Doyle McManus: Reform ... Where Bush missed, Obama has a shot
[Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more than 25 years.]
Four years ago, after a hard-fought election campaign, a president tried to use his newly won mandate to reform a program that touched every American family: Social Security. President George W. Bush soon discovered that his mandate wasn't nearly as powerful as he thought. Even though Bush promised that current pensioners' benefits wouldn't be cut, senior citizens were nervous about any change. In effect, they told the federal government to keep its hands off their Social Security. Bush stumped the country explaining and defending his proposals, but they died without Congress ever taking a vote.
President Obama has run into much the same problem with healthcare reform. Public backing for Obama's ideas has been broad but tepid; it's hard to rally support when the president hasn't said exactly what he's seeking. Meanwhile, a small but vocal opposition has been ferocious -- and it includes not only hard-core Obama-haters but also a significant number of senior citizens, the nation's most powerful voting bloc.
In public opinion polls, young people generally support Obama's proposals, but people over 65 do not. That generation gap mirrors last year's election returns: Senior citizens were the only age group Obama didn't win. But it also reflects fear among the elderly that Obama's drive to make Medicare more cost-efficient could eventually limit their medical choices -- as indeed, it probably would. A poll released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 37% of the elderly believe that Obama's proposals will harm Medicare, while only 20% said they thought Obama would make their healthcare better. When angry octogenarians tell congressmen to keep the government's hands off Medicare, they're saying exactly what they mean. (And, yes, they know it's a government program.)
The skittishness of older voters was only one of several danger signs for Obama in polls taken after the Republicans' summer offensive against his healthcare proposals. An NBC poll found that more people now think Obama's proposals are a bad idea than a good idea, 42% to 36%. (That question was a dead heat in June.) The same poll found that 55% believed that Obama's proposals were likely to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants (they won't).
Still, despite all that bad news for Obama, there are several ways his healthcare venture is different from Bush's 2005 attempt to remake Social Security -- contrasts that suggest how he can still succeed where Bush failed...
Read entire article at LA Times
Four years ago, after a hard-fought election campaign, a president tried to use his newly won mandate to reform a program that touched every American family: Social Security. President George W. Bush soon discovered that his mandate wasn't nearly as powerful as he thought. Even though Bush promised that current pensioners' benefits wouldn't be cut, senior citizens were nervous about any change. In effect, they told the federal government to keep its hands off their Social Security. Bush stumped the country explaining and defending his proposals, but they died without Congress ever taking a vote.
President Obama has run into much the same problem with healthcare reform. Public backing for Obama's ideas has been broad but tepid; it's hard to rally support when the president hasn't said exactly what he's seeking. Meanwhile, a small but vocal opposition has been ferocious -- and it includes not only hard-core Obama-haters but also a significant number of senior citizens, the nation's most powerful voting bloc.
In public opinion polls, young people generally support Obama's proposals, but people over 65 do not. That generation gap mirrors last year's election returns: Senior citizens were the only age group Obama didn't win. But it also reflects fear among the elderly that Obama's drive to make Medicare more cost-efficient could eventually limit their medical choices -- as indeed, it probably would. A poll released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 37% of the elderly believe that Obama's proposals will harm Medicare, while only 20% said they thought Obama would make their healthcare better. When angry octogenarians tell congressmen to keep the government's hands off Medicare, they're saying exactly what they mean. (And, yes, they know it's a government program.)
The skittishness of older voters was only one of several danger signs for Obama in polls taken after the Republicans' summer offensive against his healthcare proposals. An NBC poll found that more people now think Obama's proposals are a bad idea than a good idea, 42% to 36%. (That question was a dead heat in June.) The same poll found that 55% believed that Obama's proposals were likely to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants (they won't).
Still, despite all that bad news for Obama, there are several ways his healthcare venture is different from Bush's 2005 attempt to remake Social Security -- contrasts that suggest how he can still succeed where Bush failed...