Keep On Spanking the Donkey
I was surprised by the volume and tone of letters I received about my polemic against the Democrats (<H>“Spank the Donkey,”<P> 11/27). So far the count runs to something over 80 letters to the editor and personal notes, and barely half a dozen take me to task for my heresy. The other 90 percent say about time. I’m not prepared to certify that 9 out of 10 Americans are primed for electoral revolt, but I’m more convinced than ever that the public is way ahead of the pundit class on this one. There’s a nice moment in the middle of the new HBO documentary Travels With George that captures the hermetic character of big media. One of the scribes congregated round Bush observes that the reporters on the campaign trail are as profoundly out of touch with the country at large as the politicians they cover: Everything they see and take part in is a staged event. The same is no less true for the Russerts and Rathers and O’Reillys who take to the air every night to tell us what it all means. They have no idea. You do.
The most interesting and impassioned response I got came from a reader in Italy, Paolo de Falco, wondering why the Democrats do not embrace the obvious political appeal of universal health care. It’s a great letter, and I’m going to post a long excerpt here; space allowing, it may run in its entirety in next week’s issue (12/11).
Nothing like outside eyes to pierce the murk of conventional wisdom:
Recipe for sure victory for DEMS! A winning strategy in 5 easy points and a short necessary premise
Ciao Perry,
I am an Italian writing to you from Italy proper and I hope you can answer to this letter as I am hugely curious about it.
The basic difference between Europe (and Canada) and the States is, at a mass level, the lack of universal health care (at a moral level, capital punishment). Now my question is: Has America ever held a poll to check if every single American knows that every European/Canadian citizen has healthcare? How is it possible that a politician pushing for national health care on the Canadian model or the model of, say, France or Germany, doesn't win elections automatically? I mean any American politician might prove, with indisputable data in his own hands, that the Canadian/European models are the only ones truly providing health care for anybody (the Italian constitution itself says that every citizen has a right to health care), and that the only way to truly have universal healthcare is to have a strong government role and to mandate by law that every citizen must have heath coverage.
So why is it that the left-liberal politicians ( however few they may be) don't bombard every American with the notion that in Europe and Canada, health care for everybody is just taken for granted? Why don't they bombard them with the fact that both the right and the left support it (Michael Moore did it in <I>Bowling for Columbine<P>, but it's such a rare voice), that it's a politically non-controversial point, just an obvious thing for civilized people! The only political differences may vary on how much citizens should receive from the health care system, but no one disputes the fact that every single citizen should receive all basic medical needs and that such a fact must be recognized by law. Americans should be bombarded with fact like this: Even Margaret Thatcher (so close to Reagan) never dared touch the British national health service! Any politician, even the conservative Berlusconi, would be politically dead if he pushed for the dreaded American profit-based system!
So the question to be put to voters should be: How is it possible that such a obvious goal becomes controversial and said to be unaffordable, when America is obviously richer than say, Greece or Portugal or even France? More to the point, you say that Democrats know that but they don't want to lose the money of private financiers; that’s right, but the first goal of a politician (particularly a candidate for president) should be to win. And I think every politician proposing universal health care on the basis of real experiences (Europe, Canada, and Australia for the half past century!) should be quite able to do that based on the following points.
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