This a short post since typing it on my iPhone.
I heard John McCain speak on the Senate floor yesterday. His basic point? That candidate Obama said he would take a political approach to reforming health care which embodied "change", that it would be a bipartisan group he would convene, and that debate would take place before the cameras of CSPAN, but did no such thing as president. He called him out. Called him a hypocrit, in effect. I heard that and said, "He's right."
Then I heard Senator Harkin after. And he responded that Republicans never got their caucus together with a proposal they themselves would both support in large numbers and could reasonably offer to the majority Democrats - a proposal something like "give us real medical malpractice liability reform and interstate competition of insurance, and we will vote for this in large numbers, even if it includes a public option and no specific exclusion on funding of abortions."
And I said, "He's right."
I sometimes want to blame the system. And I don't believe our system of doling out committee chairmanships is democratic, true enough. But blaming the system is in this case far too charitable. It comes down to men and women, citizen legislators, elected to lead, with the freedom and opportunity and responsibility to lead, who individually and collectively choose not to.
I say throw them all out...first chance you get. But it begs the question, getting back to the system, what's the chance better and more courageous and more responsible leaders follow?
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