The art of the deal

Barack Obama is finding it much harder to govern than to run, just like Bill Clinton did in 1992. And the reason for both their difficulties is much the same; bad advice from their inner sanctum in the West Wing. This tendency among new presidents to do something earth shaking in their first hundred days is bad precedent but it seems no one learns from their predecessor's mistakes. Obama is being marginalized by the same albatross that made Clinton look weak and ineffective his first year and that is health care.

Obama took office at the height of the most severe economic crisis this country has encountered since the Great Depression as well as two wars being waged simultaneously. He had plenty on his plate; much more than Clinton or George W. Bush and that's what he should have focused all his energy on. He ran on a platform of change and these crises that were already present when he took office gave him the opportunity to not only lead but to implement change as well. But in addition to tending to the overwhelming problems he inherited, he added more problems of his own when he decided to tackle health care once again.

Most of us won't know for sure until biographies are written about his presidency from people on the inside about whether this was his idea or bad advice from his most trusted advisers but I suspect it's more of the latter than the former, just like George Stephanopoulos misread the mood of the public in Clinton's first year.

So, in poker parlance, Obama went "all in" on his health care plan, believing he had the support of the people when it became clear very early on that he didn't. And he didn't primarily because instead of advancing his own plan, he ceded control of putting together a workable plan to Congress with disastrous results. What he ended up with was a hodgepodge of measures to placate practically every special interest group out there while alienating much of the public at large. As Fareed Zakaria writes in this week's Newsweek magazine, for 85 percent of Americans the great health care crisis is about cost and for the other 15 percent it's about coverage. Yet the current plan does very little about the first and focuses almost entirely on the second.

By allowing Congress to essentially write the health care bill, Obama had to compromise his own ideas in order to get the 60 votes needed in the U.S. Senate to stave off a Republican filibuster and to do that, he had to promise too many things to too many people including our own senator from Nebraska, Ben Nelson.

The senator turned out to be the crucial 60th vote in that process and many Nebraskans think he made a deal with the devil in deciding to vote for the health care bill. The negative response by Nebraskans has been swift and severe. The Republican Party is meeting in McCook this weekend and the theme of their meeting is "Give Ben the Boot."

They contend he "sold" his vote and in doing so, took a position that runs contrary to the overwhelming majority of the people he represents.

I think that's probably true, although most people don't understand the nature of the kind of representative democracy we have in this country. Dictionary.com defines it as a type of democracy in which the citizens delegate authority to elected representatives. In other words, the people we elect are supposed to vote their conscience, being in a far better position to know the ins and outs of a particular bill than the people back home do. But the average voter doesn't look at it that way at all. The voter expects their elected officials to vote the way a majority of their constituents think about a particular issue and therein lies the rub.

Sen. Nelson has served the state admirably as governor and U.S. Senator. He has been, as the McCook Gazette likes to characterize him, an "independent" thinker in the tradition of independent thinking Nebraskans. Translated, that means he votes with the Republicans about as often as he votes with the Democrats. "That's My Congress," an independent voice on campaigns and legislation on the Web gives him a Progressive rating of 28 out of 100 and a Conservative rating of 25 out of 100. As a Democrat, I wish his progressive score was higher and his conservative score lower but most Nebraskans wish it the other way around.

For decades now, this has been a country dominated by centrist ideas. The far left and far right never poll well. That's why third party candidates rarely get elected. The earth-shattering election of an unknown Republican in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy was made possible by Independents rather than Republicans. Despite the president's falling poll numbers, (by the way, his poll numbers after his first year are the same as Ronald Reagan's were) the Republican Party claims only about 30 percent of party registrations while the Democrats are around 40 percent.

Elections are being won by how independents vote, rather than party mantra. The Republicans have dug a hole for themselves by appearing to be against anything the Democrats propose instead of governing responsibly and presenting their own platform. The Democrats have an agenda but that agenda is seen as being too far left for the average voter and so Independents continue to carry the day and elect the candidates of their choice.

Nebraska Republicans, like their counterparts in other parts of the country, have decided to be "against" Ben Nelson without being "for" anything or even having a candidate to run against him. They've seized on this one health care vote and conveniently choose to ignore all the votes the Senator has made in his two terms in the Senate that most Nebraskans supported.

I believe the Senator to be a good man with a good heart who cares deeply about Nebraska and his obligation to its people. But although I supported it, I think his vote for the health care bill was a mistake and, although I've not spoken to him personally about it, I sense that maybe he thinks it was too after the fact. But if we develop a lynch mob mentality about one vote and are prepared to kick people out of office because of it, ignoring all the positive things they've done while serving, we become more polarized as a society and, because of that, good people like Chuck Hagel are discouraged from running for office or staying in office after they've been elected.

Give the Senator a break. He's done far more good for Nebraska than bad.