I disregarded my therapist’s advice and started reading the Brooks-Collins “Conversation” again. Here’s Bobo on ACA:
I also agree that health care was at least as audacious as a motorcycle jump across the Grand Canyon, and like that jump it will crash into the wall on the far side.
I’ve asked before how SCOUTS would have ruled if ACA had been passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president. (And I want to add that, I don’t think it’s all that unlikely that that might have happened eventually — it was drawn up by a conservative think tank and the pressure to do something about the uninsured might have eventually built to where some escape valve was needed.) So…how would Bobo feel about ACA if it had been passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president?
jibeaux
Grand Canyon’s about 9 miles or so across, depending on where you are. I don’t know offhand how far a motorcycle can fly, but if it makes it to the wall on the far side it seems to me to be a FUCKING KICK-ASS MOTORCYCLE.
Maude
@jibeaux:
WIN
dr. bloor
Listen to your shrink. As the old expression goes, people with neuroses
make themselves unhappy, while people with character pathology make others unhappy. Brooks is the latter, and your penchant for going back to him makes you the former.
Yutsano
It would either be a high expression of Hayekian modesty or give him a tingle up his leg.
The Dangerman
They are still bitching about Medicare and it’s only been about 50 years.
Comrade Javamanphil
@jibeaux: No doubt made by the Acme company.
Hunter Gathers
It would have been the Greatest Legislative Achievement In The History Of The Republic, A Testament To (insert name of GOPer POTUS who passed it)’s Burkean Modesty, and would give rise to the Permanent Conservative Majority. In other words, he would have soiled his pants.
Frankensteinbeck
The ACA would never have been passed by a Republican congress. Its extensive regulations on the insurance and medical industries are anathema to GOP congressmen.
Once that distinction is made, a mandate-based insurance supplement might have been passed by the GOP. That is the thing Heritage proposed, the thing Romney passed, and the thing they’re screaming is unconstitutional.
gene108
Thanks for the laugh.
Republicans feel pressure to help the poor and/or disadvantaged?
Isn’t going to happen anymore.
The take home lesson from Bush, Jr., for the Right, is he tried his whole “compassionate” conservatism by trying to use government to help folks and that screwed up the economy and Republicans got blamed because of Bush, Jr.’s Leftward tilt away from “true” conservatism.
ant
@jibeaux: lol
David in NY
@jibeaux: I literally LOL’ed.
NonyNony
Yes, eventually SOMETHING would have had to have been passed to save the health insurance market from its own spiral downward in a race to the bottom.
But under a Republican Congress it would have passed as an individual mandate without the employer mandate at all and quite possibly without the regulations on the insurance industry to force them to accept people with pre-existing conditions and such. Which I now understand was the actual Heritage Foundation plan – meaning that the actual POPULAR parts of the plan would not have been passed, only the UNPOPULAR parts.
So yeah, that probably would have made David Brooks extra-super happy since it involves stern Republican men acting like mean daddies and telling us to buy something for our own good while also slipping the shiv in between our ribs. He eats that stuff up with as spoon.
scav
@Hunter Gathers: Don’t forget Utterly PROVE the UnEnding Superiority of the FREE-MARKET-SYSTEM over anything dabbled with in Yurp and be Blessed by No Less than the Baby, Teenage and Grownup Jebus in Harmony.
sb
@jibeaux: FTW
trollhattan
@jibeaux:
That motorcycle needs to be made by an AMERICAN company, damnit, not some Japanese company.
Roger Moore
@jibeaux:
Yeah, it’s a fucking awful metaphor. Not only is the Grand Canyon way to wide to even think about jumping across, it also doesn’t really have walls in the sense of something you smack against the way Brooks seems to imply. The crash would be more like landing too early on a badly prepared site rather than smacking into a wall. Maybe he’s thinking of the Snake River Gorge?
Cluttered Mind
Permanent state of war for the past 11 years with no end in sight: AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
Keeping Americans from dying preventable deaths by letting them see doctors: Audacious and doomed to disaster!
