A republic, if you can keep it
Since the House passed the health care bill last night, sending it to the President’s desk for signature, many on the right have been up in arms about how Congress defied the will of the people. Protester outside the Capitol on Sunday shouted that the American people didn’t want the bill and that, as a result, it should be voted down.
They’re right in one regard: polls show that, while Americans are in favor of health insurance reform, they were roundly against the bill that the president will sign tomorrow.
But maybe if “we the people” stopped requesting the president’s birth certificate 50 times a month and instead picked up a high school civics textbook (offer not valid in Texas), we’d remember that America is a republic and not a democracy. (Except in California, where “we the people” can vote on any damn fool thing that comes to their minds. How’s that working out for you, California?)
Elections have consequences. Obama campaigned on health reform, and what passed yesterday looks strikingly similar in many respects to the Obama campaign’s proposal [pdf]. So, yes, in the only poll that matters, people did express a desire for what we got. As H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Is this a bad bill? Yes. Is it constitutional for the federal government to force everyone to buy a specific product as a condition of being alive? Not hardly. Is this bill the fiscally responsible action its backers claim? No, it creates a huge new unfunded entitlement. Was the math fudged? Big time.
There are plenty of reason to oppose this bill on principle — because it’s a bad bill, sets bad precedents, doesn’t identify a clear problem to solve, and has unknown consequences that will amplify the costs and attenuate the benefits. (I bet there will be a lot of recission and cancellation notices going out this week.) But policy decisions are not made by polls, they’re made at polls. Obama won a decisive victory in 2008, and this issue was at the root of his platform.
In 2007, when polls showed that the majority of Americans wanted to impeach Dick Cheney, that didn’t make it a good idea. Nor did the fact in 1998 that the majority of Americans did not want to impeach Bill Clinton make it a bad idea. (It was a bad idea on its merits.)
This health care bill is a bad idea. But because of what’s in it, not because of opinion polls. Rule by angry mob and opinion poll is hardly what the Framers had in mind.
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