While many ultra right wing conservatives may have regarded the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States with foreboding, I did not. The vote I cast for him was done without equivocation, in fact, it was done with pride and an abiding sense of relief that the highest elective office in the land would be occupied by an individual who was literate, competent, and well-spoken. After eight years of aberration, malignant officials and malfeasance in governance, the erosion of democracy in this country, and the lack of both the will and the wisdom to shape a viable foreign policy almost any change would have been an improvement–provided that Sarah Palin was not a part of the new administration. Conservatives feared Obama’s idealism and liberals embraced it but these political adversaries failed to weigh their strategies to accommodate the President’s overarching pragmatism. Whereas idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive it is important to note that ideals (objectives) be regarded as open-ended and not necessarily absolute. Obama’s approach very much involves a tool theory of truth which implies a working ethic secured to the notion that what works for the general weal serves to define what is true. Under this principle it seems likely that a single payer system is in the best interest of the people whereas such an arrangement defeats the continued excessive profits enjoyed by health insurance companies and providers.
The apparent failure of the majority party (can you say Democrat) to guarantee the inclusion of the single payer option in any healthcare legislation brought to the floor unfortunately is both predictable and indicative of the massive buying power of the insurance lobby. I wish that simply being more self-aware was a solution; perhaps, then, George Santayana’s famous quotation would be appropriate: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Our elected officials are not unconscious–their motivations are self-driven and only complex because we allow them to be presented as such–but they lack even a whisper of conscience and are devoid of the slightest measure of courage. We, the people, run from our intellect, flee reason, and embrace ignorance and fear, tremble at the mere mention of loaded words, the shibboleths of definitions: socialism, socialized medicine, government intervention. We have forsaken individualism, stifled innovation, and surrendered our rights as citizens to corporate and private greed. A pragmatist runs the risk of becoming ensnared in the open-endedness of his construct of truth especially if what works, works only for the privileged minority.
Santayana also said: Only the dead have seen the end of the war. George W Bush failed to comprehend the philosopher’s meaning; perhaps, that is a curse that all of our presidents must suffer. And now, Afghanistan, has become Obama’s albatross. If only one person had to wear this necklace decorated with the failed charms of opprobrium–war, greed, economic chaos, environmental ruin, a debauched healthcare system, political and social injustice–then the sacrifice might parallel the Christian imagery which mocks us as it hastens our decline.
A pragmatist may stumble bearing the weight of our national character. As Santayana noted in Character and Opinion in the United States: You must wave, you must cheer, you must push with the irresistible crowd; otherwise you will feel like a traitor, a soulless outcast, a deserted ship high and dry on the shore … Perhaps, our president finds himself shipwrecked and in need of a man Friday to bolster his resolve.