Thanks for clearing that up for us, Bobo.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I’m pretty sure it would be more of Burkean restraint than Hayekian modesty. Wait, except that’s actually vaguely accurate, so there’s no way Brooks would put it that way. Hayekian modesty it is.
anthrosciguy
You said “Maybe he’s thinking” in reference to Bobo. Bobo.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: That’s the problem with the Inigo Montoya school of Punditry: no one is sure a word means what you think it means.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: I thought the same thing. Evel Knievel would be a current pop culture reference to Bobo.
NonyNony
@Roger Moore:
His partner in crime Gail Collins actually says “I believe you’re thinking of Evel Knievel and the Snake River Canyon, which is a different thing entirely.” Though she brought up the “Grand Canyon jump” analogy in the first place, I think she was using it as an analogy about how out of whack the attention span of our fellow citizens is. It’s David Brooks own special blend of pop culture knowledge (available only a the local Applebee’s Salad Bar, mind you) that made the linkage that DougJ blockquoted above.
slippy
I think Bobo would have thunk what Bobo thinks about republicans on any day:
gobblegarblegagahgahgahgaha— GULP!
Yeah, I don’t have a high opinion of that fuckwit’s intellect.
The Dangerman
Actually, Evel Kneivel’s (sp?) jump is an apt comparison to Republican efforts given that “jump” was a complete fraud.
MariedeGournay
I just reread his column “The Limits of Empathy.’ I want the ghost of Adam Smith to possess him and spoon out his eyes.
Lars H
It was a steam powered rocket and it was the Snake River Canyon.
NR
Exactly the same way. It’s a corporatist policy, and the SCOTUS always rules in favor of corporations. Whether the corporatist policy is passed by Republicans or Democrats makes no difference.
Valdivia
Burkean modesty all the way. Genius about the incorporation of free market concepts, principled in holding the freeloaders accountable, etc etc. Maybe there’s a contemporaneous article by BoBo from when Romney got this done in Mass? That would be sweet to quote him back to himself.
maryQ
As other commenters have said, Bobo would write a tongue bath of a column, extolling the Burkean and Hyakean virtues of the GPO president who passed it. And as other commenters have pointed out, , the GOP president could only pass such an act of Burkean Hyakean splendor without a GOP congress, so this hypothetical GOP health care legislation would have been passed with broad support from Democrats. THose democrats who supported this wonderful market-based, reality based legislation would be praised for their willingness to face the realities that we live in, five up their idealistic notions one big happy government granting equality and justice to all, and ponies, and the ones who did not support it would be compared to Nancy Pelosi and called partisan hacks and unrelenting idealists who are too much in the thrall of aging hippies reliving their glory days from Madison and Berkeley.
And then there would be the oh-so-sad regret-filled paragraph talking about how such a wonderful plan could have been passed long ago, and saved so many from suffering so badly, saved our nation from it’s innovation-crushing debt, if only Ted Kennedy had been more like today’s Hyakean centrist Democrats, and compromised with Richard Nixon who, after all, proposed a much more liberal alternative. Sniff. Oh, it’s too sad for me to even go on thinking about all of the lives that could have been saved!! Oh, and the irony that perhaps by now brain cancer would have been cured, had Ted Kennedy worked with Richard Nixon, because health care would be so much better and cheaper, and our nation would have so much more market-driven innovation!!
DougJ
@maryQ:
On the money.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is all very well and good to speculate on what Brooks meant with his stupid analogy, but in the spirit of Hayekian modesty I say we go with a good old-fashioned empirical test: strap David Brooks onto the back of the fastest motorcycle we can find and launch him off the rim of the Grand Canyon, to find out what really happens. I’ll even be generous and say we launch him off the North Rim (which is higher in elevation than the South Rim), so he has a better chance of hitting the other side than he would if it were the other way around.
