One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Obamacare

Yesterday, the President compared the drive for health care reform with a previous generation’s success in putting a man on the moon.

Yesterday, the President compared the drive for health care reform with a previous generation’s success in putting a man on the moon. To paraphrase:  Some doubters and cynics thought that President Kennedy’s goal was foolish and unrealistic, but the American people proved those cynics wrong, showing what we as a nation are capable of when we put our minds to it. So too healthcare.  Now is the time to act.  The time for talk and nay-saying is past. If the President thought more about his analogy, the work of his predecessors, and the institutional capacities of Congress, he might reconsider his efforts to jam complex health care legislation through Congress as early as this fall. In 1957, the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit.  JFK announced his goal of putting a man on the moon in 1961.  Neil Armstrong took his first steps in 1969. Naturally, a program as complicated as the Apollo missions took many years to complete and encountered setbacks along the way. Yet somehow, President Obama looks at this example of a near decade of deliberate innovation by NASA and finds inspiration in the abilities of Congressmen and Senators to rework one-seventh of the American economy before they head out for vacation? The President might have been more realistic if he had referenced another journey to space in his push for health care reform.  If Congress manages to pull such sweeping reform off, it will have boldly gone where few Congresses have gone before. May the force be with Obama.  He's going to need it.