It was just a few weeks ago -- six to be precise -- that we were in the midst of a government shutdown which had been brought on by the Republican Party's own grand debacle, a seemingly misguided and miscalculated attempt to hold the government and economy hostage to force a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. At the heart of the effort was Ted Cruz who evolved during the shutdown to a laughing stock and tagline to jokes on late night television. Polls showed support of the GOP to be at an all time low. The public and, in fact, most of the world affected by the instability of the US economy, stood with the President and, when the shutdown ended, applauded his handling of the situation while at the same time continuing to castigate the Republican party for pushing the world economy to the brink of collapse. When the shutdown was over it was Obama who stood tallest. The GOP was on the run and its chances of holding the House let alone securing any seats in the Senate at the upcoming mid-term elections on very shaky ground. Just six weeks ago it was the Democratic party which stood to gain the most from the "Shutdown of 2013", its chances of taking the House and increasing its majority in the Senate surely enhanced by the Republican Party's track to the darkside.
Now six weeks later, all of that momentum, all of that good will, all of the credibility that fell into the lap of the President and the Democratic Party is gone and with it, I fear, any chance of the party gaining control of the government and ending, once and for all, the gridlock which has paralyzed the government and rendered governing nearly impossible. The details of the mishandling of the rollout of the The Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- are too numerous to recount for the purposes of this post. What is worth recounting, however, is the depth of the wound that the President has inflicted on himself as a result of his several mis-steps, a wound, I fear, which may be fatal to his Presidency and his legacy. Joe Nocera, in an Op-Ed piece appearing in today's New York Times "Obama's Bay of Pigs" analogizes Obama's mis-handling of the ACA roll out to Kennedy's handling of the ill-conceived and executed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The analogy, with due respect, does not hold. The plans to invade Cuba were already on Kennedy's desk when he took over the Oval Office in January 1961 and while he certainly had the authority to abort the mission, Kennedy, without experience or context for managing a military operation of this magnitude, chose instead to put his faith in his military and civilian advisors much to his regret. It was that experience as well as his having been in office for more than two years that allowed him to make the measured judgments which avoided a nuclear holocaust in April 1963. That growth would certainly have continued into a second Kennedy term.
By contrast, the Affordable Care Act and its implementation are all Obama. Unlike Kennedy, Barack Obama is already in his second term. The time for the type of mis-steps he has made (and is continuing to make) are long past and would more easily be forgiven had they occurred during his first term. That is not to say that he learned nothing from the political battles fought during the first four plus years of his Presidency. Indeed, his handling of the government shutdown would likely not have been so successful had he not spent so much of his tenure working his way around political land mines planted across the Washington landscape. The nearly unified cries of the Tea Party and its Republican acolytes that the ACA was a disaster waiting to happen and in need of repeal before it began to affect millions of Americans were adeptly challenged by a President who stood on the moral high ground, imbued with the credibility built over months of having stood his ground against political forces that were increasingly viewed as extremist and out of touch with the majority of the American people. Rather than succumbing to Republican warnings about the disaster which was about to befall the nation, the majority of Americans believed in and stood by a President who assured them that their lives would be improved by the implementation of the ACA, that no one would lose their health insurance coverage and touting, as well, the ease with which it would be possible to shop for and acquire health insurance under the Act.
As we know, many of those pronouncements have turned out to not be true, at least in the short run. That the ACA, from a conceptual standpoint, has the potential to vastly improve the delivery of health care to millions of Americans is lost in the firestorm which has enveloped the Obama administration and the President himself. Much of what Obama said -- and said repeatedly -- has proven not to be accurate. As it has turned out, the Act does not allow a certain percentage of Americans to keep their existing coverage and actually provides for Draconian measures (i.e. the issuance of cancellation notices) to enforce its goal of ensuring that everyone has a health insurance policy that satisfies government standards. It was that very fact that the GOP warned about in their pre- and intra-shutdown rantings. That considerable blunder, together with the failed implementation of the ACA website has turned what should have been a crowning achievement that would stand as a testament to political will into a crowning disaster that should provide academia with curricula about how not to govern for years to come.
As a result, the Republican Party now seems positioned to supplant the President as the protectors of the people's interests. That Ted Cruz, of all people, may have more credibility that Barack Obama is simply astonishing. Concessions of mistakes and mis-statements by the President can and will do nothing to quell the storm brewing above his Presidency. So much of governing is about trust and credibility and if both are lost so too is the ability to lead. Unlike John Kennedy who, it was expected, would have the benefit of time to hone governing skills that were already producing impressive results by November 1963, Barack Obama does not have the luxury of time. Good will squandered is good will lost and possibly lost forever. I feel a bit adrift and let down.
