Democrats usher in new era of freedom and security (at the expense of constitutionality?)

Note: As you read this, you may be tempted to call me partisan or left-leaning.  However I respectfully ask you to withhold the urge to slot me into a simple political perspective as you read through this.  This analysis is my best attempt to look at the health care reform bill on the merits and demerits, with my personal bias towards proactive problem solving, as well as my bias for effective leadership.

While certainly full of problems that come with any large initiative or legislation that enables substantial change, the expansion of access to health care for Americans will, indeed, spread freedom and security throughout the land.  Here's how:

• By outlawing pre-existing conditions, Americans will have more freedom to leave insurers, change insurers, and select insurers. 
  
• Americans will be free to tell the truth about their pre-existing conditions (instead of lying about not having any so that they can have insurance). 
  
• Americans will be free to leave or change employers, and choose from a larger swath of employers (esp. small businesses).  Thanks to serious tax-payer subsidies, more people will be able to afford insurance without needing it to be an employer-based benefit.
• Just like our military uses our tax dollars to ensure our security and safety, so will this legislation.  The military is all about keeping us alive and free.  So will this health insurance reform legislation.  As a country, we've time and time again decided that our tax dollars are well worth our safety, security and freedom.  This is no exception.
  
• Americans just got a new "benefit" just for being an American.  Just like any good employer provides good benefits to its workforce, a good country delivers good benefits for its citizenry.  

However, it's not all butterflies and roses.  Unlike prior "social justice" measures that progressives have led throughout history, there is a serious liberty loophole in the legislation as I see it:  The individual mandate, which forces Americans to buy insurance or else get fined by the government, may be unconstitutional.  At a minimum, it's unprecedented:

Never before has a federal law forced a citizen to buy a product from a private company.* 

(*as far as I know -- if you know of precedent for this, please add to the comments below)

Democratic defenders will typically respond to this critique with the question: "How is that any different from being forced to buy car insurance?"  Well, in two ways, but only one is important:  No American is forced to buy a car.  The secondary reason is that car insurance mandates are regulated at the state-level, not federal.  Ironically, if the so-called "public option" were part of this legislation, I don't think there would be a constitutional issue at hand.  After all, there is a lot of precedent of the government forcing Americans to buy things from the government.  So, with a public option, an American would merely be forced to buy something from the government -- which is far closer to a tax than anything else.  But this compromise that forces Americans to buy something from a private company really seems constitutionally troubling, and is philosophically at odds with a mainstream view of the reach of government.  

But is this the right legislation?  Well, we can look at almost anything and pick it apart.  Give me an hour, and I'll give you two hours of critiques of any organization out there, their products, their services, etc.  Everyone's a critic.   Regarding this bill specifically, outlawing pre-existing conditions is tricky business for an insurance company from an actuarial perspective.  And mandating that all businesses with 15 or more employees offer health insurance will have a heaping spoonful of unintended consequences in the shape of the rise of temporary workforces.   And the fact that it doesn't substantially affect the cost or delivery of health care seems like a pretty big miss. 

Of course there are better ways to solve this problem than this bill prescribes.  But there are better ways to do just about anything.  And if you have ever worked with or in a large organization, you'll know from your own experience that large organizations require large compromises to get anything of substance done.  Large projects never launch on time, and never include all the things that should be in there.  There are often too many competing priorities, limiting the 'perfection' of almost anything, and instead focusing on the important bits that keep you just competitive enough to compete another day.  So, while this legislation is far from great in terms of its elegance and ability to reform health care cost and delivery, it certainly accomplishes meaningful progress in the tactical-yet-important-to-many-people spheres of access and affordability (via subsidies). 

In short, this legislation is not a "government takeover of health care" as the Republicans have so effectively mis-portrayed the plan over the past year.  Rather, it's a real expanded role of government -- an expansion that adds new responsibilities to the federal government for ensuring that its citizens have access to the care needed to keep themselves alive. 

You may or may not think this is the proper role of government.  You may think this will help or hurt our economy.  You may think that socially funding access is bad for the economy.  You may even be with me in thinking that its specific implementation could prove to be unconstitutional.  In one way or another, these are all debates that we've had over the past year.  But what is not debatable is that this legislation will enable new levels of freedom of employer choice, new levels of insurance provider choice, and new levels of health security for Americans.

