This is the last part of Obama’s closing argument for health care reform to the House. It’s rather stirring. I’ve always regarded the heath care debates as something of a litmus test for our democracy, and here Obama gets at the heart of it: does America still have what it takes, as a polity with old institutions like the senate and as a nation based around the novel idea that a mixed-up group of people can come together and create a sovereign, “moral” community (to use Charles Eliot Norton’s phrase) — do we still have what it takes to govern ourselves? Is this American experiment going to last? As we wait on the health care vote, it would be good to remember Obama’s lines. He quotes Lincoln, ““I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.” Be true not just for the health of our citizens (natch) and the health of our economy (natch, too) but also for the health of our democracy.
But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you’re right, the system is not working for you and I’m going to make it a little bit better.
And this is one of those moments.
On substance, I found Jonathan Cohn’s closing argument for reform to be powerful, too:
The disturbing part of our health care system is the financial and physical suffering it causes. But the unjust part of our health care system is the way it distributes that suffering. There are things all of us can do to stay healthy–we can eat right, we can exercise, we can avoid excessive risks. But even when we do the right things, we remain vulnerable…
[B]roadly speaking, conservative ideas about responsibility and vulnerability have dominated political discussion for most of the last four decades. That will change on Sunday, if health care reform passes. The bill before Congress may be flawed. And the process that produced it may be severely flawed. But it is, nevertheless, an expression of the idea that we–as as society–are not prepared to let people continue to suffer such dire consequences just because they’re unlucky.
