Bright, Inf inite Future

By Casey Tolan

When I first heard that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, my initial reaction was, “for what?”

Sure, in the nine months since he took office, Obama announced he would close Guantanamo Bay, he started to pull troops out of Iraq, and he announced a nuclear nonproliferation plan. All quite peaceful. But right now Gitmo is open, American soldiers remain in Iraq, and, the last time I looked, the US still had quite a few nukes. Most of Obama’s policies have yet to come to fruition.

Moreover, Obama isn’t an obvious choice for the Peace Prize at all. When I think of the Prize, I think of lone, visionary figures struggling and sacrificing all to help the poor or the sick or those who can’t help themselves. I don’t think of the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the planet, the man who is commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military force.

And yet, after considering the situation, I believe that Obama definitely deserved the Prize.

When it comes down to it, the award wasn’t given to Obama for any of his policies. He won it – and deserved it – for doing something completely different, something almost revolutionary: changing the entire image of the United States overnight.

Living in the US, it’s obviously easy to think of Obama as president, as a politician whose policies we may agree or disagree with. For the greater global community, however, the president represents the entire country, and Obama has changed this representation drastically.

For about the last decade, anti-American sentiments have been common abroad. And it’s not too hard to see why: between the Iraq war, unilateral policies, and a sense of superiority, the US has been seen as selfish and arrogant world round. Just look at the “freedom fries” movement to get a sense of this arrogance.

But opinion of the US has improved since Obama was elected. According to a poll of 27,000 people in 25 nations conducted in June by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, there were double-digit boosts to percentages of people who viewed the US favorably worldwide. These percentages decreased sharply during the Bush years.

Notably, Obama received much support during several speeches abroad. During speeches in Prague and Cairo, for example, he was interrupted often with cheers and shouts of “We love Obama!”

Compare this to the response George W. Bush met in June 2007 when he visited Prague to talk with Czech leaders, when more than 2000 people demonstrated against Bush and his policies while he was in the city. In January 2008, anti-US protestors in Cairo set fire to American flags and called Bush a war criminal when he visited Egypt. And how can anyone forget Bush’s reception in one of his last trips abroad as president: having a shoe thrown at him in Iraq in December 2008.

That’s not to say that Obama is universally loved by the rest of the world, or that Obama deserves a prize simply for replacing Bush. But it’s impossible to ignore the shift in attitude toward America that much of the rest of the world went through basically overnight after Obama was elected. This change is more than simply a shift in president: it’s a shift in paradigm.

In giving the Prize to Obama, the Nobel committee recognized that he was taking the US in a new direction and creating a new image for it. The Prize is a message from the world to Obama that says, “we approve.”

Obama concluded his speech to the UN last month with these words: “We have reached a pivotal moment. The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation – one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations.”

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the peace prize is for “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.” I’m not sure how well Obama scored in reducing standing armies or spreading “peace congresses,” but as for working toward “fraternity between the nations,” I can’t think of a better choice.

One of my favorite things about politics is how fast everything changes. When I last posted, just a week ago, Obama’s plan, public option and all, seemed to have a pretty good chance of a being passed relatively easily. Sure, there was some dissent and dissatisfaction, but all signs were pointing in Obama’s direction.

But before long, favor was swinging away from Obama and specifically the public option. Obama stated that he would be open to a compromise without a public option, but even so Republicans were jumping ship left and right. Senator Charles Grassley, who the New York Times singled out as one of six major bipartisan negotiators a couple of weeks ago, is now saying he won’t vote for any reform unless it has wide support from republicans, even if a bill includes everything he wants.

And now, the democrats seem to have decided to ditch the republicans and do it all themselves. On the one hand, this is obviously flying in the face of bipatisanship, which I consider very important. But on the other hand, the democrats will still be forced make their plan moderate enough to satisfy their more conservative democratic colleagues, and that could very well eliminate the public option – something I wouldn’t complain about. Except, if they do decide to ignore the GOP, the dems will also have to placate the most liberal members of congress, many of whom are still clamoring for the public option.

Suffice it to say, it could go any way from here.

But I want to take a minute to write about one reason I think everything is moving so fast. Yeah, politics always moves fast, but in this health care debate we’ve seen a huge range of political climates in a pretty short amount of time.

One culprit of this is, I think, the vast amount of misinformation swirling around this whole issue. I’m not sure where it came from, and I doubt we’ll ever know for sure if any of it was organized by the GOP, but it’s really shocking. Here are some choice quotes I’ve found that really speak for themselves, all from a town hall meeting with Arlen Specter:

“You’re trampling our constitution… You and your cronies in the government do this kind of stuff all the time… One day, God is going to stand before you and he’s going to judge you!”

