U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, was the latest of many officials to struggle with the question of how to treat captured foreign combatants who commit acts of war but belong to no state.

As he put it, ”the 9/11 attacks were both an act of war and a violation of our federal criminal law, and they could have been prosecuted in either federal courts or military commissions.”

But Holder decided (and President Barack Obama defended this decision) to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed under federal criminal law in a civilian court.  He did not fully explain why, except to say that he concluded the chances of a fully successful prosecution were better in a civilian court.

It is a controversial decision, on many levels.  Opposition Republicans argue that to try him in a civilian court treats him as a criminal rather than a combatant waging war against the United States.

But Mohammed, or KSM as he has been known for years, was not captured on a battlefield, but in Pakistan.  He was captured by Pakistani agents, not by American soldiers.  He had been indicted by an American civilian court already in 1996 for his role in the Manila air plot and may have conspired in many other failed or successful terrorist attacks.  Most of the victims 9/11 were civilians.

Some claim that the procedures of a civilian trial will risk revealing classified information.  KSM – so the thinking goes — if he chooses to reject legal counsel and represent himself, may be entitled to see evidence that would not be disclosed in a military trial.  A civilian trial may take much longer – consider the process of jury selection, for example – than would a military tribunal.

These arguments have considerable weight, but nothing outweighs the importance of seeing justice done properly.  There is something reassuring in having the full force and transparency of the U.S. criminal justice system applied to this most heinous of terrorist attacks/crimes.  After the repeated water boarding of KSM and years of detention at Guantanamo, there will finally be an opportunity to apply to this case unambiguous traditions of jurisprudence that have been fashioned over centuries, rather than procedures defined in moments of national stress.

Those who have witnessed history, especially this history, known that there was no predetermined course to the Revolution of 1989.  The very announcement that transit between East and West Berlin would be freely permitted was a kind of accident.  But once the announcement was made, corresponding as it did to the will of an overwhelming majority, there was nothing left to stop the free flow of people across the internal German border.  Communism didn’t relent — it had simply walked away.  Americans endlessly quote Ronald Reagan from 1987:  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Gorby didn’t need to.  He just abandoned it, like a decrepit Trabant left at the side of the road.

Hillary Clinton gave a polite and heartfelt speech, overlooked by Germans about as much as Angela Merkel’s much more heartfelt speech before the US Congress was ignored by Americans last week.  Too bad.  We have moved on to a new historical period, as Clinton’s predecessor Madeline Albright said today — the period of 9/11 and its specter of terrorism launched from the Middle East.  Like the Germans and November 9th, will we have some day a better event to mark September 11th, with hopeful omens instead of hate?

The legislation is not yet law.  The U.S. Senate has yet to vote on the matter, and that vote will be close.  But most observers now expect passage, perhaps by the end of the year.  It will be a significant political victory for President Obama, who made health care reform a major priority during his election campaign last year.

Seen from abroad, it is easy to overlook or misunderstand the significance of this hard-fought party-line vote.  No issue apart from the economy has received more attention in American political life in recent months.  And while the debate has hardened many views on both sides, it has also occasioned a reexamination of the way that the American health care system is organized.

It is an expensive system, a large part of the U.S. economy, and differs greatly from health care systems in most other developed countries.  It is neither a nationalized system, where the government owns hospitals and pays doctors, nor a single-payer system, where a government program pays most health care costs.  Except for the elderly and the very poor, there has been no national health program in the United States.

If the bill passed by the House is also passed by the Senate, that now will change.  Most Americans will still have private insurance for most health care expenses, but the government will play a much bigger role in setting the rules by which private insurance companies pay for or reimburse most health care costs.

There will be rights and responsibilities.  Nearly every American citizen will have to have health insurance and if they are poor the government will help pay for it.  By the same token, no one who is sick will be refused a health insurance policy.   The government will probably end up marketing some sort of “public option” for those dissatisfied with the range of choices that private insurers provide on their own.

Until fairly recently, most Americans got health insurance through their workplace.  Health insurance was one of the benefits that most employers paid for to entice workers to come work for them.  But, with the recession now in the United States, almost one in five American workers is either unemployed or works only part-time.  These workers will now get a break, since the government will step in to make sure that health insurance is available to them.

