OBAMA THROWS OUT POLITICAL RULES

With many Americans - a majority according to some polls - opposed to health care reform, Britian's Financial Times has this to say about what President Obama and the Democrats have done by passing health care reform:

... In Europe, rule by a political class that tells voters what is good for them is an idea so familiar that it is quite taken for granted. In the United States it is novel, and not instantly welcome.

Between now and November, Democrats must persuade the country that they acted in its best interests when they overrode the public's doubts. If they succeed and retain their majorities in Congress they will have a green light to advance their wider aims, which include tax reform, labour relations, energy and industrial policies. They will conclude that Clintonism, with its submission to centrist opinion, was an error: they will have learned that they can capture and move centrist opinion. But if voters punish their arrogance, their momentum will be stopped. US policy will be set on a very different course.

Read the entire article. It's pretty sober, and it makes it clear that if President Obama wants to continue operating without the Republicans on big pieces of legislation, that he needs to explain what health care reform really is, and how America benefits. If successful, the political dividends are nothing less than moving America to the Left politically - whether the Republicans like it or not.

This would make President Obama the "transformational" president that Ronald Reagan was, and President Clinton wanted to be.

- Mark