If President Obama's speech did not manage to turn Republican members of Congress last night onto the idea of major health care reform, it will be a huge political failure and a huge disappointment.
The speech, which marked Obama's second time before the full Congress since his inauguration, was supposed to call for a compromise between Democrats who support a public-option plan and Republicans who support creating either a nonprofit health care cooperative or no reform at all.
The speech was also a time to address a sharply divided American public.
What he could say to Congress, though, was limited. He could push hard for a public option, but the point was to bring the two parties together and end the partisan split, not to launch any more attacks or deepen the fissure.
Obama did address point by point the misconceptions of many Americans that were perpetuated by Republicans such as Sarah Palin. He laughed at the idea of "death panels" and reiterated that his plan would not insure illegal immigrants or provide for abortions. He asked Republicans blatantly to stop misrepresenting the bill as a government takeover of health care.
However, we think the American public should be aware of something that Obama could never bring up to his opponents in Congress, out of sheer diplomacy. Even though Obama noted how some members of Congress used Americans' confusion over health care reform as way to raise fear and gain political clout, he couldn't fully illustrate their hypocrisy.
Article 31 of the Iraqi Constitution, drafted by the Bush administration, calls for single-payer guaranteed health care for Iraqi citizens.
Now, the same plan that was drafted by the GOP and shoved onto another country under the guise of "freedom" is being denounced as socialism in the United States.
The cost of implementing freedom, or at least carrying out Operation Enduring Freedom, has reached almost $900 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. The cost of Obama's proposed health-care reform has been estimated at about that amount over the next decade.
In essence, the United States has spent the taxpayer money it would require to overhaul the health-care system to create a government, complete with a health-care system, in another country.
Obama will have a hard time convincing Republican congressmen to change their minds about health care when their positions are already so steeped in fallacious thinking.
In his speech, Obama told congressmen: "If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out." We wish that Obama could have reminded Republicans that they voted to implement universal health care in Iraq. We wish he could remind them that they did it in the name of democracy, not socialism. And we really wish that he could respond to the Republican response, which just went on to call Obama's plan a government takeover of the health-care system and seemed to completely ignore the preceding one-hour speech.
But then again, we aren't cool-headed enough to be president.
Obama's speech addressed the concerns of the people, appropriately called out Republican fear-mongerers and directly tied the vote to a moral obligation to constituents.
We just hope that it was enough.
