By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS – Barack Obama could use some sane, centered friends.
So, for that matter, could the American people.
The barrage Obama has faced from the Republican Party and conservatives since he took office almost five years ago has been almost as incessant as it has been nonsensical. The GOP has attacked, without let up, the president’s health-care reform package as “socialized†medicine despite the fact that the concept behind it is based on market principles, was devised first by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and first was implemented with success by a Republican governor who later became the Republicans’ presidential nominee.
Given that the mere mention of Barack Obama’s name seems to conjure up dark fantasies on the right, we shouldn’t expect too much reality from conservative activists in the country.
Now, though, even the president’s supposed friends have gotten in on the act.
Progressive activists now have launched a series of attacks on Obama’s health care plan. They say that the problem with it was that the president compromised too much – that the only way to avoid the huge problems accompanying the roll-out of  Obamacare was to go to a much more government-directed, government-controlled single-payer system.
These leftist critics of the president don’t say where Obama was supposed to locate the votes necessary to implement such a system into law.
Narnia?
Oz?
A galaxy far, far away?
What has been frustrating about our prolonged national argument over health care has been the level to which it has been divorced from reality.
Ideologues on both sides of the political divide have strafed the health care plan because it is flawed, because it does not comport exactly with what they wanted or what they believe would be the perfect solution.
But that criticism can be leveled at just about every policy or program – conservative, liberal or moderate – devised by our nation’s leaders in this country’s history.
This country is not and never has been a winner-take-all society. Much of our success as a nation has come from our ability to reconcile different needs, varying interests and disparate philosophies. More often than not, we have yielded and bargained our way to success.
Perfection is the goal of dreamers. Politics, as Otto Von Bismarck said, is the art of the possible.
For much of our history, we Americans have been true artists at creating compromises that have allowed a large and diverse nation not just to survive, but to thrive. The times when our genius for compromise has failed us – the Civil War, for example – have been tragic.
Our successful presidents (Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts and, yes, Reagan) all were trimmers, leaders skilled at striking deals. None of them ever got exactly what he wanted. All generally got done as much as could be expected.
To govern is to accept responsibility. It is to realize that problems must be solved even when perfect solutions do not exist or, for any number of reasons, those solutions cannot be implemented.
We had a big problem when it came to health care. Between 30 million and 50 million Americans were without coverage before the Affordable Care Act became law. When they sought medical treatment, they often did so in the most expensive and least efficient manner available. As a result, the flooding costs – financial and human – of health care were swamping us.
It was a problem that needed to be solved somehow.
We’re now five years into this latest discussion about health care in America. Conservatives have yet to propose their solution to the problem. Liberals content themselves with spinning the kind of fantasies that used to exist only in Disney movies.
And beleaguered Barack Obama gets pounded because he tried to solve a problem.
It can be lonely being grown-up surrounded by adolescents indulging themselves with fits of outrage, synthetic or otherwise.
But that’s what presidents do.
At least the good ones do, that is.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits†WFYI 90.1 FM Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
