This Fateful Moment: Follow-Ups

Copenhagen is over, the health care bill passed its first and probably decisive test in the Senate on a straight party-line 60-40 vote, the minimum necessary to avoid an unbreakable filibuster. So evaluations of the outcomes have begun.

Internationally there's a lot of skepticism about the Copenhagen agreement, expressed particularly in UK papers, like the Guardian. This BBC summary is a bit more balanced but still pretty brutal.

Update: Sam Hummel's useful and detailed account at Salon questions much of the reporting on Copenhagen. He asserts that no better accord was rejected, that while they were disappointed that the accord wasn't stronger, most developing nations supported it; the accord was put together by a representative group rather than a "backroom deal" of a few countries; and that the accord is meaningful: "The importance of getting an agreement under which the major developing nation emitters recognize they have a responsibility to act cannot be overstated!" He also says that Obama is not to blame for any perceived weakness in the accord, and that his contribution was positive. He concludes: "The things I saw, in every segment of the COP15 negotiations that I had the opportunity to watch, gave me hope."


On the health care bill, while some on the left are still angry, some oppose provisions or especially what's lacking so intensely that they remain opposed to the bill, others--like Kos--are calling for the left to continue to try to improve the bill until it is in absolute final form. At that point, if it doesn't become "worse," he and others will likely support it.

There's a growing sense that it's the best that could be expected, that all major "revolutionary" legislation began in a limited, inadequate form, and that what it does is better than things as they are. And there's the beginning of admission that it's an historic achievement for the Obama administration. As Andrew Sullivan wrote, "It was as grueling a victory as the one in the primaries, and took even longer. But it was a victory, a substantive, enduring legislative victory the like of which no president has achieved since Reagan."

In the context of the ongoing madness in the U.S. Senate on health care, several more voices have joined mine and Ezra Klein's in asserting that the current misuse of the filibuster as demanding a super-majority for any substantive bill is the prime suspect in a government that can't quite govern: The Nation's Chris Hayes said so on MSNBC, and Paul Krugman concludes that "the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional."

But what does all this mean for "this fateful moment" in the shape of things to come? It's more than a truism to say, only time will tell. It's a reminder that quite a lot is unpredictable. But from this perspective, it is ominous. The basic fact is that neither the need for a decent health care system in the U.S. and a concerted effort to address the Climate Crisis by the entire world could overcome the power of other political and economic interests.

While there is plenty of responsibility to go around, the usual suspects of the huge financial and economic interests--the multinationals and their banks, the big fossil fuel and insurance conglomerates--have been busy in the shadows, pulling silent strings.

Those interests mightily influence U.S. politics, and since I know this landscape better, this is where I see the most disgusting and disquieting evidence. It's true on the Climate Crisis as well as health care--for the lack of congressional action on carbon limited what President Obama could promise or persuade in Copenhagen.

This is despite what I believe is much stronger public support for universal health care and for action on the Climate Crisis. Polls suggest this as well, including a new one on the Climate Crisis, in which 65% favored regulating carbon emissions.

So at this moment, the conclusion on both issues suggest important beginnings, but containing flaws that may turn out to be fatal. The health care bill may not control costs or lower premiums enough, may impose an unpopular and perhaps unconstitutional "individual mandate" to buy products from private insurance, and may be phased in so gradually that it remains vulnerable to political destruction before it takes full effect. The Copenhagen agreement may not lead to real agreements to act, and may signal that national governments won't act quickly enough or sufficiently to either blunt the effects of the Climate Crisis in the near future, and especially stop the worst from happening later on.

I agree with those who say that even if he had done some things differently, President Obama could not have altered either outcome for the better. And I'm not going to waste my energy on political posturing. I have no editors to please or ideological banner to wave from my masthead. I have no producers to please by being outrageous.

As far as what we do to make a better future using the instruments of politics as well as of science, business and law: this is where we are. Both the health care bill (assuming that something like this becomes law) and the Copenhagen agreement do reverse the recent and seemingly unstoppable official refusal by the U.S. government to recognize and confront these fateful issues.

Most of these efforts will be conducted by people younger than me. To them I reiterate that hope is not what you feel but what you do.