Blinded By Good Intentions

The Wall Street Journal opinion page does a good job exposing bloated bureaucracy.  However, today's Obamacare op-ed by historian Robert Dallek is a Big Government lovefest.

If the reform works as intended by expanding health insurance to an additional 30 million Americans and reducing the national debt, the Democrats will pillory the Republicans for the indefinite future.

If.  If the "reform" actually covers 30 million while magically reducing the deficit. The odds of that are slim.

Dallek suggests opponents of Obama care will endure comparisons to "Herbert Hoover's failed response to the Great Depression." That may be.  Opponents of Big Government get blamed for every problem. He's right that Hoover's policies failed, but he neglects to mention that Hoover's policies were not laissez-faire. They were sharply increased taxes and the trade-killing Smoot-Hawley tariff.

Democrats will continue to enjoy their standing as the more compassionate advocates of needy Americans.

The Dems do enjoy that standing, but that reputation is not based on success at helping the needy.  Many of their programs have locked the needy into a spiral of dependency and learned passivity. Supporting Big Government doesn't make one compassionate.  Good intentions are not the measure of a policy.

... [T]he Obama White House can take great satisfaction from winning passage of a reform on a par with Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 Social Security law, and with Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Civil Rights bill, and the 1965 Medicare and federal aid to education laws.

The civil rights laws were good.  But they were forms of deregulation -- they repealed government imposed segregation. But why should any party take satisfaction from passing Medicare and Social Security.  These unsustainable handouts will bankrupt future generations.

... [Obama] has carried off something of a minor miracle. The national health-insurance law is not the full measure of what it could have been. But then, in time, both Social Security and Medicare expanded beyond their original coverage. The same seems likely with President Obama's reform.

Oh yes, this one will expand too.  They all do.