Wrestling With the Angel

From all appearances, this health care debate is a giant boondoggle. The bills to reform it are thousands of pages long and nobody really knows what’s in them. Lobbyists are swarming over Congress. Fist fights break out at town hall meetings, where “ordinary people” are outnumbered by members of interest groups. And of course, it’s the wrong time to be thinking about this, many say, in the middle of a deep recession when so many have no jobs.

But is it the wrong time? I submit that if everything in the economy was going swimmingly, there would be less interest in reform, not more. When things are good, who’s interested in changing anything? Success is something you don’t generally feel like messing with.

As for the town halls, fist fights at least show that citizens are involved in this debate. The difference between a member of a political interest group and an “ordinary” participant is as thin as the color of the T-shirts being worn. And can you think of a time in recent memory when there were town halls around the country about a particular issue? Wouldn’t it be nice if we’d had them in advance of, say, our invading Iraq?

This debate is forcing the populace to pay a lot more attention to the influence of lobbyists in Congress, and is prompting individuals to mobilize -- and no lobbyist can outweigh the influence of an engaged electorate.

If you’ll pardon me for going biblical on you, there’s the well-known story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. The match went on all night, and the angel tried everything to escape Jacob’s grasp, including knocking his hip out of joint, but old Jake would not let go until he got his blessing. I believe that’s the attitude we need to solve the health care problem. We have to resist the pressure to meet some artificial deadline or just let go completely. If we wait for a time when things are better, well, they’re just never going to be good enough, so let’s finish what we’ve started.