When Roosevelt first ran for the Presidency, he did NOT run on the New Deal.

He's ended up using his extraordinary eloquence to defend timidity and caution, not sell hard steps.

Right, but his current goal isn't to be a spokesman for his policies, it's to get elected. He needs to accumulate political capital before he invests it in telling "hard truths."

But Reagan didn't really govern as an aggressive conservative, so the distinction you are trying to draw doesn't really hold. Reagan was a fount of conservative chestnuts and shibboleths, but he cut and ran from Lebanon, raised taxes when deficits loomed, and nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the SCOTUS in fulfillment of a campaign promise to nominate a woman to the bench.

Recent history does furnish examples of national conservatives with aggressive governing styles: Newt Gingrigh, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush. I don't foresee Obama adopting any of them as his model.

Progressives should probably get used to President Obama passionately and movingly articulating liberal themes, but only pressing forward when there is a broad consensus supporting him. After all, that's how it worked for Reagan.

"When Roosevelt first ran for the Presidency, he did NOT run on the New Deal."

Nor did Jimmy Carter or Clinton. I never know what people are trying to prove with this. The FDR analogy just shows that these sorts of things are tough to predict, particularly if there's a historiic economic collapse.

You could look up what Obama has fought for.

He is my Senator. I am a Progressive and he has listened to us and done everything we have asked of him.

Find anotther talking point. America has already told you blogging idiots that we aren't listening to you.

A Colin Powell Endorsement for Obama!
Is it possible that the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican could endorse Barack Obama for President?

Colin Powell was very candid in his interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. He made it very clear that he will vote for the best candidate and not necessarily a nominee of his party. He also talked about Obama rather fondly.

Colin Powell may be reminiscing about the time when he was asked to run for President and he declined. I guess he feels Obama is competent, charming and fresh and could the take the country to a new direction so why not support him. Though not a done deal yet, but it seems very likely.

Colin Powell also has to wash off his own embarrassment of that Iraq war speech that he made in the UN and this may be the perfect opportunity to do the right thing. Despite that UN debacle, Colin Powell is still one of the most respected individulas in the United States and around the world. His endorsement will mean a lot for Obama. Imagine the experience he could bring to Obama's team as Secretary of Defence, charged to put an end to the war that he started.

I think you've misread this, Ezra. Rejecting mandates as a first-start was, in fact, a gutsy stance to take in this Democratic primary. It's been one of the campaign's most contentious policy choices, constantly attacked by Hillary and Edwards. Taking up mandates would have been the easy thing to do, and at this point the downsides to rejecting them in the primary look larger than the downsides of supporting them in the general. Thus one presumes that Obama's rejection of mandates has to do with conviction, and not political posturing. Mandates are extremely popular with the primary electorate and dissing them has been a big thorn for Obama. I call that gutsy. Now, I realize that you might not see at gutsy a position that doesn't square with you *own* interpretation of sound policy, but I'm afraid it very much qualifies. Hate to break it to you!

I had that same problem with Obama as well, and if you read the News Blog archives, Steve Gilliard also had that problem.

The one thing that made me more *affirmative* in favor of Obama rather than Clinton is that across the board, he is apparently for reducing the regressive nature of american life from taxes to business/gov. policy.

But of course, there is no explicit mention of that fact! So I just have to hope that my vote(s) for Obama will actually flow into that theme.

You could look up what Obama has fought for.

This.

Proposing and passing ethics reform in Illinois, and ethics reform that actually receives applause from experts, requires political skill and political courage.

So does getting a bill to have capital crime interrogations videotaped to prevent coerced confessions. And getting the governor to sign it in spite of initial opposition.

Calling for open government is bedrock progressivism. Yeah, it should be expected, but who else is stumping on it and has knowledgeable experts like the founder of Creative Commons advising on the subject?

Net neutrality? Sign me up.

He is pushing the debate left.

Carbon auctions are not important. Everywhere this sort of legislation has been passed, all it does is ensure those who can afford it, can still pollute as much as they want, and those with no power are screwed once again.

There needs to be no more pollution, not more expensive pollution. You think Exxon Mobile will have an issue with paying a wee more for doing whatever they want? This is precisely the same reason the EPA is so fucked; Fine those who pollute, they pay it, and keep on polluting.

