We all have to drink from that reservoir

Yesterday morning I watched the president sign into law the historic health care bill, and after shedding a tear for the pundits and talking heads for the loss of their beloved controversy, I paused to consider the sweltering political climate created by the vitriolic debate leading up to the signing of this bill. Politicians from the right side of the aisle have made it clear that they are very upset with the left’s handling of health care reform, and with all of their grandstanding it’s easy to forget that for nearly eight months they brazenly rejected any and all efforts by the current administration to bring them into the reform process. Listening to conservative objections to the health care bill, I can scarcely recognize the Republican party that I remember from my youth. It seems impossible that the same party that jumped at the chance to spend dollars and lives to topple two countries based on the possibility that they were a threat to our safety suddenly remembered that they were also the party of fiscal responsibility. To the discerning eye, raising such a monumental stink over health care reform seems like a cynical play for re-election at the expense of the American people.
Whatever the motives of either side, we all have to live in the political environment left-over, and if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that it is very difficult for one party to accomplish anything all by their lonesome. Yet in this day and age, when enlightened political discourse has been replaced by hyper-partisan political theater, it seems like there are no other options. When Senator McCain, previously a beacon of bipartisanship all but holds up a skull and soliloquies, declaring a pox on their house, what do we have left but two bickering parties who refuse to get anything done? The good senator claims that the Democrats have “poisoned the well,” but I believe that a whole lot worse has been thrown into that well over the last year from his side of the aisle, and I would remind him and everyone else who makes their living on this kind of controversy that the rest of us have to drink that water.

-Nathan Aspenson