Laws Have Consequences

Lots of people have noted that, in the name of compromise and small government, the Blue Dogs are setting us up for a situation where millions of Americans are required by law to pay premiums to insurance companies they despise for coverage of little value. This is probably not a recipe for victory for the Democrats.

There's a broader point here that I think is getting lost, though. Throughout the media and centrist politics, there's very little recognition that most of the political impact of an action comes after it has been taken and people see what the consequences are. Sure, there could be a temporary hit in the polls if the American people think we've passed a health care bill that's too liberal (not that that's going to happen.) But within a couple of years, public opinion is going to be largely about what the bill actually did, not the debates of 2009. Accusations that we're giving health care to 'illegals' make noise now, but in the end that either happens or it doesn't. People like what's happened to their insurance, or they don't. If you think your grandmother is going to be sentenced to death by panel, you are reasonably likely to notice in the future whether or not this occurs. If sending more troops to Afghanistan solves the problems there, it's probably a good political move regardless of how it polls this week, and vice versa; you may recall invading Iraq was a pretty popular idea back when we did it.

That's not to say the politics doesn't color future perceptions of the bill, or that it won't have big implications for the 2010 election. But a lot of people seem to have this notion that politics and policy are perfectly separate. Policies this big can affect the electorate for generations, particularly if politicians are, as a friend put it, brave enough to take credit for doing popular things. The current state of political loyalties among African-Americans and Southern whites is not based on who said exactly what during the debate of the Civil Rights Act.

This kind of indifference to the political consequences of real-world outcomes has a lot of troubling implications beyond writing a lousy health care bill. It feeds the centrists' addiction to compromise, of course. It also raises the question of exactly what they went to Washington for anyway.