Wrong no matter how you slice it.

Fair enough Ezra, but then what makes you think that Hillary will do any of that in office? Seriously? Mark Penn isn't going to be pressing her to do right by progressives.

As a hardcore Obama supporter, more than happy to flame the standard quasi-racist or mindless Hillarybot that posts crap against him, I must say that this is perhaps the most cogent criticism of him I have read.

Most of his legislative accomplishments, while worthwhile, have been at the margins, and don't go towards solving the heart of our country's problems.

I also agree with the commenters who say give him a break, he needs to get elected first. He obviously has alot of sympathy for progressive causes, and an almost unmatched ability to make progressive solutions to problems sound reasonable.

Let's elect him and then make sure that neither of these qualities are wasted when he's President.

You can imagine him getting people interested in things that didn't previously interest them,

He is getting lots of folks to participate in caucuses and primaries. Given the state of interest in politics in our country, that *is* something.

Now, I know that shouldn't count, becuase we expect politicians to do this. If he wins the nomination, I'm expecting that he'll be better on this in the general election. If he's not and loses in the general, then *please* feel free to grill him like Kerry.

He's ended up using his extraordinary eloquence to defend timidity and caution, not sell hard steps.

It's called strategy. You might not recognize it after watching the Bush Administration follow your approach for the last 7 years. The Bush Administration has picked fight after fight, each time pushing the most extreme position then "negotiating" down to a slightly less absurd version of the same awful policy.

Obama's approach is to present the idea in a way that makes sense. He acknowledges the idealistic scenario, and he acknowledges the anticipated arguments against the idea; then he presents the realistic approach to actually make the idea into reality. By the time Obama gets to his recommended approach, most people in the room have been flattered and disarmed, and they're putty in his hands.

Obama may say he wants to be a president like Reagan, but on substance, the fact of the matter is he's campaigned much like Clinton.

Ezra, tell the truth--did you just start paying attention to Obama's campaign in the last few weeks? It's OK that you bought into the Clinton inevitability myth, but at least try to come up to speed on Obama's campaign before posting about it. Some substantial daring liberal announcements in the campaign so far include his October 2 speech, when Obama pledged to reduce our stockpile of nuclear weapons and double foreign assistance; and his December 5 speech, when Obama announced his bold national service agenda, proclaiming it a cause of his presidency.

hey Seth, who cares how gutsy someone's position is if it is wrong. You hear people on the teevee say how gutsy Bush is.

I think Obama has somehow (inadvertently? it's not exactly destroying him, though) hit that sweet spot where true "low information" voters are persuaded by his charm, true "high information" voters are persuaded by his policies, and truly lazy voters are left wondering what they're missing because they're too cynical to fall for his charm and too inept to look up his policies. Turns out that last category isn't so big as one might have feared.

You know, back a year ago you thought that the degree of regulation of insurers & the creation & availability of a Gov't health care plan were the most important features. And of course, not only have you decided to make "individual mandates w/o any specified enforcement mechanism" the holy grail of health care policy--you have also decided to entirely ignore Obama's best issues.

He sounds unquestionably better than Clinton, & better than any other major candidate I've heard in ages other than Edwards (& usually better than Edwards too), on: 1. the war on drugs. 2. criminal justice. 3. immigration. 4. Iraq. 5. torture.

Hey, any intention of posting a correction on the "refusal to hold town hall meetings" thing?

Within the context of the Democratic primary, you are correct, Ezra. But the positions Obama (as well as Edwards and Obama) are far to the left of what Kerry was willing to push four years ago.

Obama may look mainstream to you as a progressive blogger, but that certainly isn't true to the general electorate.

Obama IS selling the mainstream progressive ideology to the American people. That is exactly what we need in our president. Let others sell the hard left.

Talking to Castro and advocating the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons are visionary by American standards.

I think some of Ezra's complaint is legit, but not all of it, especially regarding foreign policy.

Hey, any intention of posting a correction on the "refusal to hold town hall meetings" thing?

Seriously, I'd like to see that. I'd also like to see you blog about something other than health care, to be honest, because to be frank, I think you're better and smarter in a lot of other areas. You've tried to make a niche area about a subject you're not very good on.

I think some of Ezra's complaint is legit, but not all of it, especially regarding foreign policy.