“This is the Soviet Union, this is Maoist China… The people in this room want their country back.” (Protestors elsewhere called the plan Nazi. High school social studies update: Nazis and Maoists don’t mix.)

“It says plainly right here they want to limit the type of care elderly people get… They are talking about killing people.”

Not only is this kind of stuff utterly ridiculous, it’s also drowning out real information and positive, civilized debate. It wouldn’t be that bad if people who legitimately believed these things expressed their views civilly, but instead most are screaming at or heckling their congresspeople – not to mention burning/hanging them in effigy, in a few extreme cases.

Nancy Pelosi called these disruptions un-American, and while I don’t think I would go that far, I do think that the idea that popular opinion is defined by whoever can shout the loudest is a bad precedent to set.

Whatever happens next in the debate, I hope that the behavior exhibited at these town hall meetings doesn’t become the norm. If you’re angry or passionate about an issue, that’s okay – just express your opinions in a way that lets others do the same.

Photo credit: New York Times

Health Care is one of the most important issues for Obama’s presidency. Especially in the past few weeks, the debate has intensified, with people on either side of the issue expressing their opinions quite… passionately, in some cases.

I think it’s a big enough issue to warrant several blog posts. In this first one, I’ll examine Obama’s plan for health care reform and give my opinion on it.

On Obama’s website, the following tidbit about health care can be found:

President Obama has announced three bedrock requirements for real health insurance reform:

Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control

Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option

Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care

Now we have to show Congress where the American people stand.

In my opinion, Obama has generally the right idea. I agree with and support his plan on all but one key point.

First of all, I agree with him that we need reform. The insane costs alone warrant some action on the health care front, but even without that, nearly 50 million Americans have no health care insurance — that’s about 1/6 of the population. I believe that every person has a right to quality health care.

I also agree with Obama that everyone should be able to choose their plan and doctor, and that government shouldn’t get in the way of patient and treatment.

But I strongly disagree with Obama about the necessity of a public insurance option that would compete with private companies. I definitely am in support of Medicare and/or Medicaid for those who cannot afford private health insurance. But introducing a public or government-run health care option for the general public would be, in the long term, a disaster.

In the short term, a government-run option competing with private health insurance companies would be great. It would create more competition, forcing prices down and quality up.

But I am of the opinion that when private and public companies compete, private companies can rarely, if ever, survive. Public companies usually give higher quality for less cost; they can have government funds to back them. Again, this would be great for consumers in the short term. But the public option would be too good: private companies would be unable to compete and would die out in the long term.

So let me be clear. Right now, Obama’s plan does not call for a socialized “one-player” health care system. I don’t want to spread that kind of misinformation. But there’s a good chance that the public health care provider he is calling for would eventually drive private companies out of business, and this could result in a one-player system whether that was the original plan or not.

Any one-player system is always worse than a system with multiple, competing players; in the latter competition will drive down costs and keep quality high, while there is little incentive for low costs or high quality for a single player. Because of this, I am unsatisfied with any health care plan that would include a public option, including Obama’s plan.

In a town hall meeting, Obama responded to a criticism similar to this with the example of the US Postal Service. As a public company, it competes with private companies like UPS and FedEx. I don’t accept the validity of this analogy.

In my opinion, the USPS offers a different service than its competitors. When you want to send something on the cheap, you use the USPS. But if you need to get something somewhere fast, FedEx or UPS are better bets – even though they cost more. In other words, speaking generally, the USPS is low cost and low quality, while its private competitors are high cost and high quality. While USPS does compete with FedEx and UPS, it really offers a different kind of package delivery.

Now, take that and apply it to the health care system. The public option (a la USPS) would be low quality and low cost. Obviously, your health is more important than the speed your packages are delivered. No one wants low quality health care. Unlike the situation in Obama’s postal example, a public health care option would compete directly with private companies.

So, to sum things up, I agree with the majority of Obama’s plan. I agree that reform needs to happen, that everyone should have health care, and that people should be able to choose their provider. But I am against the idea of a government-run insurance option for the general public.

If I was a congressman, would I vote for a bill based on Obama’s plan? Probably. Even this partially flawed reform is better than doing nothing, in my opinion. But I would much rather see a compromise with GOP congresspeople that ditched the public option but kept the rest of Obama’s plan.