__
There’s a fair chance that the Founding Fathers would have approved of this, and Teddy Roosevelt is a dead-cinch certainty.
Valdivia
@maryQ:
you said it so much better. clap clap clap :)
if I weren’t running around I would look for the actual BoBo column from when Romney did this and bet he wrote it exactly as you did!
Yutsano
@maryQ: Are you BoBo’s ghost writer? :)
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@jibeaux:
Well, I flew one about ten feet or so when I hit a parking block that someone had helpfully put in the middle of the road. Landing was rough, however, and the take-off put a corner into the front wheel. Wheels aren’t supposed to have corners. Also, when jumping or flying a motorcycle, I am pretty sure the idea is to have the bike land first, with you on top of the bike. Other way around not so good actually.
clussman
Agree with most of the commenters, just want to point out that Evil Knievel’s son, Robbie, did successfully make a 228ft jump across the Grand Canyon. Parts of the canyon are miles wide, parts of it aren’t. Dissecting the analogy is a distraction to the larger point of the post. :)
David in NY
OT — Is this why they call them “Red States”? http://graphical.weather.gov/
And slightly more on point, am I not correct that Arlo Guthrie wrote a long explanation about flying a motorcycle a few decades ago? The moral was, I think, “Land on a police car.”
slag
@maryQ: That was beautiful! And you’ve just saved DougJ from ever having to read another Brooks column again. Whenever he gets tempted, he can just read your two paragraphs and, with a few proper noun changes, know exactly what Bobo’s writing about today. Nicely done!
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I volunteer to find a bike. Anyone object if the fastest bike I can find is an old Harley with one spark plug missing?
ETA: As far as I know, manufacturers now voluntarily limit production bikes to 186 mph, but this slightly-modified bike goes over 300 mph: http://jalopnik.com/5822354/this-is-the-worlds-fastest-motorcycle
Just in case any of you want to give Bobo a slightly longer flight.
superking
I don’t think republicans would have ever passed health care reform. You say that the pressure would have built up to a point where some escape valve was necessary, but you’re overlooking the most obvious escape valve, namely elections. Health care was a large part of the 2008 campaign, and although the economy was falling apart by November, it was still a huge issue that people voted on. The escape valve was to elect Democrats to do something about it.
danimal
Oh Gawd, I just realized that, sometime in the next 5-10 years, David Brooks will remember something about Fonzie on waterskis jumping over a shark tank…I’m sure he’ll use it in a column to show his pop culture cred.
Haydnseek
We’re sorry, but Mr. Brooks is unavailable for comment at this time. He’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert in Lithuania with Mark Halperin.
KG
Since I missed the chance last time… my guess is that some winger State AG would challenge the ACA if it was passed by the GOP, and there probably would have been a private party challenge as well – almost every single law passed is challenged, most just die in district court or occasionally at the circuit courts. If there was only one or two challenges, and the lower courts ruled the same way, it wouldn’t have gotten to the Supremes.
On this question, my guess is that Brooks et al would have been concerned about “a new middle class entitlement” but somehow convinced themselves that it was ultimately good for the country because the GOP transcended politics or something. Or, basically, how they reacted to Medicare Part D.
Steve in DC
The GOP would never have passed their own plan on their own though. Romney/Obamacare was only cooked up so the GOP could have a policy on the books they could point to if asked and to counter medicare for all and single payer if they had to use it. The policy they have always wanted is eliminating lawsuits against hospitals, doctors not having to treat patients if they can’t pay, debtors prisons, and reducing taxes and telling communities to chip in and pay for their own aka “let the church handle it”.
The problem they face now is things can only move forward. They don’t really have a trump card to play.
Steve in DC
@Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads:
Heh, that’s a Hayabusa, the stock version will go over 210mph if you remove the limiter on it, not that hard either. It’s a monster of a bike though…
evinfuilt
@Frankensteinbeck:
If they could have passed the mandate and still allow recession to occur, I’m sure they would have passed it. Chamber of Commerce would have gone insane on that, pure gold for them.