Ezra, like Krugman, is trying to pretend that foreign policy doesn't matter right now.

BMF - I was taking Ezra to task for seeing gutsiness as present only when it happens to correspond with his own policy preferences. Whether mandates are good policy or not was not even raised. But since you raise it, I think they are not good policy, in addition to being politically unfeasible. And so I agree with you completely. Bush is both gutsy and wrong. But as we have a difference of opinion on the wisdom of mandates, I'm afraid I have to contend that in the case of Obama you are wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?pagewanted=1&hp

The NYTimes published this account of Obama's nuclear power regulation legislation.

The episode that prompted Mr. Obama’s legislation began on Dec. 1, 2005, when Exelon issued a news release saying it had discovered tritium, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear power, in monitoring wells at its Braidwood plant, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. A few days later, tritium was detected in a drinking water well at a home near the plant, although the levels did not exceed federal safety standards.

At least as disturbing for local residents was the revelation that Exelon believed the tritium came from millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant years earlier but went unreported at the time.
SNIP
Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was “the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.”
SNIP
However, the legislation was increasingly watered down, and eventually did not pass.

In interviews over the past two weeks, Obama aides insisted that the revisions did not substantively alter the bill. In fact, it was left drastically different.

In place of the straightforward reporting requirements was new language giving the nuclear commission two years to come up with its own regulations. The bill said that the commission “shall consider” — not require — immediate public notification, and also take into account the findings of a task force it set up to study the tritium leaks.

By then, the task force had already concluded that “existing reporting requirements for abnormal spills and leaks are at a level that is risk-informed and appropriate.”

The rewritten bill also contained the new wording sought by Exelon making it clear that state and local authorities would have no regulatory oversight of nuclear power plants.

I do take MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) with a grain of salt. But I did find this worrisome.

No positions, no retreats, no flip flops, no responsibility.

Put another way: The emperor's fashion sense appeals to all tastes. For now.

You're missing the forest for the trees here, Ezra, although in fairness, you are focusing on your specific policy tree.

The forest is that Obama and Clinton have broadly similar policy orientations except for on one issue (the war) which ostensibly you support if you are even considering voting for Hillary "Kyl-Lieberman" Clinton. This isn't a flame. Just a syllogism.

The question isn't who is more progressive if you look at their general tenor of their domestic proposals but, as you correctly identify, who is likely to be more successful.

But again, you are forest-for-the-treesing. The argument that Obama will be successful can be critiqued but the argument that Hillary will be successful in spite of being a deeply polarizing figure with a record of major policy failures and minor policy accomplishments is a non-starter.

As much as I like Obama, this is something that has worried me (and in fact tilted me towards Edwards at first). Those of us who voted for the guy in Illinois are aware of this problem. He's significantly less exciting as a Senator than a candidate. I'm not sure how much this will translate into his Presidency, but it's something worth thinking about.

On the other hand, with Clinton you're basically guaranteed to get equivocation in the face of hard choices, so it's not like there's a real choice on this measure.

I think that this is a reasonable critique.

But no one knows for sure how a candidate will work out. When it looked like Clinton would win, I clung to the idea that against all evidence of cautious centrism, maybe she'd turn out to be a liberal president after all. Dems in NY had high hopes for Elliot Spitzer but he's been stuck in a huge rut. I don't think it's fair to focus this "take it on faith" argument on Obama. It's true of all candidates at all times, no?

He's significantly less exciting as a Senator than a candidate.

One frustrating aspect of having Senators campaigning is their reluctance to take stands -- real stands -- on matters of Senate business, perhaps for fear that they mess with the campaign's overarching message.

Obama was in DC to vote against retroactive telco immunity, but that was more symbolic than meaningful. If you can't use the power of your office during a campaign, when can you use it?

By the time Obama gets to his recommended approach, most people in the room have been flattered and disarmed, and they're putty in his hands.

No! This is not going to happen. I really hope Obama himself is not so naive as to believe this.

Right, but his current goal isn't to be a spokesman for his policies, it's to get elected. He needs to accumulate political capital before he invests it in telling "hard truths."

This is not how liberal democracy works. If you want political capital, you run on the goals you want to achieve and you win after having put those goals on the table. You don't have to get into a whole lot of policy specifics, but you need to define the winners and the losers.

