Brown bags Blue Hills as Coakley chokes

The US’s flirtation with liberalism lasted precisely one year, the time it took to go from staring doe-eyed at the newly inaugurated Barack Obama to sucking the face off model republican Scott Brown. Massachusetts voters last week replaced Ted Kennedy – the man who dragged the US kicking and screaming to Alma Ata and whose last legislative wish was to secure the passage of health care reform – with sometime tea-bagger[i] Brown, whose first priority will be to block it. And if he really wants to he can: the election left the Democrats one senator short of the 60 they need to carry their proposals through.

So, what words did Brown use to bewitch the Commonwealth and over-turn the natural order? “I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham. I drive a truck.” Asked to elaborate, he opined that there are some things – principally money and human rights – that the citizenry should keep for themselves and out of the sweaty hands of the government and shifty foreign nationals. Meanwhile the Democrats, having done the hard work of anointing Martha Coakley, put their feet up and waited for the coronation. Whenever Coakley did come out to address the masses she demonstrated a fondness for faux pas: she didn’t drive a truck, apparently couldn’t spell Massachusetts, and – most damningly of all – accused a Boston Red Sox icon of being a New York Yankee. Washington Democrats spent most of January helplessly watching their candidate’s detumescence in the polls, before sending the president in at the eleventh hour to make a last-ditch appeal to voters, the subtext being: “Please give me my sixtieth senator – I need to get health care reform through.” Unfortunately for Obama, Massachusians have already provided nearly (but not quite) universal health care coverage for themselves, and weren’t prepared to make any sacrifices for the remaining 49 states to nearly get it as well.

Tactical errors in one campaign the Democrats can probably live with, however costly. More worrying is that Obama is creaking under a weight of expectation that would flatten a herd of elephants. Not only has he failed to walk on water during his first year in office, he’s developed the selective memory of, of all things, a politician[ii]  – possibly a sequela of repeatedly battering his head against the wall of Republican intransigence. He has also been unfortunate with the timing of Wall Street’s brief experiment in temperance and contrition. In the twilight of the previous administration the nation’s bankers – sudden converts to the doctrine of government intervention – were wringing their caps at the Senate door. A year later the seven digit bonuses and cocaine trucks have reappeared on Wall Street. The snorting – through bank notes pilfered from the public purse – can be heard all the way to Hawaii. 

Obama used his State of the Union address to scold financiers and rally the troops, reminding Democrats that they still have a majority in both houses. The problem is they haven’t achieved much with it to date. This is the result of a magnificently mendacious rearguard action by Republicans and industry lobbyists, pouring grit into the gears of the political machinery in Washington. Their success in impeding reform can be gauged from the share prices of the major health insurers, which over the last 10 months have risen inexorably. It is becoming clear that there is little chance of genuine reform – on health care, climate change, or anything else – in the absence of political reform. Unfortunately, just to heap yet more misery on liberals, the Supreme Court ruled last week that corporations can dispense with the brown paper envelopes and publicly lavish as much cash as they like on political campaigns. This has proved too much even for the corporations themselves, who are so sick of the attentions of needy politicians that several of them – from Ben & Jerry’s to Playboy – have begged congress to stop hustling them for money and approve public financing of political campaigns. So a week that began with a Republican taking Massachusetts ended with pornographers lecturing legislators and the Supreme Court on propriety. Strange days. 

The Harkness Fellowships are supported by the Commonwealth Fund and the Nuffield Trust. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Commonwealth Fund, the Nuffield Trust or their directors or officers.