Compromise on Health Care? That's Sailing into the Wind

Elective oligarchy is like sailing...

Over at the Old Gray Lady, NY Times Columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins throw marshmallows of love at each other over the inability of Democrats and Republicans to compromise over health care reform.  You can find their debate here.

Without delving into the specifics of health care reform, I just try to illuminate the unrealistic assumptions on which their debate is based: that our politicians should all just try to get along.  That's kind of a silly assumption, given that the only way politicians can advance their careers is by pandering to the people who elected them, and 98% of our Congress is perpetually re-elected from safely partisan districts.

So here's my glib rejoinder to the Times' peas in a pod:

The American government structure is bi-polar and so the nation always moves like a sailboat into the wind, first tacking right, then tacking left.  When we move right, all the lefties complain like crazy but that cannot stop the boat from moving right; when we tack to the left, all the righties go ballistic, but that cannot stop the boat from moving to the left.

Our system is built on permanent conflict with power alternating like a pendulum.

So: duh! OF COURSE the Republicans will oppose, oppose, oppose, as Brooks says. That’s their dang job. But that cannot stop health care reform from coming, because the Democrats have control of House, Senate and Presidency.

However, our health system will not transform overnight, and so in the coming decades we will continue to refine it, upgrade it, change it, reverse it, etc. When the Republicans get back into power, as they always do, they’ll try to scale back whatever Obama has accomplished, and the Democrats will oppose, oppose, oppose. Brooks and Collins will still be debating (I'm sure they get great health insurance at the Times).

There is a better way of sailing towards Utopia, but it can only be implemented when and if Americans begin to realize they live under a duo-polistic mafia run by an homogeneous oligarchy of politicians, who require conflict to stay in power and further their careers.