Obama's rhetoric suggests that we can all be winners, which is (a) false, and (b) detrimental to his ability to achieve anything should he be elected.

Obama stood against the Iraq War when it was tremendously unpopular and politically risky to do so. He was an ambitious politician then, and he had a lot to lose. Clinton went with the mob that was screaming for blood, voting to authorize force in Iraq.

Just yesterday he voted "no" on attaching telecom immunity to the FISA bill, calling b*llsh*t on Republican cant that national security requires abrogation of the Constitution. Clinton was AWOL.

So, in my view Obama has a lot more backbone than Clinton, and in general a lot of backbone. The fact that he can give a good speech and persuade people is a plus, not a minus.

I don't know where you stood on the Iraq invasion before it went down, Mr. Klein. I do remember that there were precious few voices in the commentariat who stood against that idiotic war. I stood on street corners protesting in the months before March 2003 - some of the women protesting with me received death threats. Obama stood by us; Clinton betrayed us. It's that naked.

Please cut the nonsense about Obama lacking spine, or employing too much conciliatory rhetoric.

"But I have to take it on faith that he'll use his talents to push forward, rather than to merely get elected." --Ezra Klein

Merely? MERELY?!

When people accuse Obama of offering nothing but hope and empty rhetoric, rather than a real "plan," they should keep in mind that a detailed progressive agenda or "plan" is also nothing but empty rhetoric, if you don't get elected.

About a year ago, Ezra Klein used to gush about Edwards's detailed progressive agenda, and criticize Obama for not having released a detailed plan yet. Well, which one of them now has a very good chance of being "merely" elected? I know you are young, Ezra, but surely you remember at least the last two Presidential elections, right? There is nothing "mere" about being elected, and Obama would be idiotic to start handing ammunition to Republicans anytime between now and November.

When Roosevelt first ran for the Presidency, he did NOT run on the New Deal.

This is misleading. Roosevelt made a "new deal" his central campaign theme in 1932, right from his nomination acceptance speech.

Give me a break man! Yea, Obama is really a conservative Muslim trying to play both sides until he wins the election. You have to bring people together with hope and inspiration first and win their respect. He has to play it safe until he gets elected and then make a hard case and reason with the people who disagree with you. As a black candidate, with the middle name Hussein and a Muslim father, you sort of have to play it safe, right? Hillary will get nothing done and only ensure a right wing backlash in 4 or 8 years like Bush has created on the left. Stop it with the righteous crap and get behind the progressive movement's best chance at a long term majority. Seriously.

Shorter Ezra: Why doesn't Obama give the McCain campaign more to work with?

progressives should remember that hope is not a plan.

Actually, it is a plan. It's a plan -- a strategy -- for getting elected. And getting elected is vastly more important than pushing forward on policy -- especially when ambitious policy positions could hurt Obama's electibility. The time to push is after Obama gets in the White House.

Of course, if elected, Obama may turn out to be a bust and may never use his eloquence and persuasiveness to push real, progressive change. But I will take a bust Democrat over any Republican, any day of the week. Don't get greedy, Ezra. Let's win this thing and then we'll push.

He's like Roosevelt or Lincoln. Lincoln didn't run on freeing the slaves, he ran on containing slavery.

If Obama moves the electorate to vote democrat, if we get over 60 Democratic senators, well then, we'll not only get health care reform, but medicare for all kind of healthcare reform. And if we get that, the Economy will get a huge shot in the arm from an enormous release of purchasing power tied up in Health care. And once that occurs we could get more progressive legislation.

I would be looking for structural reform to undermine the neocon establishment. Things like the return of the fairness doctrine in broadcasting, true Energy independence, Holding public officials liable for international crimes, that sort of thing.

Based on Obama's past vote for a ban on the use of cluster bombs (which Hillary voted against--that is voting for cluster bomb use), and his work on nuclear disarmament, I have no reason to believe he'll stop doing the right, important thing once elected.

He is my Senator. I am a Progressive and he has listened to us and done everything we have asked of him.

Great! Could you do me a favor and ask him to stop voting to fund the Iraq occupation?

Thanks!

What Ezra is saying is that if Obama gets the nomination we will, without having to stop and think about it at all, support him passionately, we will defend him against the inevitable Republican smears, we will work actively in the trenches for his election, and we will make sure to show up on that first Tuesday in November and vote for him.