Democrats: Just don't pretend you're not squeaking health care reform through

Democrats can sometimes be like Republicans and not realize how their approach to getting what they want can be seen as so brazen by those who don't buy into what they're doing.  Case in point: Health care reform bill passage.
 
Yes, the Dems did get a 60-vote majority in the Senate last year.  This 'officially' gives the House something to sign-off on and then send to the President to sign into law.  But, the 60-vote majority only came by literally buying off Senators and states with all kinds of unsavory deals.  Yes, I know -- unsavory deals are part of the legislative sausage making.  But these deals are really shabby.  Needless to say, without these deals in place, there would not have been 60 votes. 

Yet, there are 60 votes to work with.  But the House doesn't much like the sausage they are being delivered, so they want to modify it, improve it, and make it more tasteful so that they can get re-elected, too.  Unfortunately for Democrats, the nature of the Senate has changed and there will no longer be 60 senators ready to pass any new provisions the House introduces.

So, the Dems are stuck.  But not procedurally.  They have a solution.  It's perfectly legal and legit, but it's a procedural solution that feels like the back-alley way of getting to the next intersection.  Yeah, you'll get there.  But it won't be pretty, and it certainly won't be in style.

So, here's how it's going to work: The House will hold their noses, cross their fingers, and pass the smelly stinky, Senate bill as it stands today.  The President will sign this into law, and then the Senate will use a process called reconciliation (a straight majority process designed to tweak budget-level items, but not designed to set policy) to address all the concerns the House had with the bill they just passed -- including getting rid of all the give-aways and smellier parts of the bill that they just passed.  Reconciliation requires a straight majority vote: 51/49.  Much easier to pass than the super-majority votes for policy.  Once Reconciliation is done, the latest and greatest health care reform bill will be good to go. 

In other words, Health Care Reform 2.0 will be released within hours or days of 1.0.  This may be the fastest re-release in legislative history.

The end result will look very similar to the plan that President Obama introduced in February.  It will be better than the original Senate bill, but it will take the equivalent of legislative whiplash to get it there.

The Dems are pretty stoked that they can work this out.  And their fans are pretty happy that the Dems are finally ready to play to win.  But when the Republicans "play to win," Democrats cry foul.  This is hypocritical.  Most people would not be very surprised to see Republicans be as scrappy and savvy as feasible to win -- that's part of their brand.  But Democrats like to think of themselves as higher-order people -- people who don't have to play games to win.  In the case of passing health care reform, Democrats may be playing by the rules, but so did the Bush Administration when they made their case to go to war with Iraq. 

Reading the signs

The media generally wears political bifocals... they can see clearly only when they fit into the pre-determined focal lengths: left vs. right, Dem vs. Pub, big vs. small, partisan vs. bi-partisan.

While this creates clarity and surety (attributes that people prefer in our cultural narratives), it doesn't always serve us well.  Sometimes, there are complex dynamics at play -- dynamics that are "messy."  And when political reporting skirts these complexities, we get the equivalent of listening to music in "mono" (vs. stereo), or watching a television show in black & white (vs. color).  We lose critical dimension that tells us a lot more about what we're observing. 

In the most recent incident of this bifocalization of politics, the narrative has been painted opportunistically by the Republicans that, well, Democrats are back in power... and look at how they spend your tax dollars!  

And Obama and the Democrats fell into the that brand trap so easily and readily, it's almost as if they hadn't been aware of their brand problems regarding spending and taxes over the past, say, 40 years. 

So, predictably, the media "reports" what the Republicans decry, and with no meaningful counter-narrative from the Democrats, the dye has been cast in the media's eyes: Obama's popularity is fading because of how he mishandled the health care reform debate, and that he didn't focus enough on "jobs, jobs, jobs."

But, there is a lot more color around the politics du jour than is being painted.  There are many sources of social noise that simply can't be located when listening to politics in mono. 

What is really at issue here is a trend that has been tragically under-reported:  the economic shift that started in the early 1990s and continues at a rapid pace today:  the globalization of the economy.

"Outsourcing" has been the evil mask we're affixed to this overarching dynamic.  The populist media found an easy, comprehensible target and flooded our national narrative with outsourcing as the evil face of globalization.

Yet the outsourcing of jobs to developing countries is merely one facet of globalization's impact.  The more systemic and troubling development (at least, for America) is that with capitalism, markets tend to become more efficient, and find equilibrium.   And as we continue to embark on global capitalistic endeavors and trade deals, America's disproportionate high standard of living is rubbing up directly against standards of living that, on average, are far, far lower almost anywhere else in the world.