One hopes that the cost of health insurance to business goes down — or at least comes under control.  It was that cost, after all, that was considered one of the big disadvantages to American business in competing with companies based in countries whose governments pay all health care costs.

When things go sour in a far off region, it’s easier to avoid comment when you’re at home and don’t have a traveling press corps in tow, with press conferences and on-the-record, town hall-type events occupying a significant part of your schedule.  Clinton did not have the luxury of avoiding comment, so she put on her game face.

In Islamabad, she did her best to overcome the skepticism of journalists, students and women’s groups that repeatedly questioned U.S. motives.

Well into one long, set-piece discussion, she seemed to express frustration with the government of Pakistan:

“It is our information that the leadership of al-Qaida is in Pakistan. We don’t know where, and we are very committed to pursuing them because of their attack on us, but I also believe that the Government of Pakistan is as well. It’s a question of priorities. They are going after their most direct enemy right now, the Pakistan Taliban and some of its elements…I think it is absolutely clear, and I am convinced, that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of al-Qaida. And it’s very personal for me because of what happened on 9/11. I was a senator from New York and spent a lot of my time during my eight years in the Senate working both to help the people who were affected and to try and prevent another attack…So when we have an arrest like we did some weeks ago of a man named Zazi and we find out that he was trained in an al-Qaida camp – not a Taliban camp, an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan – we feel like we have to go to the Government of Pakistan and say, “Somewhere these people have to be hidden [sic] out. We don’t know where.” And I have no information that they know where, but this is a big government. It’s got – a government on many levels, there are local governments and national governments just like there is in any country. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan, must know where these people are. And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world.

In short, the U.S. Secretary of State seemed to be suggesting that the Government of Pakistan, if it only put its mind to it, would recognize its own interest and produce the information needed for the U.S. to locate and destroy the al-Qaida leadership.

The next day, responding to a mangled question about this, Clinton’s view changed:

QUESTION: Yesterday, you stated that Usama bin Ladin and Pakistani leadership or Pakistanis know where they are – Pakistani officials. I just want to – there is a need of clarification. Is it (inaudible) from Pakistani Government or Pakistani agencies? What will you say?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, what I said was that I don’t know if anyone knows, but we in the United States would very much like to see the end of the al-Qaida leadership. And our best information is that they are somewhere in Pakistan. And we think that it’s in Pakistan’s interest as well as our own that we try to capture or kill the leadership of al-Qaida, because we think that would be a very severe blow to terrorists everywhere. And my point is let’s work together to get that done.

At another point, she remarked how good the U.S.-Pakistani military relationship is:

I think the military-to-military relationship in – between the United States and Pakistan is at a new level of trust and confidence. The relationship between Admiral Mullen and General Kiyani is a close, personal one, not just a professional one. And I think that the military knows that we support them in their struggle against terrorism. We have provided, by far, the most equipment and most support that they have received from anyone. But we do have a system of accountability that we expect when we give people military assistance, and I think your military understands that very well.

So, in essence, no problem.  Our military relations are great, the Pakistani military understands our priorities, and they know we support them.  It seems so reasonable until you look for results.

In Jerusalem, Secretary Clinton saw another half-full glass:  “What [Prime Minister Netanyahu] has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described – no new starts, for example – is unprecedented in the context of the prior two negotiations. It’s also the fact that for 40 years, [U.S.] presidents of both parties have questioned the legitimacy of settlements.”

So, after 40 years of U.S. objections to Israeli West Bank settlement expansion, during which time the settlements have been continuously expanded and Palestinian lands repeatedly seized in contravention of Israeli law, Israel offers to not begin new settlements, just expand existing ones.  A distinction without a difference?

Finally, on Afghanistan, with Abdullah dropping out, Secretary Clinton remained unfazed.  “There have been other situations in our own country as well as around the world where, in a runoff election, one of the parties decides, for whatever reason, that they are not going to go on,” she said.  “I do not think that that in any way affects the legitimacy. And I would just add that when President Karzai accepted the second round without knowing what the consequences and outcome would be, that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward, and Dr. Abdullah’s decision does not in any way take away from that.”

Yes, technically, Ms. Clinton was right.  There of course have been candidates in U.S. elections who have dropped out before the actual vote.  For example, in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where the Republican candidate has just dropped out in advance of tomorrow’s election after being ganged up on by outsiders like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck.

