Vote for Change or Compromise?

Vote for Change or Compromise?
In the last election, I suspect that those who empowered Obama and the Democratic led Congress did so in order to change government. Had it been otherwise, we would now have a McCain administration and a Republican controlled Congress. McCain and his cohorts ran for office professing that, with only slight modification, the policies of the Bush administration and its Congress would be continued in part and compromised in part. The electors spoke loudly, though, that change rather than compromise was what was expected of government.

While change can mean reversal, it is often used to denote a break in one direction in favor of another and, invariably, means, as Lord Tennyson said, “The old order changeth, yielding place to the new.” Conversely, compromise, such as we have seen in Congress’s efforts to produce Health Care Reform, means a give and take appeasement reaching middle ground. As said by Lord Cecil, a compromise is “[a]n agreement between two [parties] to do what both agree is wrong.” It can resolve impasse for good or bad. If, however, you consider P.J. O’Rourke’s observation that, “[a] compromise is the sense that being bitten in half by a shark is a compromise with being swallowed whole[,]” then compromise can only be bad.

It seems that the Obama administration and the Democrats ensconced in Washington are hamstrung with the Pollyannish notion that bi-partisan support is necessary to formulate a cohesive and comprehensive Health Care Reform measure. We gave them a mandate to change and they should whether Republicans join them or not. Some of course, blame the various Democrats themselves for creating the differing ‘fixes’ needed to overhaul what is a patently critical situation involving good health care. What those contentious Democrats should consider, however, is that they received their jobs by hanging onto the coattails of Obama and adopting the change mantra to get elected. They, too, should embrace and pass the health care reform bill that Obama was elected to foster into law. It is time for the Democratic whips to whip.