Talk To The Hand

Here, for example, is a passage from Sam Stein's essay on the Huffingon Post:

"In retrospect, 1974 was the closest we have ever come to enacting national health insurance, and Democrats made a great mistake by not eagerly embracing [President Richard] Nixon's proposal," said Paul Starr, a health care policy expert and professor at Princeton University. "The distance between Kennedy and Nixon then was so small by comparison with the distance that exists now between Democrats and Republicans."

Stein goes on to argue that President Clinton's compromises on health care resembled those made with Nixon but "lessons that Kennedy had learned with Nixon — namely that broad consent and consultation was needed to move legislation forward — was lost in the battle." Well, maybe not so much.

What did Nixon really think about health care? I'm not sure exactly but this one fragment of a transcript of Nixon talking with Ehrlichman tells us much of what we need to know. Speaking of HMOs in 1971, Ehrlichman says "the less care they [the HMOs] give them [the patients], the more money they [the HMOs] make." "Fine," says Nixon. Ehrlichman adds, "And the incentives run the right way." "Not bad," Nixon replies. So the compromise that Senator Kennedy attempted with Nixon, from 1971 to 1974, never consummated, presumably would have run along lines quite similar to compromises talked about with regard to the Republicans today, i.e., federally mandated coverage through private plans with federal subsidies for certain lower income brackets. Put simply: pay more for less care, with substantial government subsidies passed through the public to corporations. And that's not the kind of compromise that any sensible liberal should ever accept.

I guess that, except for having committed involuntary or perhaps criminally negligent manslaughter at Chappaquiddick and having gotten cleanly away with it, Teddy wasn't such a bad guy. It's impressive that so many people have such wonderful things to say about him. But if he were really so great as they say he was he probably would've accomplished more than he did, and in particular he would not have helped escort Barack Obama to the White House.

One lesson here: bipartisanship just ain't what it's cracked up to be.

And if there's an afterlife I wonder what Teddy will say to Mary Jo Kopechne, who they estimate lived for "at least" two hours in a submerged air pocket, while Teddy went back to his hotel?

You screw one person that way I think that, deep down, you're perfectly willing to screw the world.

To be fair about it, nevertheless, probably a lot of what Edward M. Kennedy did in later life, he did out of a sense of atonement.