Secretary Clinton may have spoken more than she wanted or needed to last week.  But something about this doesn’t feel like legitimacy.  Not in Afghanistan, where the U.N. figures that one-third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent.  Not in Pakistan, where the military seems more in control than any elected government.  And not in the West Bank, where legitimacy is undermined by efforts to change facts on the ground.  By bestowing legitimacy in these cases we obscure legitimacy of a more important kind — the kind that is actually earned.

Taken together, the two stories are signposts on the steep downward course of American journalism in recent years.

First, to be clear:  It was tactically and principally wrong for the White House to fire a public salvo against Fox News.  Tactically wrong because it immediately aroused sympathy for Fox among other journalists, it distracted from the message that the White House was trying to convey, and lowered the stature of the White House’s media operation to the point where it invited comparison with Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”  It was free publicity for Fox.

It was also wrong in principle for the White House to discriminate against a major network on the grounds that it disagreed with their editorial viewpoint.

It started off earlier this month when White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told Time Magazine that “Fox News is opinion journalism masquerading as news,” then took to the airwaves on Howard Kurtz’s weekly CNN show to sharpen the attack:

“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party… what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party.”

When Kurtz questioned her closely, Dunn admitted that Fox’s White House correspondent, Major Garrett, is “a very good correspondent,” thus undercutting her own argument.

Dunn’s frustration is apparent and understandable.  Fox and cable news in general have become less about news and more about opinion.  The top-rated programs on both Fox and MSNBC are plainly political advocacy — repeating one viewpoint throughout the day — conservative for Fox and liberal for MSNBC.

Fox’s defense of its programming — comparing itself to a daily newspaper, with clearly delineated news and opinion pages — was disingenuous.  In classic American journalism, the news pages predominated, and partisan editorials were a very small part of overall content.  In today’s broadcast and new media journalism, however, opinion dominates and real news is almost incidental.

Fox News programming is driven by conservatives Bill O’Reilly, Shawn Hannity, and Glenn Beck and Fox makes no pretense about this trio providing “fair and balanced” commentary.  (A liberal, Alan Colmes, was paired with Hannity on Fox’s “Hannity and Colmes” show for many years, but when Colmes left the show last year, Fox simply increased Hannity’s air time without any liberal counterweight.)

The rise of non-analytical, partisan commentary comes at the expense of real journalism; the less that real journalism provides the “news,” the less demand there is for real journalists.  Thus one of the reasons for the decline of the New York Times.  The Times buried the story on its staff cutbacks to its business pages, but clearly this was more than just a business story.   The Times and American journalism are in trouble, and the staff reductions at the leading American newspaper are as much a sign of this as are the rancorous exchanges between the White House and its broadcast “news” opposition.

Still, coming as it did during a week in which it was revealed that the Iranian Foreign Minister had been allowed to travel to Washington to meet with staff at the Iranian Interests Section (at the Embassy of Pakistan) and, at the same time, U.S. and Cuban negotiators sat down for the first time in more than five years, America’s new diplomatic outreach appears qualitatively different from anything attempted by Washington in recent years.

A new, key word has entered America’s diplomatic lexicon, and that word is “engagement.”

A senior U.S. official, meeting with a group of bloggers (including this one) earlier this week in Washington, put it this way in discussing the talks with Iran:

“We really want to find diplomatic solutions to the challenges that we face with Iran, and part of that has been trying to signal to the Iranians a change in attitude, a change in tone, in our relationships with them.”

“What we’re really looking for,” he added,  “is an Iranian commitment to finding a diplomatic solution [so that through] reciprocity we would offer some engagement and they would come back with some serious thoughts and serious ideas and serious actions that [in turn] lead us to believe that having a second round of talks will be useful.”

In other words, the United States intends to use diplomacy to the fullest extent possible — tough and sensible, multilateral wherever possible, and step by step.

Earlier this week, following the disclosure of the secret Iranian enrichment program, there was considerable concern voiced that Israel might insist on a more robust response involving immediate new sanctions.  But in an interview with our bloggers group, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl said the U.S. is “clearly committed to and I think the Israelis are committed to giving us some time to explore the diplomatic track.”

“We’re simultaneously engaging while building leverage in case the Iranians need additional encouragement to negotiate in good faith,” he added.  “I don’t think that any of us think that a military strike by anybody is imminent.”

