Not the Change I Voted For

As my twitter feed has already suggested, my confidence in the Obama administration has been shaken, perhaps beyond repair. Given the wide range of reasons, more often illegitimate than justifiable for shaky faith in Barack Obama, I feel compelled to elaborate on my specific sources of concern.

Barack Obama ascended to power projecting a conciliatory nature that was perceived as refreshing, a departure from politics as usual. I was sufficiently moved to travel to Philadelphia despite my medical situation to volunteer for a weekend. However, the willingness to compromise is only a virtue as a means to a worthwhile end; a compromise that damns its ends has no reason for being.

My crisis of confidence relates primarily to two issues, healthcare and Israel. In both cases the Obama administration has made compromises that, for me, undermine everything he hopes to achieve.

I agree with the need for a public option in healthcare. At the very least some floor needs to be established for the minimum level of healthcare universally guaranteed that far exceeds current standards. Our government must embrace the indivisibility of curative and preventative medicine; people should not die from diseases that could be discovered at routine physicals.

However, the central problem with healthcare is its cost. The universality of healthcare is dependent upon the affordability of healthcare. A compromise that ensures the continued inflation of healthcare costs undermines the goal of universality.

To this end, Obama has erred in every conceivable way, and not for the purist of reasons. His refusal to put tort reform on the table is a clear overture to the powerful lobby of trial lawyers. If a doctor is afraid that he/she will be sued for millions of dollars for missing an extremely improbable ailment, that doctor will run unnecessary and potentially exorbitantly costly tests. More obviously, the costs of defending against malpractice lawsuits are passed on to patients, even when the charges are dismissed.

Equally troublesome is the Obama administration’s deal with pharmaceutical companies to preserve their windfall profits in exchange for support for his public option. Intellectual property laws exist to provide incentives for research. This doesn’t require that drug companies should be able to set monopolistic prices for procedures. Pills that cost two dollars to manufacture should not be sold for hundreds of dollars each.

Similarly problematic is the Obama administration’s compromise concerning support for Israel in the Security Council. I am a Jew of Israeli descent from a family in which memories of the Holocaust are recent. However, I am also considerably left of center. I wore a blue ribbon on my bag while in Israel in the summer of 2005 to express my support for dismantling the Gaza settlements and believe strongly in the creation of a Palestinian state. Nevertheless, I believe that the Obama administration’s action in supporting the nuclear disarmament of Israel is detrimental to the interests of the United States, Israel, Palestinians, Iran and the prospects for peace in the region.

In the short run, Obama appears conciliatory towards Iran, earning several brownie points with the theocracy. However, in the long run, the consequences could be devastating on many fronts. First of all, Israel will not relinquish its nuclear arsenal. Israel’s long run security against far more populous antagonistic neighbors is dependent upon the nuclear deterrent. From Israel’s perspective, in the absence of a nuclear deterrent, it does not matter if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon. Iran, together with its allies could potentially exploit its size advantage over Israel and win a ground war. With the United States army currently overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli leaders will never acquiesce to this resolution.

Given this obvious reality, we must then consider the ramifications of this gesture by the Obama administration on Israeli politics. Unlike support for dismantling settlements, this move alienates both left-wing and right-wing Israelis. The resulting lack of faith in United States support is likely to bolster the political standing of security hawks like Benjamin Netanyahu. As a liberal Jew, I fear that Obama’s move will undermine Israeli liberals, resulting in a significant shift to the right. Such a political shift would likely complicate any attempt to achieve peace in the region.

Obama’s leadership leads me to question many previously held values concerning desirable virtues in a leader. Hillary Clinton, about whom I have many more personal reservations, more strongly embodied specific values. The charm of Obama’s professorial nature and his willingness to engage in intelligent debate masked the fact that I, along with many others elected a man to the highest office in the nation despite a paucity of specific policy positions. His conciliatory nature inspired faith in his ability to unite disparate interests, but in practice his compromises have often undermined the goals they were intended to accomplish. If I could go back in time, I would not do anything differently in the general election. But as concerns the primary, I would rather have voted for a leader with questionable character, modest ambition, and modest accomplishments to one that valiantly makes things worse with backwards attempts to achieve poorly chosen objectives.