Obama’s politics of hope inform healthcare, climate change efforts

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President Obama today praised progress on two fronts, healthcare reform and climate change, using similar language to argue that important, even historic, steps had been taken, but that there was still significant work to be done.

December was supposed to be a joyous month for Obama. He was picking up a Nobel Peace Prize, was going to Copenhagen to push for an international agreement on fossil fuels and was expected to fulfill a major domestic priority by signing healthcare overhaul legislation.

Some of that happened, but they were balanced by other, less favorable factors. Obama, the peace laureate, ordered a major escalation in the Afghanistan war. The climate pact is nonbinding and there are questions whether it helps much in curbing emissions. And the final healthcare product is less than what liberals, part of the president’s constituency, wanted.

Further, polls show Obama’s popularity has fallen from the dizzying heights of the post-campaign period just a year ago, amid questions of his domestic and foreign policies.

So instead of taking a victory lap before a joyous holiday celebration, Obama today spoke in praise of the Senate’s action in crafting a compromise that seemingly has the backing of the 60-member Democratic caucus and of his own efforts to negotiate a climate agreement in Copenhagen. Both are first payments to future progress, he argued.

“Today is a major step forward for the American people,” Obama said of the Senate moves on healthcare. “After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making healthcare reform a reality in the United States of America.”

The language was similar to what he used to describe the Copenhagen agreement.

“For the first time in history, all of the major, the world’s major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” Obama said. “After extremely difficult and complex negotiations, this important breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come.”

That spirit of small but important steps followed by the need for more work to achieve even bigger results is the heart of Obama’s vision of politics: slow, steady work laced with compromises as the process works its way through. Any victory, even if it is less than originally hoped for, is important because any defeat grinds the process to a halt.

“As with any legislation, compromise is part of the process,” Obama said of the Senate healthcare bill, which no longer has any public option, not even the version that passed the House.

Obama then argued that the new bill will cut deficits over the long term, add consumer protections and give the uninsured some protection from illness.

“These are not small changes,” Obama said today. “These are big changes. They’re fundamental reforms. They will save money. They will save lives. And I look forward to working with the Senate and the House to finish the work that remains so that we can make this reform a reality for the American people.”
This language too is similar to what Obama used today on climate change.

“This progress did not come easily and we know that progress on this particular aspect of climate change negotiations is not enough,’ he said. ‘Going forward, we’re going to have to build on the momentum that we established in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time.

“So even though we have a long way to go, there’s no question that we’ve accomplished a great deal over the last few days,” Obama said.

As he was preparing to leave Copenhagen on Friday, an obviously weary Obama spoke with reporters and gave one of his best summations of his vision and of the optimism on which his politics is based.
“This is going to be hard,” he said. “This is hard within countries; it’s going to be even harder between countries.

“And one of the things that I’ve felt very strongly about during the course of this year is that hard stuff requires not paralysis, but it requires going ahead and making the best of the situation that you’re in at this point, and then continually trying to improve and make progress from there,” he said.

-- Michael Muskal
twitter.com/LATimesmuskal