This is hardly the first time that the U.S. has followed a “dual track” approach of pursuing diplomacy while preparing for other eventualities.  But in this case, and in general in foreign affairs, the Obama Administration gives the impression of favoring multilateral diplomacy over other alternatives.  It matters also that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, including Secretary Gates, is among the first to warn of the limits and consequences of military action.  As Assistant Secretary Kahl put it in our interview, “Military action is not a desirable course and should be a last option, largely because it will have an unpredictable set of consequences for the region.”

While it is too soon to judge how effective Obama will be, it is evident that most leaders and publics welcome the change from Bush’s approach.  The atmospherics at the upcoming Pittsburgh G-20 Summit and the U.N. General Assembly should underline this.  On environment and global warming, engagement with Iran, and now missile defense, Obama has signaled fundamental changes of course that will have far reaching impact on the role of the United States in the world.

Most of these strategic course corrections require years to show distinct results.  For example, although he will meet separately tomorrow in New York with Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama and his envoy, George Mitchell, know that Palestinian-Israeli negotiations will be long, complicated and frustrating.  Iran’s behavior — both internally and internationally — will make any kind of international engagement with Ahmedinejad in the interests of international security both difficult and occasionally unpopular.  Moreover, dropping the missile “shield” deployments in Central Europe — intended by the U.S. to deter Iran but welcomed by Poland to deter Russia — risks giving Iran (and Russia) the impression that the U.S. will back down without insisting on concessions from them.  This will not make negotiations easier.

The most immediate international security challenge for the Obama Administration — Afghanistan — requires decisive action in the near term.  Having already committed new troops to the military campaign, Obama’s commanders are now asking for more.  NATO allies with troops committed to the campaign are sustaining losses that their domestic publics are not prepared to accept.

Brought Home to Rome

The American public is frustrated as well.  If we can’t win what Obama has called the “right” war, then what good are our enormous and costly military and intelligence services?

This month has been filled with symbolism and remembrance.  Not just the anniversaries of Hitler’s attack on Poland (Sept. 1) and the Soviet invasion of that country (Sept. 17) in 1939.  Between those dates lies September 11th.  For America and much of the world, September 11th is an occasion to take stock of everything that has happened since that date in 2001.  Every anniversary I do the same thing:  I go back to the 9/11 Commission Report, review its conclusions, and try to figure out whether we’ve made any progress in the past year.  Usually I conclude that there’s not much tangible progress, even if I have to admit that every year without a repeat of September 11, 2001 should be acknowledged with gratitude toward all those who keep us safe.

But the broader reality is disturbing.  We have used all our 21st century technology, all of our political, economic and military might, but we have still not destroyed or even neutralized the forces that attacked us with box cutters eight years ago.  Afghanistan, training ground of the Saudi terrorists who attacked us then, is now an inchoate mass of tribes and shifting allegiances, home to massive corruption, fraudulent elections and the source of deadly heroin.  The President must show a clear relationship between what we are doing in Afghanistan and an end to international terror.  And there must be a clear way forward.

The Obama Administration announced its decision on the missile “shield” on September 17th, a hapless offense to Polish sensibilities.  For Poland, the shield was always about Russia and Russians knew this.  But for the world today, the biggest security threats are those emanating from lands far removed from the Russian-Polish border, and the symbolism is that of 9/11.

America's Road?

films, offers a fairly depressing vision of American society — one that the largely European audience here finds easy to accept.  It is a view of American reality as it is, was, or might be, and is equally disturbing in fact or imagination.

Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism:  A Love Story,” which had its world premiere last night, has been warmly received by the hundreds of journalists who’ve seen it so far.   It is a continuation of Moore’s polemics against Republicans and corporate America but, for once, the sympathetic response of the left-minded European Fourth Estate may precede broader approval in America as well.  As Moore catalogs the past year’s headlines and the ruinous management of America’s banking system, his indignation is likely to be shared by an increasing number of Americans, on various parts of the political spectrum, who now agree that things are in a worrisome state, even if they don’t share Moore’s view that “capitalism is evil…” and must be replaced by “democracy.”

