Barack and Birth Control
The Guru had invited me to help him prepare a speech on the future of employment in the US and Canada
We were sitting in antique, maple rocking chairs in his large office/study/boardroom. Through the windows we could see rows of vines that had been stripped of their icewine grapes during a brief cold spell in early January.
Before starting on the employment speech, I asked him about the contraception issue in the US
"The first thing to say is that it was intended, it wasn't an accident that the White House just happened to blunder into."
"So, it WAS a trap?"
"No", the Guru said, "I didn't say that. I prefer to think of it as an Obama Teaching Moment."
"You're going to have to explain that to me."
"Glad to. Let me set the stage a bit. Years ago, there was a rock group in Peterborough , Ontario Peterborough
"Whoa", I said, "I'm not sure I see the connection between your Rev. Ken and contraception."
"Obama spent a lot of time in academia. He values reason and has always done his best to lead students from ignorance to understanding. He carried that goal into the White House where he hoped that he could have rational discussions with the Republicans about their policy differences. He hoped that working together they could come up with policy compromises that would best serve the needs of the country. But the Republicans stonewalled him, figuring they could make him a one-term president. He then moved to what I call his 'make-ignorance-painful' strategy. For example, remember the debate over his birth certificate? He could have released the long-form certificate at any time but waited and waited. When he finally released it, his critics faced laughter and ridicule. They suddenly understood that ignorance can indeed be painful."
"All except Donald Trump."
"As my grandfather used to say, 'No sense, no feeling.'!"
"So you're saying that Obama allowed the birth control issue to develop so it could become a teaching moment."
"Exactly. There were several health care examples in state legislation on how to treat religious organizations, examples that could have been used to defuse the issue. He chose not to bring forward a compromise until the Republicans and some rightwing Bishops had exposed their ignorance. Phone calls, letters, Facebook and Twitter messages from women across the country swamped the ignorant, and they felt the pain. And perhaps learned a thing or two."
"From the pleased look on your face, you seem to feel that the controversy in addition to inflicting some pain on the ignorant may have actually helped Obama politically?'
"Yes, the controversy will have important benefits for the White House. It gave a big boost to Obama's most precious initiative, his health care plan. Most voters, and especially women, didn't realize that the plan would mean free contraceptive care---no deductibles, no co-pays. So that's another attractive feature of the plan in addition to the ruling that children can stay on their parents' plan until age 26, plus insurance companies can't refuse people on the grounds of pre-existing condition, nor can they drop people who develop a major illness like cancer, and so on."
"Good point."
"And how can the Republicans promise to repeal Obamacare without trying to find some way to preserve these attractive features?"
"And", I commented, "continuing those benefits isn't possible without a mandate rule that requires everyone to be insured in order to pool the risk. The Republicans are going to have a tough time arguing against the mandate idea, which of course was theirs to begin with."
"And that", the Guru continued, " will make it hard for the Supreme Court to rule that the mandate feature of Obamacare is unconstitutional. The Court is supposed to be above politics but legal scholars have always known that its decisions are influenced by public opinion."
"So you think that through allowing this controversy, Obama has sent a message to the Supreme Court?"
"Sure, but not just to the Court, he has sent a message to the Catholic hierarchy. While the US Catholic Bishops were opposing the White House compromise, Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health organization, immediately supported it. She is widely respected by Catholics and by other nuns for her dedication to helping the poor and disadvantaged."
"Another good point", I said. "You know, I haven't been able to understand why the Bishops rejected Obama's compromise. Trying to defend a medieval policy on contraception that is ignored by over 90 percent of your flock is bad enough, but why compound your problems by denouncing a compromise that your own health organizations and the majority of the population feels is fair?"
"Perhaps Obama isn't the only one sending messages. Is it possible that the Vatican reminded the bishops that the Pope is elderly and won't last forever, and that the next pope could be American (one of them, in fact) but only if the US bishops are seen as being 'more-Catholic-than-the-pope' in matters of contraception?"
"But surely," I added, "the bishops are going to pay a price for their 'ignorance'. The stereotype of plump, self-satisfied, out-of-touch MEN who flubbed the issue of sex abuse by paedophilic priests is not going to be enhanced by this fight against full coverage of contraception---especially among women."
"Yes, they'll feel some pain. Turning to the Republican Party, it is interesting that many of its leaders basically acquiesced in the Obama compromise although they issued some perfunctory comments about Obama's attack on religious freedom. But some of the Neanderthals in the party want to continue the fight by passing a law that would allow any employer to refuse health care coverage for any treatment that they are morally opposed to, thus gutting the health care program. I'm afraid that ignorance runs deep in parts of today's Republican party and there is a lot more pain to be felt before they come to their senses."
"So Obama's 'teaching moment' strategy has been successful?"
"In my view, yes, and the success of it was partly due to the clever tactics employed by the White House. For example, the President announced the compromise at noon on Friday, February 10th. That afternoon, Romney and Santorum made crucial speeches to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Guess what news was featured in the print and digital media that day? Obama's compromise."
"And some pundits seem to feel that the contraception issue gives Santorum an advantage over Romney among conservative Republicans."
The Guru grinned, "Surely you don't think the White House would do something that would make life more difficult for Romney, do you?"
"Look', I said, "you may call it a 'teaching moment strategy' but the more I think about it and the more I listen to you, the more I think Andrew Sullivan is right. That it was a trap."
"Perhaps it was both!", the Guru smiled. "A teaching moment, AND a trap---he is from the Chicago
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If you have any comments, please leave them below or drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com. The next Icewine Guru posting will appear in the fullness of time. My other blog, The Letter from Virgil, (http://letterfromvirgil.blogspot.com/) appears every Sunday morning.
