Nutballs and Hope

The health care debate rages on. It seems that President Obama is getting ready to sell us down the river when he gives his health care speech next Wednesday. If he decides to jettison the Public Option, it will be a betrayal of the worst kind. I really believe that without some kind of government-backed plan, the reform we're hoping for will not happen.

How did all this get out of hand? The president started out so well, with support from Congress, public opinion far in his favor, and a fair wind blowing in his sails. Then the sweltering heat of August hit and it all seemed to go down the tubes.

I cringe watching these awful town hall meetings. When was America taken over by rude, ill-informed, mean-spirited, selfish people? How in the world are we going to take it back?

If President Obama turns against us and sides with the lobbyists, the corporations and the crazy nutballs screaming for him keep his government hands off their Medicare, I don't have a lot of hope for the rest of his presidency. And up until this point, hope was all we had.

Knockin' em Back at the "Table of Equality"

This New York Times picture of President Barack Obama sitting on the White House lawn, sipping beer and chatting about race relations with Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, the policeman who arrested him last week, made me think of another incident that involved an invitation to sit at the White House table.



On October 16, 1901 the newly-elected President Theodore Roosevelt invited black leader Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House. This simple act ignited a firestorm of resentment and bigotry. Outraged Southern newspapers maligned the president and questioned his wisdom and patriotism for "mingling the races." Hate mail and death threats came pouring in. South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman said, "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n****r will necessitate our killing a thousand n****rs in the South before they will learn their place again."




These two tables, a century apart, symbolize the progress America has made on its slog through the mire of race relations. We've come a long way and we still have far to go but at least we're talking.

All for One and One For All

I knew we were in trouble back in 1996 when the conservatives ridiculed Hillary Clinton for saying, "It takes a village to raise a child."

Bob Dole and other Republicans scoffed at the idea. Following the lead of their exulted leader Ronald Reagan, they downplayed the importance of our social bonds and suggested that only the rights and responsibilities of the individual mattered. Instead of community, they promoted self interest. Welfare mothers, social programs, who needs them? We needed rugged individualism, tax cuts and that frontier spirit.

It's been down hill ever since. With our focus fixed on individual need and individual greed, we've blithely careened along this collision course to ruin.

We must come to our senses and realize that we need each other. People do better living in groups. That's what makes civilization possible and and what makes it preferable to living alone. We band together because, when the night is long and cold, it's a great comfort to have friends huddling with you around the campfire.

Hillary's point when she evoked the proverb in her book and at her speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention was that we need to pool our resources and our strengths, to accomplish communally that which would be near impossible alone.

It's time to rediscover this spirit. Today, we must come together to get ourselves out of this massive economic ditch we've landed in. President Obama's economic stimulus and mortgage rescue plans are heading in that direction. You bail out your neighbor today in the hopes that your neighbor will be around to bail you out when you hit a rough patch tomorrow.

America has always managed this crazy balance that pits the needs of the group against the needs of the individual. As a country, we're strongest when we foster both.