"Eat Your Gruel and Like It."
OK the president did not exactly say that. He said that his healthcare plan is a "moral obligation." Same message though.
Look, big ambitious domestic programs tend to stand or fail according to whether a sufficient number of Americans decide they mean "free money for me." Prescription Drugs? Passed the "free money for me" test. It's law. Social Security reform by contrast offered a splendid opportunity to right the finances of the United States and promote personal saving. Lacking the crucial "free money for me" element, however, it never got a vote in Congress.
There's a part of me that is impressed by the dour severity of the Obama healthcare message. Nobody can ever accuse him of pandering! He's presented his healthcare program as a stern selfless act of self-denial. You, Mr. or Mrs. Senior Citizen will probably have to wait longer at the doctor's office. But you'll have the consolation of knowing that a lot of people you don't know (and might not like if you did) are getting betterhealthcare - and that your children's debt load may perhaps (but probably not) be lightened as a result. Politics does not get more high-minded than that.
I once heard a famous political consultant, then on the left, now on the right, reply to the question: "How much do Americans care about liberty?" His answer: Zero, zip, nada . He said: This is a country that takes its freedom entirely for granted and cannot be frightened by warnings that freedom will be taken away. It's an utterly non-ideological country that pays no attention to the internal consistency of a candidate's message. Individual voters have all kinds of motives, but voter behavior can be predicted with the question: "What's in it for me?" Obama has just answered, "Not much." We'll see how that works out for him.