This August the body politic shows signs of prickly heat, that irritating rash common in hot humid areas in late summer. Across the country, some members of Congress react with indignation, even fear, when confronted by unruly voters at normally civil “town-hall” meetings on health care.
Prickly, indeed. Even in the usually temperate Northwest, the rowdy proceedings prompted Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, to cancel his town hall meetings. Fretting about “Brown Shirt tactics,” he tells the Vancouver Columbian, there’s a “lynch-mob mentality out there.” He told a liberal MSNBC talk show host that he finds the rhetoric “eerily reminiscent of the kind of things that drove Tim McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma.”
Commendably, no other members of Washington’s congressional delegation have canceled meetings, although some rarely hold town halls to begin with. According to McClatchy newspapers, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, said of the heckling at a recent meeting, “It comes with the job.”
The D.C. playbook presumes to direct local responses. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, waves Astroturf, saying the protests are not grassroots efforts. Members of Congress dutifully repeat the line.
Politico reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi armed her members with a 3-by-8-inch pocket card so they’d stay on message when meeting with constituents. Better than a 1,000-page bill, I guess, but it won’t work. Folks want answers, not talking points. The speaker said she hopes for “a positive drumbeat across America about what this means for the American people.”
If only it wasn’t for those noisy constituents drowning out the drums, we’d hear about how the budget would be balanced, costs contained, the economy strengthened, and all Americans guaranteed excellent health care.
Things haven’t worked out that way. The wrong crowd stole the show.
It happens. Good politics involves getting your people to show up — informed, passionate and prepared to engage. Partisans and special interests have the right, if not the obligation, to rally their forces. But they cannot manufacture the emotion on display at these meetings.
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney boasted last week that in July “7,500 union members blanketed the halls of Congress.” This month he promises “the biggest and most effective nationwide grassroots lobby effort ever on health care.” (Yes, he said grassroots.) Town hall meetings will be the “principal battleground.”
Law professor and pundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds takes a wry view of the game. “When lefties do it, it’s called community organizing,” he writes. “When conservatives and libertarians do it, it’s ‘astroturf’.”
The raucous caucuses in the news are a symptom, not a cause, of widespread dissatisfaction with the proposed health care legislation. Voters don’t know the details. And they suspect their elected representatives don’t either. Chants of “read the bill” are common.
Personal, visceral reactions range from fear and confusion to anger and outrage. Health care reform combines with towering deficits, meltdown in the financial sector, and massive government intervention in the auto and banking industries to create a dizzying voter vertigo.
Can those feelings be manipulated? Certainly. But that does not make them any less valid.
Here’s the problem facing congressional leaders and the Obama administration. Major independent polls confirm that most of us like the health care we have and worry that reform will make it worse. We doubt that reform will control costs and believe it will balloon an already daunting deficit and damage the economy. Moreover, we have little faith in Congress or the federal government.
Unsurprisingly, then, the public sees no urgent need for health care reform, especially with a trillion-dollar price tag.
Yet we see, hear and read reports that a complex, costly reform will be jammed through in the next few months and there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing, that is, except make sure our elected representatives know how we feel.
Some people shout and yell. That’s rude and counterproductive, whether from the Right or the Left. But we can handle it. Emotions run high when people believe that something essential to their security and well being is being taken from them. That’s what’s happening with health care today.
The prickly heat will be with us a while.
Richard S. Davis writes on public policy, economics and politics. His e-mail address is richardsdavis@gmail.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
