Needlenose

Phoenix Woman wrote at Firedoglake yesterday (actually, twice) about the emerging Village contention that, why, of course Ted Kennedy would have swiftly and gleefully traded away the public option to pass something that could be called healthcare reform legislation, however useless the end result might be.

The latest attempt to make this leaden trial balloon fly comes from columnist Steven Pearlstein in this morning’s Washington Post:

Asked about his greatest regret as a legislator, Ted Kennedy would usually cite his refusal to cut a deal with Richard Nixon on health care.

. . . [in 1971], Nixon asked Congress to require for the first time that all companies provide a health plan for their employees, with federal subsidies for low-income workers. Nixon was particularly intrigued by a new idea called health maintenance organizations, which held the promise of providing high-quality care at lower prices by relying on salaried physicians to manage and coordinate patient care.

At first, Kennedy rejected Nixon’s proposal as nothing more than a bonanza for the insurance industry that would create a two-class system of health care in America. But after Nixon won reelection, Kennedy began a series of secret negotiations with the White House that almost led to a public agreement. In the end, Nixon backed out after receiving pressure from small-business owners and the American Medical Association. And Kennedy himself decided to back off after receiving heavy pressure from labor leaders, who urged him to hold out for a single-payer system once Democrats recaptured the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Thirty-five years later, the single-payer dream of Democratic liberals still remains politically out of reach. . .

The simple lesson from this story — and certainly the one Kennedy himself drew — is that when it comes to historic breakthroughs in social policy, make the best deal you can get, leaving it to subsequent generations to perfect.

But not so fast.  As anyone who saw Sicko might remember,  what Pearlstein describes as Kennedy’s initial reaction was, in fact, an entirely accurate assessment of Nixon’s motivation in promoting HMOs — as confirmed by a taped conversation between Tricky Dick and aide John Ehrlichman: (transcript condensed to remove cross-talk)

Nixon: “. . . You know, I’m not too keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This is a private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. . . . I had Edgar Kaiser come in [and] talk to me about this, and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.”

Ehrlichman: “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

Maybe any deal that a leading Republican politician and his corporate allies would have signed off on in 1971 wouldn’t have been worth agreeing to.  Maybe that’s still the case now.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Earlier today, Matt Yglesias mused about how Richard Nixon’s illegal acts caused him to be forced out of office, while any suggestion of such accountability for Dubya’s flagrant disregard for the law (for instance, regarding FISA and torture) has been marginalized or ignored as “lunatic” extremism.

Atrios offered an explanation that the Republican establishment is simply stronger now than it was then (to the point where it “is almost indistinguishable” from the Washington, D.C. establishment), but Kevin Drum took a different tack:

I agree that the David Broders of the world have been far too sanguine about the abuses of the Bush administration. At the same time, the difference here really is pretty obvious. Nixon broke the law repeatedly for purely political purposes: to help his friends, punish his enemies, and keep tabs on domestic groups he happened to personally dislike. There was no ideological dispute about the value of what Nixon did . . .

In contrast, Drum says, Bush’s lawbreaking was ideologically based:

He approved torture of prisoners and violated FISA because he genuinely thought it was necessary for national security reasons after 9/11 — and unfortunately, lots of people agreed with him at the time and continue to agree with him today. I too wish there were a broader consensus that Bush has acted illegally and ought to held accountable, but the fact that he hasn’t met Nixon’s fate doesn’t really say all that much about how tolerant we are of executive lawbreaking. Ideological disputes are simply a different kettle of fish than personal vendettas.

Kevin is already in the middle of a severe beatdown from his commenters for this claim, but I think he’s partially right, although he doesn’t grasp the exact reason why.

The whole “unitary executive” claptrap and all the other pseudo-ideological manure put out by the Bushites is simply a flimsy fig leaf over the kind of naked power grab Nixon thought was his right (indeed, Kevin seems to have forgotten that Tricky Dick tried to use “national security” as an excuse, too).

The difference now is that the petty political vendettas pursued by Nixon have been raised to the level of ideology by the modern GOP. Unrestrained use of power for its own sake is their sine qua non, their raison d’etre (and probably a bunch of other foreign phrases, too). Whatever interest they used to feign in the common good, they’ve dropped that particular mask now.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)