The result?  In an open, transparent market, America's standard of living is guaranteed to be reduced in the face of open competition from lower standard of living regions and countries.   We as Americans -- especially the politically potent of us -- are hooked on affluence.  We believe as a culture (many religiously) that we are destined and chosen to live more secure, happier, plush lifestyles simply because we are American.  

But since the early 1990's, reality is creeping up on us.  Our global economic and moral hegemony is on the decline, and all we can really do is just hang on and try to delay the slide for as long as possible.

Which is why we have become so gosh-darned conservative and economically imbalanced over the years.  Avoiding an uncertain and unflattering future is a conservative stance.  And while most people would never articulate their fears and concerns the way I just did, I believe that people intuitively understand what's going on.  But what they are doing politically is the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and screaming "la la la la la!" so as not to address these issues head-on.  Because no matter what we do, the issues are going to reduce our standard of living for a long time -- and possibly permanently.

The irony is that a decline in our aggregate lifestyle will be the best thing that ever happened to this country.  Our country has become a singularly-focused culture on wealth, wealth creation and wealth protection.  This is quite unhealthy socially, and we are seeing the results of this social obesity throughout our system.  People are much richer, yet much less happy.  People have less time to enjoy life.  Parents have less time to raise their children.  Americans are becoming historically obese and overweight.  Our culture of convenience has made us generally more lazy, and less fulfilled.  And it can't existentially or morally be fulfilling when the affluent feel increasingly victimized by taxation as they turn a blind eye toward the plight of the poor and working class. 

Nevertheless, nobody wants to slide toward less affluence, less protection and less economic freedom.  Yet that is where we're heading.  And it's because of this macro-social-economic trend that President Obama is having a difficult time running the country.  Wall Street, realtors, small and large businesses alike are all on the lookout and grasping for the next scheme they can latch onto on the way down the economic slide -- any scheme that will prop them up long enough so that they can cash out and surf the decline in relative style. 

You can't really blame these people and institutions for trying to scour the system for a few last-minute jackpots.  It's the natural thing to do.  And you can't really blame our political leaders for not being honest with us about the situation at hand (who would win on that platform?).   But I'd argue you can blame the media for not making this the narrative that we all need to discuss and chew on as a culture.  At length.  Only after mainstream America understands and comes to grips with the future will we have the fortitude to look for political leaders who will need to deal with the future as it's going to be -- not sell us a lie about our future.

I want to point out that I am not being a pessimist.  I believe very strongly in the power and capability of Americans to innovate and create new, unprecedented value in the global marketplace.  And I believe that our military might will keep the country quite relevant on the global stage.   But our ability to innovate and create new economic value has very little to do with the global lifestyle equilibrium being so out of whack for so long.  With global trade, the equilibrium will inevitably slowly converge, with developing countries trending up toward average, and America trending down toward average. 

This trajectory will be very good for the people in the world.  More people will be lifted out of poverty as a result.  We are embarking on a historic transfer of wealth from America and The West to developing markets. And it's happening through the free markets and increasing trade -- not some socialist agenda.  

The iSlate of the Union: Jobs v. Obama

In celebration of January 27 being a tremendously important day for both Steve Jobs and President Obama, Slate recently published a cute mash-up of Steve Jobs giving the State of the Union address.

This article led to a conversation I had with some friends around the importance of marketing, communications, (and frankly, hype) when it comes to not just consumer marketing, but political marketing.

A prevailing view in this conversation was that if Barack Obama would only frame his initiatives like Steve Jobs does, he’d be enjoying much more success after his first year in office.   Further, there was a strong belief that President Obama needs to demonstrate the kind of leadership that Jobs is famous for displaying at Apple.  In other words, if Obama were to lead like Jobs, then Health Care Reform would be as successful as the iPod.   In other words, Obama’s policies need to “just work.”  

There are a lot of similarities here, and I think there are plenty of politicians that can and should learn from successful marketers like Jobs.  However, I am not convinced that passing “progressive” policy like health care reform is anything like selling an iPod.  Similarly, creating progressive policy is nothing like developing any hi-tech gadget. 

