Finding Interests Closer to Home : Health issue heats up and Bush opposes Duke

The message for sitting politicians Tuesday was mostly loud, clear and ugly: Run for your lives. Resentment at Washington’s seeming to look right through the people of Pennsylvania to see what is happening overseas is part of the message. It was intense enough to help sweep a virtually unknown Democrat past President Bush’s chosen candidate into a full term in the U.S. Senate.

There was enough ill will for both political parties. In neighboring New Jersey, tax increases imposed by a Democratic governor led to Republican majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature for the first time in two decades.

And in most races, the revolt expressed anger that while the economy is souring nobody in power seems to care.

For Washington, a big surprise must be the role of national health insurance in the landslide victory of appointed Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) over former U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, who started with a 44-point lead. The word among insiders has for years been that Americans want more health care for less money and that there was no steam behind the issue. That word will no doubt change, because pounding away at health insurance was what turned the campaign around for Wofford.

Did the message get through? It reached the President. He canceled a visit to Asia. Bush quite properly--though reluctantly--endorsed a Democrat for governor in Louisiana to erase any doubts that he indeed does want to drum former klansman David Duke out of the Republican Party. And he acknowledged that Americans “are concerned about their livelihood.”

In Pennsylvania, unemployment is no worse than the national average. But the recession stubbornly refuses to recede there, and Thornburgh’s own polls showed that most believe that the nation is on the wrong course.

This obviously helped make health insurance the big sleeper issue. People who worry about the economy are also bound to worry that they are one pink slip away from losing their medical coverage.

Does the Pennsylvania story translate to other parts of the nation and to next year’s presidential campaign? Nobody knows for certain. But retirement homes are full of former elected officials who ignored similar possibilities, and the White House is likely to scramble to head off further political damage.

The health insurance message is not addressed to one party or another. It is addressed to Washington. Maneuvering among insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and others with big stakes in the future of health care and its costs has been rather gentle so far. The Wofford upset should start producing bruises, and so be it, if that is what it takes to get action.