Yeah, I dunno about the healthcare thing. From this distance it's impossible to tell anything from anything. I don't get to experience it, I can only read it in the news, according to which it's either the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever (not even a spectrum, just extremes from the media these days :/). All I can tell is that it seems an overly complicated, bureaucratic and expensive to get something that's still not as good as universal or single payer...
It's a tough call, pragmatism over ideology. I guess it depends on the times. You need to ask is the much more he could have realistically done? Could he have closed Gitmo? It doesn't seem so. He could have done more for gay rights. He definitely should have refused the executive power granted to Bush (I think that's going to wind up being his biggest downfall, that even if he couldn't completely stop a lot of the Bush abuses of power, he didn't have to be complicit in them).
We had a PM back in the 70s, Gough Whitlam. He was the first progressive after 22 years of conservative rule. We had many of the same issues you did; Viet Nam and civil rights (we even had our own freedom rides) as well as the end of the White Australia policy (it let in heaps on non-white people, like Italians and Greeks :P). Anyway, Gough got elected and went fucking batshite crazy. Raised taxes, stopped the draft immediately and worked towards pulling out of Viet Nam, pushed equal pay cases through the courts, opened access to contraception, established diplomatic relations with China (before Nixon by the way), brought in massive increases in arts funding (including personally approving the purchase of a Pollock for the national gallery), increased education funding, brought in free university education, brought in universal health care, sanctioned South Africa, changed the national anthem from God Save The Queen to Advance Australia Fair and brought in the sole parent pension and no fault divorce. That's not everything, and there were some bad things go on (some exceptionally dodgy international finance deals for one), but the point is, he did fucking heaps.
He did that in three years. A little quirk of the parliamentary system means if the opposition blocks a bill twice, you can call for new elections. They had blocked 6 bills twice and were threatening to block supply (not pass the budget, essentially the same as your "fiscal cliff"). Rather than take the safety of two more years in power, he went to an election and won it. The opposition did the same thing and blocked supply again, he wouldn't cop it and eventually the Governor General (the Queen's man in Oz) sacked the government and called new elections, which he lost.
He was in charge for a little over three years. He had absolutely no interest in governing forever, he just wanted to change all the things that were wrong. He's said in retrospect they did too much, too soon, but I disagree. They got stuff done that once done, was really hard to undo. We still have universal health care, although it's not necessarily free now (not all doctors charge what the government pays back, but there are plenty who do), we don't have free university education now (we have to pay 25%, deferred on a 3% interest loan until you earn over $45k), the tax base has been gradually cut away. But the fact is without him doing crazy things with absolutely no regard for his political life, we probably still wouldn't have many of those things.
Could Obama have done something like that? I dunno, but he didn't really try.
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It's a tough call, pragmatism over ideology. I guess it depends on the times. You need to ask is the much more he could have realistically done? Could he have closed Gitmo? It doesn't seem so. He could have done more for gay rights. He definitely should have refused the executive power granted to Bush (I think that's going to wind up being his biggest downfall, that even if he couldn't completely stop a lot of the Bush abuses of power, he didn't have to be complicit in them).
We had a PM back in the 70s, Gough Whitlam. He was the first progressive after 22 years of conservative rule. We had many of the same issues you did; Viet Nam and civil rights (we even had our own freedom rides) as well as the end of the White Australia policy (it let in heaps on non-white people, like Italians and Greeks :P). Anyway, Gough got elected and went fucking batshite crazy. Raised taxes, stopped the draft immediately and worked towards pulling out of Viet Nam, pushed equal pay cases through the courts, opened access to contraception, established diplomatic relations with China (before Nixon by the way), brought in massive increases in arts funding (including personally approving the purchase of a Pollock for the national gallery), increased education funding, brought in free university education, brought in universal health care, sanctioned South Africa, changed the national anthem from God Save The Queen to Advance Australia Fair and brought in the sole parent pension and no fault divorce. That's not everything, and there were some bad things go on (some exceptionally dodgy international finance deals for one), but the point is, he did fucking heaps.
He did that in three years. A little quirk of the parliamentary system means if the opposition blocks a bill twice, you can call for new elections. They had blocked 6 bills twice and were threatening to block supply (not pass the budget, essentially the same as your "fiscal cliff"). Rather than take the safety of two more years in power, he went to an election and won it. The opposition did the same thing and blocked supply again, he wouldn't cop it and eventually the Governor General (the Queen's man in Oz) sacked the government and called new elections, which he lost.
He was in charge for a little over three years. He had absolutely no interest in governing forever, he just wanted to change all the things that were wrong. He's said in retrospect they did too much, too soon, but I disagree. They got stuff done that once done, was really hard to undo. We still have universal health care, although it's not necessarily free now (not all doctors charge what the government pays back, but there are plenty who do), we don't have free university education now (we have to pay 25%, deferred on a 3% interest loan until you earn over $45k), the tax base has been gradually cut away. But the fact is without him doing crazy things with absolutely no regard for his political life, we probably still wouldn't have many of those things.
Could Obama have done something like that? I dunno, but he didn't really try.