financed forces" and "those who are profiting from the status quo."
So I asked both the White House and the Democratic Party to name these malefactors of great wealth.
I called the White House last week, and asked for names, and was told to e-mail spokesman Reid Cherlin. I asked Cherlin about the WhiteHouse.gov statement, "For those who fight reform in order to profit financially or politically from the status quo, the president sends a simple message: 'Not this time.' "
And I asked about this line in Portsmouth, N.H: "Despite all the hand-wringing pundits and the best efforts of those who are profiting from the status quo ... "
"Please name names," I requested. "Which businesses, lobbyists or industries is he referring to?"
Mr. Cherlin hasn't responded.
I also called Organizing for America, the heir of the Obama campaign, now run by the Democratic National Committee. In an e-mail, the group wrote: "Opponents of health insurance reform have power. Some reap huge profits from the status quo." And: "These same well-financed forces have killed reform in the past, and they're aiming to do it again."
Who were these "well-financed forces" and profiting "opponents of ... reform"?
Organizing for America didn't call me back, either.
You see this nameless line of attack from Obama and the Democrats every day. It's called demagoguery.
Since Obama won't put a name on the enemies of reform, we need to do some detective work. A prime suspect "profiting from the status quo" would be the industry within the medical sector with the highest profit margins, namely the drug makers, which averaged 16.5 percent profit margins last quarter.
But the drug makers have been team players. The Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, the largest industry lobbying group in the country, is shelling out $12 million for pro-"reform" ads this summer and fall. Obama has bragged that "even the pharmaceutical industry" is on board.
Doctors? Nope. Obama said in Portsmouth, "We have the American Medical Association on board."
The obvious culprit remaining is the health insurance industry. Why, then, don't Obama or the DNC name the insurers, and their lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, as the "well-financed forces" profiting from the status quo. Is the president just being polite?
More likely the president doesn't want to name the health insurers as enemies because the industry is lobbying for most of the Democrats' plans -- especially the subsidies for private insurance and the proposed mandate that everybody buy insurance. The industry dissents on only one proposal: a government insurance option.
For Obama, a nameless enemy is more useful because it allows people to imagine whatever "well-financed forces" they like as the enemy. It's visceral demagoguery.
Liberals, who see a government option as indispensable, still imagine that Obama is engaged in a death struggle with the insurers -- even though Obama has signaled he's willing to toss the government option overboard. Meanwhile, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, tying together former House Majority Leader Dick Armey's lobbying for a drug company and his nonprofit group's opposition to Obama's reform, argued on Aug. 7 that the drug companies were the well-financed opponents of reform -- even though they're supporting it.
Obama, in "The Audacity of Hope," described himself as "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Today, through his rhetoric, Obama has created a different blank screen, one on which he invites his allies to project not their hopes but their fears and resentments.
Obama adviser David Axelrod has convinced Obama that attacking the health insurers is good politics. But Obama still won't call them opponents of "reform" because there's a good chance he'll sign off on the insurers' agenda. Then he can claim victory over those dastardly "opponents of reform."
Timothy P. Carney, The Examiner's lobbying editor, can be reached at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. He writes an op-ed column that appears on Friday.