Creating and passing progressive policy requires a different type of leadership, because the dynamics could not be more different:  With policy, you are forcing people to buy something.  With product, you are asking people to buy something.  True, if more policies were developed with the 'ask' mentality, they may have a higher chance of succeeding.  But politicians in Washington know that, unlike an Apple project that is under wraps for years, making policy is pretty transparent, and allow Americans to weigh in on the design mid-way through the process.  That of course has the effect of modifying the product and veering away from the original goals.   In other words, in order to make a legislative iPod, one would have to change the rules of law making. 

Another difference between iPods and progressive policy is that, time and time again, progressive policy sets a course into new territory, and forces everyone to be part of the journey.   Not surprisingly, many who benefit from the status quo have no interest in mucking with success.   And if the majority of Americans benefit from the status quo in health care, good luck getting them to buy an upgrade.   Whereas if Apple gets 10% of a given market, it’s a huge commercial success.  10% approval ratings for health care reform would be seen as a complete flop.

None of this, however, excuses Obama and the Democrats for completely mucking up the health care reform process.  They let themselves lose the public debate on the merits, and, worse, allowed themselves to fall into the 'means to an end' mentality that sent the policy off the rails, and gave their opposition much spark by crafting deals that resemble Mafia payoffs more than legislative horse trading.  

A year ago, Barack Obama was inaugurated with a feel of Apple-like fanboydom surrounding him.  Within that year, he "saved" the economy and the auto industry, and lost that argument with the majority of Americans.  Soon, Jobs will be unleashing his latest achievement that has been years in the making, where he will likely be heralded as saving the publishing industry, just like he did the music industry with iTunes/iPod.  

Seems to me that President Obama could learn a thing or two about publicity and story shaping from Jobs as they do seem to have a few things in common.

Progressives and their Long View

As President Obama's popularity dwindles from its highs not just a year ago, I am struck by an observation I have of many liberals and progressives that seems to be shared by Obama:  the preference to focus on the future over the now.

And it's not just focus -- it's language, philosophy, and orientation.  The progressive in us is the consummate planner; the part of us that looks to give up something now (time, resources, opportunities) in the hope of netting returns greater than the investment in the future.  

One might call progressives "social investors" if one were a savvy marketeer. 

Yet, investing is easier to do when it's you putting your own goods on the line to invest in your own future.  Starting a business, investing in the stock market, investing in your child's future or well-being... these are investments that are fairly easy for each of us to make.  Yet it gets a bit trickier when you're looking to commit 300 million people to a shared investment strategy.

And this is what President Obama is staring down right now -- a nation that is generally not too happy that he's planning their investment strategies for them.  Be it Wall Street bail-outs, auto sector bail-outs, or even health insurance reform, a large swath of Americans just don't trust Government to invest for them. 

Which brings me to some advice for President Obama (because we all know he reads this blog) and progressives at large:  While you might be morally, ethically and strategically connected to investing for a brighter future, a large majority of Americans live in the now, care first-and-foremost about the now, and need to believe you share their interest in the now.

This means that while you plot and plan your social investment strategies, plans and policies, you cannot forget that the majority of people aren't there with you.  They're here.  And they want to believe their leaders see the world they see, and live in the world they live in. 

Conservatives have the opposite problem, of course -- they live almost exclusively in the now and aren't big on social investment projects.  They gain popularity readily because of this dogmatic pragmatism -- it's frankly the easier pill to swallow of the two philosophies. 

Neither philosophy has exclusive rights to being perfect, of course.  They both need to be balanced against each other so that we don't exclusively focus on today, and yet don't give up all of what we have today in exchange for tomorrow.   But what surprises me about the otherwise-savvy Obama is that he has put precious little effort into portraying his administration as one that cares deeply about today, and is carefully balancing it against the needs of tomorrow.

There's no doubt that the bulk of his campaign was all about investing in tomorrow, but the market collapse in 2008 (the same collapse that likely got him elected) trumped almost everything he was running on.   I'd make the case that he hasn't calibrated his message or policies enough to fulfill the evolving needs of a nervous nation that feels systemic economic change afoot, and really isn't sure where we're going to fit in when things eventually settle down.

People feel quite unsettled out there, and health insurance reform isn't the medicine they're looking for right now.   That will come as soon as they feel secure again in a job that doesn't have good enough health insurance.

Politics in 2009: A Review

First, let me apologize for the recent infrequency of blog posts.   No excuses; just apologies.   I will do my best to ramp back up to regular posts, and at the same time look for a larger "home" for Between the Columns so that I have an environment with real deadlines. 

