The Catch of the Day goes to health care economist Aaron Carroll, who refutes a complaint that President Barack Obama rejected bipartisanship when he rammed through his health care law. According to the critic, Ron Fournier of the National Journal, Obama should have accepted a scaled-up version of Romneycare.
“Obama surrendered his mantle of bipartisanship, and Democrats muscled through a one-sided law,” Fournier wrote.
But that formulation is absurd. As Carroll says:
Is there anyone who disagrees that the ACA was an attempt to bring Gov. Romney’s Massachusetts-style health care reform to the nation? We can agree that the final specifics leave some differences between the two, but is anyone contesting that the ACA is not a direct descendant of Romneycare?
Fournier insists that no matter what happens in Washington, both sides must be at fault. Matt Yglesias points out why this is pernicious: As long as “neutral” pundits are going to blame both sides for anything that goes wrong, the out-party will have the ability to make the in-party look bad to those pundits simply by refusing to go along.
This isn’t to single out Fournier. His position is only the most cartoonish version of the blind belief among many “neutral” pundits that bipartisanship is the only thing that matters, not just on health care but on practically anything.
Fournier applies his everyone-is-at-fault theory to health care, energy, the budget, the economy and more. But instead of presenting them as his preferences, which is what they are, he’s posing as an unbiased observer. Instead of saying “I want,” he’s saying, “We need.”
The assumption in this position is that every problem has a common-sense solution we can all agree on, if only parties and politicians would get out of the way. That isn’t true.
Politics is about legitimate disagreements, whether they’re based on interests (energy-producing states honestly disagree with energy-consuming states) or on ideology (liberals want government-guaranteed health insurance for all; conservatives don’t). Or, as is usually the case, some combination of that. Sometimes, yes, compromise can produce good policy; sometimes there are simply going to be winners and losers.
In democracies we are entitled to advocate for our individual preferences, but we normally express those preferences in terms of the common good. The problem with the Fournier point of view is that it bullies those who hold other positions.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics.
