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A MATTER OF STRATEGY. As Matt Yglesias points out, John Edwards's strategy for pressuring Congress to rapidly pass his health care reform bill should he become president appears significantly flawed by its reliance on a promise to try to violate the 27th Amendment.
I would further note that there is already a growing hostility towards Edwards within the halls of Congress, according my Democratic sources, thanks to his aggressive 2008 campaign strategy of running against Congress and the Democratic Party that helped so many of them get elected. A campaign stunt like saying, as Ezra summarizes, that "he'll submit a bill terminating the health coverage of the president, the Congress, and all political appointees if Congress fails to pass health reform by July 20th, 2009" strikes me as unlikely to repair or build his Congressional relationships or to help the early months of his presidency pass smoothly, should he win election.
It would be one thing if Edwards' bill just targeted the House and Senate (both likely to still be in Democratic hands), but Edwards' proposal doesn't just propose to smack the elected officials around -- it also would punish a significant number of other government employees whose work functions have nothing to do with healthcare and who would be innocent bystanders in any fight between Edwards and the legislature. In addition to the president and members of Congress, the bill would cover the roughly 3,000 presidential appointees in government. Now, presidential appointees tend to be paid quite decently, but they are also often much younger than you might think, because the pay is still often significantly less than can be found in the private sector. Among their female ranks are many women of child-bearing age, as well as a fair number of individuals with the usual chronic conditions that afflict the populace. It generally takes a president well into his first year to fill all these positions, which include judgeships, advisory commission members, cabinet, subcabinet, and agency leaders, and ambassadors. (The slow pace of appointing such individuals was a matter of controversy early in President Bush's first term, when -- as in Clinton's presidency, and Bush senior's -- it looked as though it would take until October of his first year in office to fully confirm just the fraction of appointees who required Senate approval.)
For Edwards, on his very first day in office, to turn these essential positions in his administration into a political football and threaten to rip away their healthcare depending on how quickly Congress acts on a bill they have no power over would a) make the posts even harder to fill and b) discourage applications from women of child-bearing age (who would rightly worry about losing coverage mid-pregnancy), men with dependent spouses and children, and people with chronic conditions who might otherwise want to join Edwards' new administration.
As Newt Gingrich discovered the hard way, punitive actions against government employees can be far less appealling in practice than they are in theory. The G.O.P.-forced government shutdown in 1995 turned into a massive public relations fiasco for the Republicans when tearful public employees went on television swooning with panic over how they were going to feed their children. Again, as Gingrich learned, all it takes is a couple of crying women on television to turn a political figure from a tough and principled leader into an ogre playing politics with people's lives. Edwards may be able to afford the out-of-pocket costs of his own and Elizabeth's healthcare coverage, as may most members of Congress, but should a single man, women, or child dependent on the insurance provided by his administration later be harmed by its revocation, Edwards, too, might find himself with a massive fiasco on his hands.
Such an outcome (which, I should add, is highly improbable, because of the improbability of the healthcare-revocation bill passing in the first place) would do little to advance the cause of healthcare reform in America, while doing much to damage an Edwards presidency.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
COMMENTS (14)
This has been the calling-card of his campaign, though. It's just the first time that, I think, his red-meat/one-upmanship campaign tactic will be on full display for even his supporters.
He had me believing for a couple months, but more and more, I'm getting the impression this is just your standard hard-left run from any Dem politician in any primary.
Posted by: mop | September 17, 2007 2:01 PM
You can tell just by reading the first paragraph in the RSS reader that it's yet another sleazy hit piece on Edwards that must have been penned by GFR.
Anything to stop the tide of progressive populism that is going to sweep the Democratic Party to epic heights over the next couple of years.
Anything to be a royal defender of the Court of the Clintons.
-----
My only real question is whether Garance plans to spend the eight years of the Edwards administration as it's R. Emmett Tyrrell. Someone will have to cover the haircut and house improvement beat.
Posted by: Petey | September 17, 2007 2:09 PM
Or put more concisely, GFR cares about the healthcare of a few thousand high level federal government employees more that she cares about the healthcare of the 47 million uninsured Americans, or of the many more million Americans with substandard coverage.
Everyone's got their priorities. Mine are with American voters. GFR's are with a limited number of government employees.
Is it any wonder GFR supports the candidate of the Washington Insider Class, while I support Edwards? I think not.
Everyone's got their priorities.
Posted by: Petey | September 17, 2007 2:16 PM
That "Congressional Dems peeved at outsider would-be President" analysis reminds me of Dean in '03 -- and Bill Clinton's early years (maybe I'm blurring campaign into '93-94, but I don't know that the dynamics are distinct) -- in that DC Democrats will let Republicans shape their destiny, but they'll be damned if they'll let some other *Democrat* dare tell them what to do). With, of course, some noticeable differences.
But two things Edwards may be doing, despite the apparently mean "The whole class stays inside until *someone* passes healthcare reform!" collective punishment principle, are (1) putting the mid-level folks on notice that if they sandbag healthcare reform with a death of a thousand paper cuts, either on their own or at the implicit behest of any reluctant bosses, *they* will suffer the consequences, and (2) creating a new set of carrots and sticks for his prospective administration to wield.