Now, onto a "politics in a nutshell" review of 2009:

• President Obama was sworn into office, riding the coattails of a nation pinning their hopes on the notion that someone who seemed different would, indeed, be the difference they were looking for.  Result: It's been different, but not nearly as much as his campaign intoned.
  
  
• President Obama took "bold, sweeping" action (a style typified by George W. Bush) in the form of a large stimulus (ahem, reinvestment and recovery act) bill that instantly affixed him to the "big spending liberal" post that was sitting there, waiting for him.   It also probably saved the country from a massive economic depression. 
  
  
• President Obama made a historic speech in Egypt about the Middle East; yet only the technocrats and historians listened and cared.
  
  
• Sarah Palin quit being Governor of Alaska, while calling people who stay in their jobs the real quitters.  Not sure if this was brilliantly stupid or stupidly brilliant.  And that mobius strip of a conundrum is precisely why the media has a high on Palin.  
  
  
• Speaking of the media being stuck on Palin, Sarah becomes the first national political personality who uses Twitter and Facebook as her exclusive press secretary. 
  
  
• A spate of rigged economic bubbles, combined with about eight years of government mismanagement -- surprise! -- left an American public untrusting of big, distant institutions.  Y'know, institutions like that federal government.  The same government that handed billions of tax payer dollars over to other big, distant institutions ranging from investment banks to auto manufacturers.  I'm stunned by the apparent lack of thought in the White House had around the transition to a new administration... that somehow Americans would so quickly begin trusting government to do "big things" like the stimulus and health care reform when it had just come off a run of Big Things Gone Bad. 
  
  
• All of this activity, combined with some latent racism and natural conservatism that occurs when people are under stress, helped launch the Tea Party movement.   This movement has had a high participant-to-impact ratio, as the media became fascinated by this small contingent of loud, angry voices.   This serves as an important reminder that squeaky wheels still do get the grease.  Especially wheels that can are able to squeak through the regular daily squawking.  
  
  
• In case you missed it, the Tea Party gets higher approval ratings than Dems or Pubs in a national poll among independents. 
  
  
• Throughout the year, Dick Cheney grumbles aloud about how Obama doesn't do anything right, and is leading America into an untimely death.  The media doesn't know what to do with a former VP who has become a bizarre caricature of his former self. 
  
  
• Amid the ugliness of a severely depressed economy, President Obama stood up and declared that he was going to fix healthcare.  He then promptly sat down and let the old-school Dems fuss about it in Congress, annoying everyone in the process (including, in the end, his base). 
  
  
• Healthcare (ahem, health insurance) legislation hi-jinks, combined with double-digit unemployment and six-digit bonuses in recently-bailed-out-Wall-Street firms, sap the remaining mojo about of the Obama Presidency.  Although we can see "change" from many different angles, it sure doesn't feel like "change" looking straight at it. 
  
  
• Obama tries a new tactic on handling terrorist attacks -- don't freak out.  Well, apparently, Republicans are demanding that Obama freak out, so he capitulated and did a little freaking out.  Then he got trashed for not freaking out soon enough, and then he got slammed for planning to try the failed terrorist in civilian court vs. military tribunals.    It would be one thing to have a great debate on the pros and cons of trying a terrorist in court or military tribunal, but it's another to make it a political statement vs. a policy statement.  If our parties can no longer talk about policy without embedding partisanship, then I'd have to say that they've overstayed their welcome.  Policy is meat; partisanship is candy.   Our politics and media have holes in their teeth, and are emaciated yet obese. 
  

Kind of a depressing round-up for 2009, eh?  Yes, this nutshell is reflective of my lens... a lens that had higher hopes for "year 1" of the era of Obama.  A lens that sees the complexities of the issues we're up against, and the seemingly unwillingness of our society to be able to cope with these complexities through meaningful debate and reasonable resolutions, policies and project plans. 

Here are some additional thoughts around why things don't feel so great on a macro scale:

America is depressed because we're letting ourselves down.  Obama said it on the campaign trail -- and he was right:  Change happens from the bottom-up, and each of us needs to make the changes we can in order for true, systemic improvements to occur in our culture.   Yet, as President, I've heard and felt almost none of this sentiment from Obama.  It's not like he's not trying to do the right thing... he certainly is.  But he's doing it in what seems to be the most conventional, conservative approach he could take -- letting Congress drive the politics, and letting the opposition party continue to control the debate and tell the more compelling stories. 