But we will also be very disappointed if he misses the historic opportunity we sense that this country has to move forward on some important agendas.

In particular, we really do fear that Obama has backed himself into a corner on health care, that it has been more because he and his advisers did not think the problem through as clearly as Edwards and Clinton rather than because he had some sort of politically astute strategy in mind, and that it will not be politically possible for him to risk going back on his pledge of "no mandates."

Imagine trying to run for reelection in 2012 with the Republicans defining you as follows:

"You read his lips. He said no mandates. And then he changed his mind."

And without individual mandates we fear that significant health care reform will go the way of the industry hijacked Medicare Part D program. And we base our fears not on some mystical intuition we have about the necessity of mandates for universal health care coverage. We base it on the economic science of the matter. Not an exact science to be sure. But it's the best we have and it tells us that the likelihood you can reach universal health care coverage without mandates flies in the face of all of the econometrics of the matter, as well as in the face of how universal health care coverage has been achieved in every advanced industrial society that we know of – and even a few not so advanced.

If an Obama health care plan comes a-cropper, we won't tell you "We told you so." We love this country and the progressive agenda too much to get caught up in crying over that sort of spilt milk. We'll just take a deep breath, roll up our sleeves, and put our shoulders back to the wheel again to try to push this boulder up the hill.

And we certainly pray to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, or any other prophet or God that anyone wants to volunteer, that we are wrong in our fears.

The first test in the general will come when, if Obama gets the nomination, he has to come to terms with his own already hinted at intellectual about face on mandates in the form of "penalties." Unlike Dean Baker, who apparently thinks (really, Dean is sort of desperately hoping) that "penalties" are somehow more politically realistic or possible than mandates to avoid the fatal flaw of free riders, we know that the Republicans are preparing their attack ads on that "strategy" as we speak. Expect it to take the form of:

"A mandate by any other name, especially 'penalty,' still stinks to high heaven for Harry and Louise."

If Obama folds at that point and backs off penalties, we will have seen the measure of the man, and weep a bit for our compromised future …

but then put our shoulders back to that wheel.

The timid thing was being afraid to use the word "tax" when proposing health care reform.

The idiotic and timid thing is thinking that a mandate will solve the problem, i.e., telling people that if they have difficulty affording health care then the solution is to have the government force them to pay for it.

The practical and timid thing is to try to come up with a proposal that avoids the mandate problem, without having the guts to propose a progressive tax to pay for the plan.

I can't imagine what KD thought I'd find of interest in this bit of tired commentary.

Getting elected is not the endpoint--too many don't understand that--fixing the bad and doing good that helps people is the endpoint--the election is just a preamble.

No candidate should be about getting elected more than about what they'll do once in office after the election is over--that's the problem. The election horserace is not so you get a ribbon or trophy at the end of it and then relax thinking you did a good job--it's that once the race ends, then you start to lead and do things--it's then that it begins. Right now, people can only "imagine" and "hope" that Obama will do the right things--we can't know that at all tho.

Just yesterday he voted "no" on attaching telecom immunity to the FISA bill, calling b*llsh*t on Republican cant that national security requires abrogation of the Constitution. Clinton was AWOL.

Neither Obama's vote nor Clinton's absence made a blind bit of difference. When the arguments were being made, and the agreements being drawn up that rendered all amendments dead in the water, Obama and Clinton were both AWOL.

Neither Obama nor Clinton (nor McCain) have used the powers available to them as United States Senators to address the legislative issues of 2008, as opposed to the executive ones of 2009.

But it's the best we have and it tells us that the likelihood you can reach universal health care coverage without mandates flies in the face of all of the econometrics of the matter, as well as in the face of how universal health care coverage has been achieved in every advanced industrial society that we know of – and even a few not so advanced.

Um, while eloquent, this isn't really accurate. Most advanced countries with universal coverage don't use individual mandates, and individual mandates--witness Massachusetts--don't guarantee universality absent serious and substantial reforms in other areas.

When did following Mitt Romney's health proposal become Teh Test of whether or not someone is a progressive?

Do you believe in magic?

or: Why Obama won.

Corrected URL for Do You Believe in Magic, or: Why Obama Won.

