Are We Tired of ‘Winning’ Yet?
It's hard to see how anything the president
would call a "win" would be good for his voters,
or for any of us.
By Jill Richardson
July
08, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Can we stop pretending that leading
Republicans care about anything beyond winning
and power?
To be sure, there are some in the party who are
guided by conservative “principles.” House
Speaker Paul Ryan said he’s been “dreaming”
of gutting Medicaid — the program that provides
health care to the poorest Americans — since his
college days.
No
doubt that goal came from some ideological
notion of cutting government programs in order
to lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans,
presumably because the poor are “lazy” or
“undeserving.”
Trump, for his part, just wants to win. Remember
how he promised we’d all be “tired
of winning” if
he became president?
(Photo:
Shutterstock)
He
didn’t mean we’d “win” by having the best, most
comprehensive health care system in the world.
Or the best education system in the world. (If
he cared one bit about education, he would’ve
picked a secretary of education who had any
qualifications to hold that job at all. But he
didn’t.)
Trump
isn’t interested in policy. Trump is interested
in Trump.
At
every step, his record proves he doesn’t know or
care much about the particulars of any health
care bill Republicans in Congress write. He
cares simply about getting it passed. He just
wants to declare a “win” by repealing Obamacare.
He wants to make the Democrats “lose.”
If 22
million Americans lose their health care in the
process, as the Congressional Budget Office
predicts, so what? If people with cancer
literally die when their health insurance is
yanked out from under them, so what?
Case in
point: After the House passed its version of the
health care bill, Trump held an event in the
Rose Garden for it. Normally such a ceremony is
reserved for when a president signs a bill.
In this
case, the Senate hadn’t even considered it yet.
Trump just wanted the optics of having a win.
Remember, this is the very same bill he later
called “mean.”
Trump
gets a high from holding rallies where he speaks
off the cuff to crowds that cheer and chant his
name. It makes him feel loved and important.
Plus, he doesn’t have to prepare that much,
always a plus.
Yet
he’s never learned that much about policy. He
just promises that everything he does will be
“tremendous” without giving any details, because
he doesn’t have any. If he gets a big cheer for
something, like building a border wall, he’ll
keep it in his repertoire and ham it up even
more.
No
wonder he came to believe that solving the most
difficult problems on earth — North Korea,
health care, terrorism — would be easy.
There
are two problems with Trump’s win-at-all-cost
ideology.
One is
a practical problem for Republicans.
Congressional Republicans have enough principles
(if you count cutting programs for the poor as a
principle) that it’s near impossible to pass a
health care bill that unites all of them.
The
bigger problem is for Americans. We don’t win
when Republicans or Donald Trump crush the
Democrats for the sake of looking like winners.
We win when our leaders carefully analyze the
nation’s problems and craft legislation that
solves them.
Republicans don’t want to lose face by keeping
Obamacare, or even by reforming its
shortcomings, after promising to repeal it for
years. Even though their proposals to replace it
are unpopular and awful, they’re willing to push
them through out of fear their base — or their
donors — will turn on them.
Republicans in Congress would rather millions of
Americans lose health insurance than risk losing
their own jobs. Apparently that’s what “winning”
looks like to them.
Americans won’t win unless their leaders’ goal
is to help the American people instead of only
helping themselves. Otherwise, Trump’s right: I
am tired of winning.
Jill
Richardson writes about food, agriculture, the
environment, health, tolerance, and well-being.
Currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology at
University of Wisconsin-Madison, she’s the
author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food
System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
This
article was first published by
OtherWords
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.