Tonal Crow
1. If a Republican does it, it’s like liberating the slaves.
2. If a Democrat does it, it’s like Hitler.
3. “It” in the preceding items is practically anything.
4. Also too when the above doesn’t quite cut it, both sides do it, so vote Republican.
Heliopause
Is he talking about Evel Knievel’s famous jump? That was not the Grand Canyon and it didn’t crash into the far wall.
maryQ
@Yutsano: Nah. I just used to read waaaaayyyyy too much Bobo. But I stopped, all on my own, without medical intervention when I realized that
a) having one less thing to stress me out improved the quality of my life and
b) the Bobo voice was so burned into my consciousness that I no longer have to read him to know what he’s going to say
I haven’t yet mastered Chunky Bobo yet, but I’m getting pretty good.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@Steve in DC:
Yeah, they are monsters all right, even with the limiter. They can be made to look silly, though. At this year’s car show here, somebody had (very skilfully) airbrushed Micheal Jackson portaits and other tributia all over one. Maybe it was selected for this treatment because “abuse” is right there in the bike’s name.
The increase in horsepower per cc for sportbikes has been pretty impressive, but these days its certainly far beyond what someone like me needs. I looked at a ZX6 last year. Over 130 hp for a bike that felt like it weighed a little more than my mountain bike.
roc
@Steve in DC: “things can only move forward”? Sadly, that is not the case.
The GOP will rage against the horribleness of this law for decades to come, using that starting point to wring further and further concessions from the law. Look at how Dodd-Frank, another bill they signed off on, is decried as an unholy abomination that must be repealed. They use that extreme starting point to make offers of ‘compromise’ seem reasonable. Like the removal of a few pieces of regulation that upset their wealthy campaign contributors.
And so it will be with the ACA. They’ll continue to call it an unholy expensive boondoggle. And they’ll use that to win public opinion, wear down the Democrats and achieve concessions that please their donors. They’ll fight to strip the clause that ties executive compensation and profits to reinvestment in care. They’ll water down the clauses that limit their ability to terminate care for people who become sick. (likely by expanding the definition of ‘fraud’ to an absurd degree) They’ll fight for interstate insurance sales without federal guidelines, under the guise of saving people money (so some Red State can sell dirt-cheap insurance-that-doesn’t-cover-anything). And so on.
Things don’t only move forward. The whole thing is a tug-of-war and if you think a step gained represents momentum, you’re going to find the rope yanked out of your hands. The only way to even *keep* what you’ve fought for, is to continue to pull as hard as you can.
Lawnguylander
@maryQ:
We would be better off and lots of people would be alive if Kennedy and Nixon had reached a compromise. It is sad that they didn’t. If Brooks wrote something like that it would count as one of those rare times when he was right so what would be wrong with such a column?
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
“It would either be a high expression of Hayekian modesty or give him a tingle up his leg.”
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, yannowitimsayin.
stickler
Why all this counterfactual crap? We actually have living proof of what the Republicans do when they try to “solve” a major, national, pressing, medical-related package of legislation — Medicare Part D. Deeply flawed, replete with “donut holes” and (obviously) no limits to corporate pork. It had some Democratic support (as (hypothetical) GOP-ACA would have needed in any case), it was Bush’s signature legislative achievement, and it was a major expansion of health coverage that covered a huge portion of the US population.
What has Bobo written about Medicare Part D?
That’s what he would have written about (hypothetical) GOP-ACA.
maryQ
@Lawnguylander: My own view is that Bobo is right about 40% of the time-or at least that I am in agreement with about 40% of what he writes. And if he were to write about how much better off we would be, with a Kennedy-Nixon compromise, with brain cancer cured and with Ted Kennedy still in the senate, that would certainly be part of the 40%.
But my point is that Bobo takes almost any opportunity to slam the Democrats and liberals, even when criticizing conservatives, or a particular GOP politician. So if he did write something nice about Ted Kennedy, or something bad about brain cancer, he would be doing it as a way to set up a swipe at liberals or Democrats. That’s all.