Now, whether either of those are fair play, or likely to work, or whether the Edwards campaign even recognizes how they're setting things up, is less clear, but that could be more of the backstory...
Posted by: Chris | September 17, 2007 2:23 PM
The edwards bill never comes to a vote, though, right? It's just about changing the conversation. If anyone balks at voting for a health care plan, or even bringing it to the floor, the press asks "well, what do you think of the President's point in H.R. 1 that Congress shouldn't get health insurance until everyone in America does?" At which point, whoever is holding the press conference hems and haws.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | September 17, 2007 2:25 PM
"yet another sleazy hit piece on Edwards"
I believe Edwards is the one proposing the legislation, not Garance.
You Edwards supporters are touchy, touchy, touchy.
I'm not sure why this moderate, centrist, Iraq War enabling southerner has such love among the netroots. But his recent conversion to populism, and his exploitation of the difficulties Obama and Clinton face vis-a-vis a war he voted for, combined with his subtly racist appeals to his "electability," make me less than thrilled with him as a candidate.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 17, 2007 2:30 PM
"For Edwards, on his very first day in office, to turn these essential positions in his administration into a political football and threaten to rip away their healthcare depending on how quickly Congress acts on a bill they have no power over"
Yeah, but I've come to the conclusion that Congress itself is populated by a bunch of largely ignorant fatasses.
This would give them the experiece of being akin to a small employer who would like to provide healthcare for his or her workers but can't make the budget balance. Or akin to a large employer who still can't manage to negotiate AETNA and Oxford down.
If you end up hiring without being able to offer healthcare, that does impact who you can attract. These are facts of the business world. Our Congressional fatasses don't care about citizens, but they profess to care about business. It seems to me that both citizens as such and employers are being held held hostage to rising healthcare costs. So, why not the federal government, too? Apparently no one else has enough power to remedy it.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 17, 2007 2:35 PM
Wow. What a narrative that was: "'HEALTH CARE?' EDWARDS PUNISHES CHILDREN, MOTHERS." Masterful. I wonder if the NY Post is hiring.
You know, watching the liberal blogosphere trip all over themselves to chide Edwards for this proposal - which, at its core, might be properly regarded as political theater - would have been funny if it weren't so self-defeating.
"Practical liberalism" over here at TAP? With posts like this, that's not what I'd call it.
Posted by: Will | September 17, 2007 2:35 PM
So, Edwards is making Dems in Congress unhappy by pointing out their spinelessness? I got news for these esteemed solons -- there are a hell of a lot of us out here in flyover land who agree with him. I hope Garance has good health insurance. She'll need it if Hilary Clinton isn't ultimately coronated and GFR's head subsequently implodes.
Posted by: Ron Obvious | September 17, 2007 3:44 PM
It's not Edwards that I'm for; it's hackery that I'm against. If the first word in an article is the name of a presidential candidate that's not HRC, and the last words are "Garance Franke-Ruta," then what lies in between is almost certainly an attack on that candidate's electability, personality, strategy, or haircut.
--ACS
Posted by: ACS | September 17, 2007 3:51 PM
"there are a hell of a lot of us out here in flyover land who agree with him."
I think they should give it a somewhat expanded timeline (we don't want a bad plan), extend the revocation of healthcare to *all* federal employees, and give them the right to sue for damages should anything disastrous happen to them during any period they go without coverage.
Edwards is an ambulance chaser. He should be able to figure out what to do.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 17, 2007 4:14 PM
Edwards also loses points with Dems in the arena for having forfeited his place in the arena, and then sniping from the peanut gallery.
This alienation is reinforced by his penchant for lofting big idea solutions with low sensitivity to the practical wrinkles that real ideas stumble over when they're ground into real legislation and carried out by real bureaucracies confronting real constituencies.
Posted by: RonK, Seattle | September 17, 2007 8:59 PM
It's lovely (that is, heartbreaking) to see so many on the left eating each other when a real leader stands up for the Democratic Party. Spin this however you want (and if the points about Edwards' "subtle racism" and "moderate, centrism" aren't spin in the worst way then a duck don't walk walk like a duck) but Edwards is doing something here that's going to have real resonance with a lot of ordinary voters.
Give me a break: what, are you against health care and against fighting economic injustice? Or are you afraid of actually winning the election? Or both?
Posted by: Mark N | September 17, 2007 11:58 PM
According to the press release from the Edwards campaign, the political appointees affected are "all senior political appointees in the legislative and executive branches of government." Each of these individuals will come into their positions well informed of this situation. They will not have their health care coverage ripped from them suddenly with no notice. And I doubt that we are talking about 3,000 political appointees either.
But actually reading a press release may be a bit much for the author of this piece as she rarely displays a penchant for facts when it comes to anyone-but-Clinton.
Posted by: edgery | November 13, 2007 12:05 PM