Waterloo

Floor Speech

Mr. McDERMOTT. As the dust settles, Mr. Speaker, on the Capitol today, I read and article called ``Waterloo,'' by President George W. Bush's speech writer, David Frum. I think it sums up nicely what we've just witnessed, and I wanted to share some excerpts with you.

He began, Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they'll compensate for today's expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections, but, first, it's a good bet that conservatives are overly optimistic about November--by then, the economy will have improved and immediate goodies in the health care bill will be reaching key voting blocs. Second, So what? Legislative majorities come and go. The health care bill is forever.

Now comes the hard lesson: A huge part of the blame for today's disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans themselves.

At the beginning of this process, he says, we made a strategic decision. Unlike, say, Democrats in 2001, when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all he marbles. This would be Obama's Waterloo, just like it was for Clinton in 1994.

The hard-liners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected by 53 percent of the vote, not Clinton's 42 percent; the liberal bloc within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-1994; and, of course, the Democrats also remember their history and also remember the consequences of the failure of 1994.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended up with none.

No illusions, please. This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994-style landslide in November, how many votes could they muster to reopen the doughnut hole and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a preexisting condition? How many votes to banish 25-year-olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there, would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, he says, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. They were leaders who knew better, would have liked to deal, but they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that dealmaking was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother or, to be more exact, with someone whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder your grandmother?

I've been on a soapbox for months, he says, now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes, it mobilizes supporters, but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for Representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio. They have very different imperatives from people in government.

Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say, but what is equally true, is that he also wanted Republicans to fail. If Republicans were to succeed--if they governed successfully in office and negotiated attractive compromises out of office--Rush's listeners would get less angry. If they're less angry, they listen to the radio less and hear fewer adds about Sleep Number beds.

So today's defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on radio and television. For them, it's a mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it's Waterloo--ours.

This is a very good self-reflective view of what happened yesterday.

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