The Pollyanna Closing: a mandatory Op-Ed compromise (Krugman v. Baucus)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

To have a voice you must offer hope, even when doing so undermines the truth of your message.

The hard truth generally comes in second to mushy truthiness for the simple and literal reason that people do not want to hear it.

And this is, in may ways, legitimate. If your objective is communication you must have an audience. QED.

This is part of the reason why pro-Iraq War types are still on TV and Iraq War opponents are still marginalized. Those who predicted the financial collapse are still considered cranks. And so on.

Most proselytizing atheists (Dawkins, et al) take it as a given that atheism will yield better results. Personally, I think there is no God but that human society requires one. Evolutionary psychology probably dooms use to relative global dominance by primitive cultures because religion is in many ways adaptive for cultures/nations in a competitive environment. My thesis is a downer. Whether true or false, it ain't no fun. So Dawkins-esque dreams of how happy everyone will be when robbed of dreams of meaning and immortality will be the norm in popular atheism. Even non-believers like hope and meaning. (Including me. But I've noticed the world isn't always what I would like.)

Leading to the the case in point: Krugman's column on the Baucus plan. It is brilliantly concise in laying out the worthlessness of the Baucus plan but leads up to the obligatory: "But maybe things will go the other way, and Mr. Baucus (and the White House) will, for once, actually listen to progressive concerns, making the bill stronger."

Why is that in there? Paul Krugman doesn't actually believe that Senator Baucus will be visted by the ghosts of health-care reforms past, enjoy and epiphany and and give Tiny Tim a juicy HCR turkey. (Actually, Baucus may well give Tiny Tim a turkey but he ain't gonna fix Tiny Tim's bum leg.)

The bizarre fantasy that Baucus will start listening to progressives is offered because an op-ed writer cannot end a column with, "We're fucked." To do so makes a person irrelevant.

Krugman knows that things do no tend to compromise themselves into being more liberal. He does not actually expect the Baucus bill to be a benign development in the big picture.

But, like the myth of Pandora, after all the evils of the world are released we must find hope in the bottom of the box. Otherwise the myth is too much of a downer.

This is like when some people were promulgating the idea that once a bad Senate bill was passed it would be fixed in conference, becoming something even better than the House bill. Folks who want to remain players were saying this all over the place despite the fact that conference almost ALWAYS waters down and moderates. Fortunately Lawrence O'Donnell no longer cares whether he is "relevant" and was willing to state what everyone knows, which is that no bill becomes more liberal in conference and that a truly robust public option not in either bill was not going to materialize in conference.

So, knowing the rules of the game, I cannot fault Krugman's tic of the Pollyanna Closing. It is what one must do to retain relevance. Once you notice the convention, however, it becomes pretty funny. Almost everyone does it.

The Krugman piece itself is already posted here, but there's no harm in repeating a few grafs of such a brilliantly concise critique:

Baucus and the Threshold. By PAUL KRUGMAN.

So Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has released his “mark” on proposed legislation — which would normally be the basis for the bill that eventually emerges from his committee. And serious supporters of health care reform will soon face their long-dreaded moment of truth.

You see, it has been clear for months that whatever health-care bill finally emerges will fall far short of reformers’ hopes. Yet even a bad bill could be much better than nothing. The question is where to draw the line. How bad does a bill have to be to make it too bad to vote for?

Now, the moment of truth isn’t here quite yet: There’s enough wrong with the Baucus proposal as it stands to make it unworkable and unacceptable. But that said, Senator Baucus’s mark is better than many of us expected. If it serves as a basis for negotiation, and the result of those negotiations is a plan that’s stronger, not weaker, reformers are going to have to make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with.

Of course, those who insist that we must have a single-payer system — Medicare for all — won’t accept any plan that tries, instead, to cajole and coerce private health insurers into covering everyone. But while many reformers, myself included, would prefer a single-payer system if we were starting from scratch, international experience shows that it’s not the only way to go. Several European countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, have managed to achieve universal coverage with a mainly private insurance system... (snip)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/opinion/18krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[kenny blankenship]

1. He kinda skips over huge points in order to stay upbeat about corporate friendly reform

Swiss primary healthcare is private and mandatory. It's also NON-PROFIT. The Swiss had 95% coverage through keeping costs affordable BEFORE they imposed universal coverage through a mandate.

Nobody is talking about ANYTHING like that in this country.

The Dutch regulate the beejeezus out of their insurance business. From the 1970s to just 3 years ago, the govt. dictated everything --treatments and procedures, hospital costs, Dr.s pay, along with premiums. It was as tightly regulated as Britain's NHS, just not "state-owned". Now they've dereg'ed a few things but to pay for it all subsidies to citizens remain MASSIVE. TWO THIRDS of Dutch households receive govt. subsidies to help pay their insurance premiums.

Again, nobody is talking about anything like that in this country.


So why make misleading and simplistic comparisons? Sometimes omissions are so misleading they may as well be deliberate lies, Mr. Krugman.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. The veneer of 'reasonableness'

If he told it exactly straight he would be a "single-payer crank."

Note that single-payer advocacy is often treated like a 9/11 conspiracy stuff even on DU.