...adding, that while I go back and forth on mandates--though am, at the moment, not as big a fan of them as I once was--there are plenty of very smart, progressive economists, health care wonks, and public policy analysts who don't like individual mandates because they force moderate income individuals to spend a lot of money buying into a very broken system. Mandates are particularly onerous for younger people who could probably use a couple thousand dollars a year to pay for student loans, rent, or any of a variety of other costs rather than giving money to private insurers to subsidize medical care for 50-somethings.

Mandates are also rough on middle income families. If you allow people to buy high deductible coverage, you've mandated people purchase insurance that provides almost nothing, barring a serious catastrophe. If you mandate comprehensive coverage, almost no one will be able to pay for it, and costs will almost certainly spiral.

The only real positive to a mandate, as far as I can tell, is the attempt at making health care universal, but mandates make insurance an obligation--like taxes--and not a right, and the implementation of that obligation could very easily and rather dramatically backfire.

I think your analysis may be correct, but the things you want him to do aren't things you do in an election, they are things you do as president. You have to build peoples belief in you first before they follow you to do difficult things, not tell them to do difficult things, and then try to inspire them to do them. Example: Hillary Clinton

Ezra, have you missed the part where he claims to want to win the general election with more than "50+1" percent of the vote? He wants to sweep. He wants a mandate.

This is key to his election, in his mind. By winning big, in red states as well as blue states, he intends to use that mandate to pass the type of legislation we progressives want.

He doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the Clinton administration, when on key issues Clinton backed down (beginning with gays in the military) due to the fact he was governing with less than 50% of the popular vote.

Ironically, by focussing on "mandates" for health care, a lot of you are missing the far larger picture, which is that Obama does indeed have a very specific agenda and he intends to use his own mandate to get it passed.

You do realize that mandates or no.. penalties or no.. funding decisions and all that come from congress not the pres.?

Once he gains office his primary and essential non-foreign policy role is to inspire others to get the work of government done. He establishes the boundaries with the veto, and prods them along with rhetoric.

We ALWAYS have to take it on faith that our candidate will use their talents to move forward. One reason that Carter and Bush I are scoffed at so heartily.. (just 1 .. no need to start a list) is that they failed to push forward for anything.

Look at the great presidents then.. JFK, Lincoln, Reagan, et al. They didnt HAVE to push forward. Reagan didn't have to have his 'tear down this wall' speech or JFK his 'ask not' speech. Much easier to rest on your laurels, but they didnt.

There is no more evidence that clinton will move boldly ahead... how is she, a well oiled cog in the machine going to offer all the change she has been promising? The machine is going to rebuild itself? Wheres her specifics?

If everyone is made to feel comfortable about the general direction of policy, and congress gets some work done to that end, your average Joe wont care about the details in the bill. Thats what lawyers are for.

:p
(fire control) Im not saying 'dont complain if theres complete crap in bills'. Im saying lets put people in the positions for which they are best suited, and elect them onthose qualities too. President on speaking, leadership, and ability to surround himself with good advisors.. congress for being policy wonks that hammer out all the details of every law.

I'm a little surprised that some Obama supporters think he should be given time to get elected first then he can lead us to the progressive promise land. What ever happened to "change" and a new way in politics, waiting and building political capital sure sounds like the old way to me. The time for excuses is over, show me what you got or I'm putting my money on the person with the most realistic proposals.

Ezra,

What if his avoidance of mandates isn't timid? Maybe he just doesn't agree with it?

Is it really that hard to believe? That someone would disagree with you?

When I saw Obama tying together the economic cost of the war (does ANYONE discuss that) with lost opportunity for domestic progress and investment, I knew he was my candidate.

Who else has been brave enough to link our economic problems to the $600,000,000,000 we have spent thus far in Iraq?

Brad is, of course, correct in pointing out that it was inaccurate for me to imply that universal health care in "every advanced industrial society that we know of" has been achieved through employing individual mandates. My fervor did get out ahead of some useful and important technical distinctions, and I thank him for the correction.