The leadership we need is not the kind that fixes the economy for us.  The leadership we need is the kind that challenges us to fix the economy.  It's our country; our economy; our values; our abilities; our limitations; our creativity; our resourcefulness; our fear; our fearlessness; our resoluteness; our inquisitiveness; our diversity; our conservatism; our liberalism; our tolerance.   We've got a ton of all of it.  We just need to be led to use what we got in more valuable, meaningful ways.  When we do that, we'll feel better individually, and only then, feel better as a society.

So, with that, happy 2010, and here's to hoping that we collectively figure out that improving our society starts with improving ourselves. 

The Politics of Patterns

Here is an interesting piece of research that just passed by my desk:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091117/lf_nm_life/us_workplace_leave

Here's a policy -- essentially allowing people to take care of themselves and loved ones -- that is likely seen as yet another left/right issue, where the left cares all about "people" and "their needs" and the right cares about "business competitiveness" and "lazy employees" taking advantage of the system. 

Our political system is so predictable that it indicates to me that we are no longer really looking at issues anymore -- we're only looking at patterns.   And if we're looking at patterns, then what we're really doing is slotting in any given issue into a pre-defined template that has been established in prior political fights.  

This reminds me of one of candidate Obama's key themes, which was that we keep on re-fighting old battles in this country, which is really not moving us forward. 

We're kind of stuck.

Of course, there are real legitimate reasons for disagreement around a policy such as government-mandated sick leave rights for workers.  But the legitimate reasons are largely based on institutionalized distrust of either side's ability to craft policy that doesn't serve their own power-bases' interest first over that of general society. 

For instance, if Democrats craft this policy, it will likely not include enough protections for the small business owner to mitigate fraud and abuse of this new federally-mandated benefit.  And, at a minimum, the Democrats won't frame the language as such to assuage Republicans that they "get" how much small business owners live in fear and distrust of any government control of how they run their businesses -- after all, many have put their entire economic future on the line with the risk of starting up a business.   And the punch line is that Republicans would never even think of crafting such a policy in the first place, as it would tarnish their brand credibility with their important small business and libertarian constituencies.

So, that covers the institutional problem with modern-day politics.  Now let's briefly get into the dynamics of the policy debate itself:

Putting on the analytical hat, both sides have legitimate points:  The research states that a healthier society provides more security to -- and freedom for -- workers, and the counter is that any federally-imposed mandate is ripe for abuse and fraud, and takes another bite out of the freedom of a small business owner to run their business as they see fit.  Yet, I would argue that both sides wouldn't disagree that providing more flexibility -- nay, freedom -- for employees wouldn't be such a bad thing if there were no downside. 

The difference between the two sides is in the assumption set.  If Democrats are ever going to get pro-business and libertarian people on-board with these work/life balance policies, the policy needs to take in account the real issues with implementing a cushion for the workforce.  These issues include people taking advantage of a cushion policy (imagine if 1/2 the employees see this as a federally-mandated 7-day paid vacation, thereby abusing the spirit of the law), and the perceptions that government-enforced policies take control away from the risk-taking, hard-working entrepreneurs (thinking primarily smallbiz here, as corporations can more easily withstand these types of policies).  In addition, the symbolic nature of this type of government mandate rubs completely against the libertarian/small business culture in this country.  Pro-worker policies also works against our not-so-honorable-yet-absolutely-real history of taking advantage of underprivileged immigrant groups.  The other part of history -- the rise and successes of labor unions -- is not seen as so triumphant these days due to the overall poor image that unions now embody. 

Yet, if there is a broad agreement that this research is correct -- that providing workers with more freedom to take care of themselves and loved ones while being employed is a good thing for our society -- then all the activity and politics around this issue will not be focused on what we agree upon; and the policy will be crafted around the politics of passage, not the original intent of the legislation. 

This goes back to trust and powerful interest groups.  In the end, the elected power base will typically push through good ideas, poorly.   Which, ultimately, makes the idea itself look bad.  Which then informs the next debate.   Which, of course, loops us back to the notion that we're battling patterns at this point, not real problems. 

So, I've now outlined my views on some of the systemic issues facing our current politics in the context of a single issue facing our society.   If readers have any ideas or suggestions on how to address the current situation, the blogosphere is listening...