Party Is Such Sweet Sorrow

No, we can't all get along on health care.
Jonathan Cohn
TNR

Even before Ted Kennedy lost his battle with brain cancer late last month, Republicans were suggesting that health care reform had suffered in his absence--not because Kennedy was so devoted to the cause, but because he would have cut a deal with the Republicans. “In every case, he fought as hard as he could . . . but, when he recognized that he couldn’t get everything he wanted, he could get a good bill by working with the other side,” Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said on ABC’s “This Week.” “If he was here, I don’t think we’d be in the mess we’re in right now.”

It’s true that Kennedy was the consummate dealmaker. His determination to reach across the aisle reflected, in no small part, his regret over one time he didn’t--during the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon put forward a health care reform proposal that Kennedy and his liberal allies rejected as too timid. But the wistfulness for Kennedy’s deal-making and, more broadly, his bipartisanship, overlooks a key detail. The deal on health care that almost came together in 1973--like the deals Kennedy later made on No Child Left Behind, immigration reform, and the Medicare drug benefit--involved Republicans who were willing to be part of the reform enterprise. Such Republicans are almost impossible to find today.

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