A Reluctant "No" on Health Care.

The battle lines have been drawn, and Congress will soon hand President Obama either a stunning victory or a humiliation such as he has never faced before.

Either way, it is too bad.

After a miserable rookie year, the President has finally begun to figure out what a more seasoned politician would have known to begin with: The Republicans play to win.

This is not something a Democrat can easily understand. Having spent the last forty years losing ground to a party which represents only the interests of the wealthy and powerful, the Democrats are not exactly expert at winning. Indeed, when they win at all, it's usually through a combination of nominating a candidate who is Republican-lite and running in a year in which the GOP has spectacularly embarrassed itself.

Still, anyone who reads the papers and doesn't spend all his time listening to himself practice great speeches for the history books must have known that the Republicans would draw a line in the sand over any attempt to reform health care. After all, they've defeated Democratic efforts time and time again since, oh, Harry Truman. They know a winner when they see one - and when the new effort is put forward by someone with even less Washington experience than Bill Clinton, the game seems about as unpredictable as a first round NCAA game between the first and sixteenth seeds.

But, all that said, is the battle between the two major parties really the issue here?

For two long, Americans have taken their cues from the media and that bastard academic pursuit known as "political science". In a nutshell, both approach politics as a series of distinct games - election cycles - with a clear winner and a clear loser. When you think that way, it's not difficult for any right-minded American to pull for the "good guys" - President Obama and the congressional Democrats.

But, difficult as it is for many to believe, the real progress of the Nation does not hang upon which of the two parties wins the next election cycle. It depends upon understanding the actual challenges which face us, developing a coherent approach to those challenges, and then crafting specific policies which will help our society move forward.

And the two-party system, with its forced choice between two entrenched parties, is not exactly the mechanism for thoughtful, pragmatic, and progressive thinking.

What's needed -- and right now -- is a third party organized along different principles. A party which defines winning -- not in terms of gaining a majority in the next election -- but in terms of moving the national dialogue forward. The proper model, in American terms, lies in the anti-slavery parties of the 1830's and 1840's -- parties which would rather defeat a half-hearted sympathizer than an outright opponent.

Parties, in short, which ran candidates in order to provoke debate, thought, and societal evolution.

What's needed today is a third party which emphasizes a simple, revolutionary ideal: The ideal which our Founders called "the Commonwealth". That is, an understanding that the aim of politics is not personal or group aggrandizement or enrichment, but the good of the whole society. And not just today's society, but future generations, as well.

A Commonwealth Party would, necessarily, favor opening up opportunities to the most talented and able members of the rising generation. It would necessarily favor the greater economic opportunity found in an entrepreneurial, as opposed to a vertically-organized, corporate economy. It would inevitably be "green".

But it would not necessarily embrace a bureaucratic/regulatory model as the automatic solution for every ill, as the Democrats do. It would, very possibly, prefer market or quasi-market strategies to statist ones. It would not necessarily embrace or reject some of the values of the social conservatives.

A Commonwealth Party would ask different questions, and thus come up with different answers.

And it would not, in my view, have any use for the excessively complex, incredibly expensive, Rube Goldberg monstrosity of the present Democratic health care plan.

A Commonwealth Party would, I submit, reject the whole notion of protecting various powerful interest groups by coopting them. Instead, it would ask a different question: Looking around the world at the host of different, working models, what model would best suit the genius of America?

It would invite the American people to compare the health-care systems of France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, and a half-dozen other countries; choose the best; and make modifications to suit it to the needs of this country.

Then, having a clear, simple alternative in mind, it would begin a gradual process of moving the American people away from the monstrosity we have to a workable, single model which would serve us all.

Indeed, I envision a Commonwealth Party conducting a sort of "Survivor" game -- perhaps online -- in which different systems were inserted into a single-elimination bracket and compared, using both statistics and real-life examples. After each comparison, the American people would be invited to vote for their favorite, until one model emerged as the winner.

This model would then be compared, in full detail, with the present American "system", and a final vote would be invited.

I can't imagine the choice would be in doubt.

If the Democratic Party had any faith in the American people, it might have done something like this. Instead of gathering representatives of the health insurance industry, Big Pharma, and the AMA behind closed doors to craft a deal, they would have invited a public debate on the merits of existing systems.

Instead of focusing on committee hearings and leaving the field open for AM radio hosts to shape public opinion, they would have used the new and old media to engage the people in discussing what was good for the Nation.

Instead of ducking debate on the floor of the Senate, they would have welcomed a filibuster as a great opportunity to prove the superiority of their plan to the GOP alternative -- which is, essentially, the status quo.

The Democrats did not of these, because, in the end, they are not about governing well -- or governing at all. They are, like the Republicans, about winning the next election.

As I reject this way of thinking, I can find no reason to support the present health care proposal. No one has even suggested -- seriously -- that this is a good plan. They merely suggest that "we" can't let the Republicans win this battle.

Well, who says we can't?

For myself, I say, to hell with the Democratic Party. It might be "better" than the Republicans, viewed in the very narrow perspective of a binary choice. But I reject the limitations of that choice.

The Democratic Party is not the party of progress. It is, by its continued existence, the greatest obstacle to the rise of a genuine party of progress.

Passing a legislative monstrosity would only perpetuate the existence of this political dinosaur, while saddling the Nation with still more expense and bureaucratic red tape.

I say to hell with it. To hell with the Democratic Party. And to hell with the health care bill.