. . . Since {Obama} won the presidency promising to stop the rise of the oceans, there has been a substantial decline in American support for the global-warming catechism, which proclaims that warming is (a) a big deal and (b) substantially America's fault. Americans have noticed that, judging by the words and deeds of the president and of the Congress his party controls, global warming is (a) an imminent threat to the planet but (b) not as urgent a concern as health-care reform. . . .The rest of the column includes comments reflecting Will's consistent opposition to military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and observations on the changing stance toward Iran and nukes. Has an interesting ending. Worth considering.
America's nerves are frayed and tempers are short. The country is uneasy, even queasy, because Obama and Congress seem to be dashing through an ambitious agenda in a slapdash manner. Their haste reflects a hubris that prevents them from acknowledging that they do not know how to do all that they are attempting. Consider the exasperation of Lamar Alexander.
A Tennessee Republican of mild mien, Alexander is a former governor and former president of the University of Tennessee. For seven years in the Senate he has been a model of the moderate Republicanism that is, we are mournfully told by the Republican Party's non-Republican moral auditors, as valuable as it is scarce. So it was noteworthy that he recently had this to say about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposed health-care legislation:
"This bill is historic in its arrogance—arrogance that we in Congress are wise enough to take this complex health system, that is 17 percent of our economy and serves 300 million Americans, and think we can write a 2,000-page bill and change it all…c It's arrogant to dump 15 million low-income Americans into a medical ghetto called Medicaid that none of us or any of our families would ever want to join."
Literary Imagination
20 hours ago
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