Keith G
This silly mind game makes no sense. You are expecting a real world, logical conclusion to come from a fantasy-world illogical premise. Can any one here name the last Republican Speaker of the House who could (or would want to) bring such a bill to a successful vote.
And at any rate, the Heritage plan was more of a debating tactic than a serious plank in the GOP platform.
Okay folks, it’s time to stop choking that chicken. Don’t ya think?
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Brooks thinking?
Not enough coffee this morning?
John Weiss
Who gives a crap about what Bobo says? Gods! Why does he have a job?
Ruckus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I have no job, own almost nothing and I’d donate time and/or what money I could scrape together to help finance that jump. I could prep the motorcycle for free. I’ll even offer to tighten the straps holding his ass on the bike. For Free.
BC
Wait 20 or 30 years and the Republicans will be stating that ACA was THEIR idea. All the popular ideas are Republican, all the successful policies are Republican.
Ruckus
@BC:
I’m hoping that many of us are correct and what we are seeing now is the republican death throws. Hopefully in 20-30 years they will be replaced with actual humans.
Steve in DC
@Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads:
Indeed, though bikes like the busa are just asking for trouble. I know far too many people that started off on meager 550cc bikes and then jumped on busa’s or GXR 1000s and fucked themselves up good and proper.
Cris (without an H)
And Joe Biden agreed that it was a Big Fucking Deal.
Ksmiami
Nice James reference dude
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BC:
__
At which point labelling the thing “Obamacare” and repeating that phrase elventy-bazillions times will be revealed to be the triumph of short term tactics over long term strategery that it actually was. Of couse they will try to pivot to “Obama was actually a seekrit Republican” but the number of Americans who are gullible enough to buy that line will be minimal, excepting the denizens of certain blogs who already think that now.
A.J.
Horseshit!!!
“Democrats protected the unemployed starting with the New Deal, then the old, then the poor. Now, thanks to health care reform, millions of working families will go to bed at night knowing that they are not an illness away from financial ruin.” – NY Times conservative columnist David Effing Brooks, March 22, 2010, the day before the ACA was signed into law (Link)
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
snake river canyon is to applebees as evel knievel is to salad bars.
i wonder what david brooks got on his sats. better question, isn’t anyone there to do plebian editor work?
burnspbesq
John Mikhail from Georgetown Law has a very interesting post up at Balkinization, in which he suggests that Justice Ginsburg’s view of what the Framers actually intended to be the scope of Federal power finds more support in the historical record than the dissenters. Looking forward to his forthcoming full-length article on the same subject.
burnspbesq
@Ruckus:
What are they throwing?
/grammar scold
maryQ
@A.J.: Don’t forget this part
Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.
Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their G.D.P. on health care. We spend 17 percent and are predicted to soon spend 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in innovation, education and everything else. It will not.
With the word security engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”
maryQ
@A.J.: or this part
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge
rikyrah
this never would have been passed by a GOP Congress or President. they never would believe in it.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@Steve in DC:
Yeah, I think a lot of less-experienced riders severely misunderestimate the type of acceleration you get on those bikes. Crack the throttle on a 550 and you go faster – do it on a modern liter-or-bigger-bike and you’ve gone a quarter mile in a blink. Definitely dangerous. On a totally unrelated note, I am starting up a collection to buy David Brooks a V4, two-stroke 500cc GP bike. See, it’s only 500cc, so a perfectly appropriate beginner bike for our Mr. Brooks. Any donors?
The Other Chuck
@Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads:
I love this part:
jon
@Ksmiami: You think you’re so pretteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeee?
bob h
There would have been no Supreme Court case if the Republicans had passed ACA. The Constitutional principle the Court settled was whether the law was still constitutional when passed by Democrats.
brantl
@burnspbesq:
That’s spelling, you effete snob.