An individual mandate, especially in the present context of discussion, technically refers to a governmentally imposed requirement that an individual not covered otherwise by

(1) Non-mandated insurance (e.g., the sort of insurance that employees typically receive as part of an implicitly or explicitly negotiated compensation package, as in the sorts of health insurance plans that many employers, at least for the moment, still provide for their non-union and union workers);

(2) a version of (1), under the Clinton and Obama plans, where certain classes of employers are now mandated to provide for insurance (e.g., a corporately mediated mandated requirement, though the individual would typically share, in the form of withheld premiums, some non-trivial part of the cost involved in implementing such a mandate);

(3) a non-contributory (functional) entitlement (e.g., Medicaid); or

(4) some other mechanism which economists -- perhaps after staring at it for a while -- will decline to classify in the narrow sense as an individual mandate;

purchase health insurance on his own, with or without subsidies, tax credits, or other financially facilitating mechanisms depending on the individual case.

And, of course, there are countries where direct mandates, whether individually or corporately implemented, do not technically play much of a role at all. One thinks of the NHS in the UK, where everyone is automatically enrolled in the plan and it is financed by taxes, and not specifically carved out insurance premiums. At least that is my understanding of how the NHS system is principally financed.

Again, I thank Brad for the correction.

But I want to take up briefly something Brad said in a subsequent post:

"The only real positive to a mandate, as far as I can tell, is the attempt at making health care universal, but mandates make insurance an obligation--like taxes--and not a right, and the implementation of that obligation could very easily and rather dramatically backfire."

I agree – sort of -- with the part of this sentence which says: "the implementation of that obligation could very easily and rather dramatically backfire."

The "sort of" is explained by the fact that while I would never pretend that the Clinton plan does not carry non-trivial risks of backfiring, the risks of the Obama plan crashing and burning are even more substantial. I accept, of course, that reasonable people can disagree about this. The argument for the superiority of the Clinton plan (or the supposed superiority of the Obama plan by its partisans for that matter) is very long and complicated, especially on the political front. But the Clinton plan does have the advantage that it does make more technical economic sense than the Obama plan, as the scrambling by the Obama camp to shore up their plan with penalties and automatic enrollment indicates.

By the way, Clinton can, and has already in principle, agreed to the idea of automatic enrollment, and without skipping a single beat in her argument for mandates. These two mechanisms are fully complementary, not contraries, as are mandates vs. no mandates.

The part of the sentence which puzzles me a bit, and which I would like Brad to amplify a bit further, is where he says:

"but mandates make insurance an obligation--like taxes--and not a right."

He obviously seems to be saying that a system where insurance is a right and not an obligation is a better system. But I think he may have undercut the distinction he was trying to make by adding the parenthetical "like taxes."

Let me explain.

I don't think, absent a Constitutional amendment – or some very creative Supreme Court decisions -- health care can be turned into a strict right in this country, i.e., one which could not be here today but gone tomorrow by legislative fiat. Even Social Security and Medicare are not those sorts of rights. We have, of course, very strong political arguments for saying that Social Security – and universal health care if enacted by Congress -- would not easily be wiped out of existence by legislative fiat.

But why is it important to note that the right Brad seems to be talking about is less than a Constitutional right?

Well, once you put it into that sub-Constitutional category, I'm not sure what the utility is of so sharply contrasting it with a paired obligation to ante up, even on an individual basis. After all, Congress and the Executive branch, through the legislative and enactment process, can democratically grant a "right" in this less than Constitutional sense and simultaneously declare that it be paid for not by general tax revenues, but by specially dedicated taxes, e.g., FICA and Medicare taxes – and Medicare premiums to boot. All of which we are, darn tooting, "obligated" to pay – of course, within the limits of some sort of means test.

So the ringing right that Brad sought to introduce in the front door has been somewhat compromised by the obligation we owe to the tax man at the back door – even if he is a specialized tax man who only collects taxes for insurance premiums, and even if he routes these obligatory premiums through the insurance (and partially private) sector of the economy.

And, by the way, income taxes are a, gulp, Constitutionally enabled obligation.

But perhaps Brad can flesh out a bit more what his intent was in making this somewhat oracular (eloquent?) pronouncement.

A final quick point. There are some who would argue that the jury is still out on the Massachusetts plan. It probably will never get to the Nirvanah of 100% universal coverage. Heck, nobody's perfect. And Brad may be right in his implication – I think it was an implication -- that it will crash and burn before it gets reasonably close.

But is Brad willing to wait and see? Or would he advise the Massachusetts Legislature and new governor to just shoot it now and get it out of its misery before they start sending good money after bad?