Moore follows his heroes and his villains, heroes like Ohio Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Vermont “democratic socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders, and progressive Catholic priests in Detroit and Chicago.  His villains are not just George W. Bush, but also Goldman Sachs, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd (and other beneficiaries of Countrywide Mortgage’s “VIP” mortgages), Ronald Reagan’s Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff Don Regan, those who evict delinquent home and farm owners, and leading banks and businesses (e.g., Wal-Mart) that secretly took out life insurance policies on their “associates,” with the companies naming themselves as beneficiaries.  (Although not implicated in any employee deaths, these corporations realized a windfall whenever an employee died — or so Moore alleges.)

Moore may not be a model journalist (on economic matters, he interviews a friend of his, actor Wallace Shawn, but no economists), nor wildly popular at home in the U.S., but he is vastly

Man on a Mission

influential.  His Fahrenheit 9/11 was shown in schools throughout Germany during the George W. Bush presidency to explain the “why” of the Iraq War.  His books (such as “Stupid White Men”) are widely translated and on sale at the Festival.

It may also be that Moore’s documentaries, which document his viewpoints more than the facts he proclaims, also influence feature film directors to “document” their own take on reality.  Oliver Stone, who wanders frequently between fact-based fiction and fictional reality, has an out-of-competition film in Venice, called “South of the Border,” a hagiographic look at how Hugo Chavez has affected Central and South American politics.  Moore, who likes Cuban health care, would likely approve.

If you think Moore’s documentary version of present-day America is scary, just wait.  John Hillcoat’s “The Road,” based on Cormac McCarthy’s best seller about survival in a post-apocalyptic world, is a frighteningly plausible view of the United States after ecological or nuclear catastrophe.   The unrelieved gray and barren landscape is strewn by the detritus of catastrophe and populated by scavenging bands that for an instant resemble extras from a George A. Romero horror film.  But this is reality as horror, not horror as farce.  The few humans left are desperate, starving and barely able to comprehend their fate.  It is one of the cinematic standouts of the Festival so far.

Another catastrophe, real but in the past, leads to personal disaster in Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant:  Port of Call New Orleans,” inspired by a 1992 movie but now set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  For Herzog and his star, Nicholas Cage, the setting of New Orleans is not just appropriate for a detective film noir, but a tale of Katrina leading to human disaster.  Cage’s character, a police sargeant, starts off with good moral instincts that are deadened after an accident leaves him drug dependent.  Cage’s character ultimately recovers from all manner of risky behavior that by rights should land him jailtime instead of promotions.   Yet, for Herzog there is always a touch of the bizarre in human behavior, yielding literal tales that cannot be taken literally.  A Bavarian who now lives in Los Angeles, Herzog told a press conference that America has a “mysterious ability” to recover from political near collapse, exemplified for him by the McCarthyite period of the 1950s yielding to JFK’s New Frontier or the years of George W. Bush being followed by Obama.  The ending of his film seems similarly inexplicable.  If there is an actual point of view from Herzog, it is seen in the old-school outburst from Cage when a nurse and her elderly charge refuse to get involved to help solve a multiple homicide:  “Its people like you who are running this country into the ground!”  He forces them to help and the house of cards he builds miraculously stays standing.

This trio of films is not the only cinematic version of America in Venice this year — a less than serious film from George Clooney and a Steven Sonderberg feature with Matt Damon are also on tap — but they do say something about the ability of film and other art to reflect our current anxieties and anticipate where we are headed.  Like the early 60s when films like “On the Beach” and “Fail Safe” conveyed our worries about nuclear disaster, a slough of recent films project a fear of some sort of apocalypse.  Much like Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film “Children of Men,” set in a Britain of the future, where a baby must be saved and delivered to waterborne safety, for the propagation of the species, “The Road” has a dark vision where a child must survive for us to believe that good stands a chance of retaking root in a barren land.  Surrounded by evil and desolation, the son of Viggo Mortensen’s character has been taught that there are “good guys” still left who “carry the fire.”  But will he find them?

Herzog, the flag waver

In different ways, these dire visions can only be reversed through commitment and trust.  “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event,” Moore told a news conference. “If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him.”  This may not be exactly what fearful and angry Americans want to hear this summer, but for some directors in Venice this week, it’s exactly what they must be told.

How will Ted Kennedy be remembered internationally?  It appears that America’s health care legislation, if it ever emerges from contentious debate to be passed by Congress, may bear the Kennedy name.  But in his nearly five decades of public life, did Ted Kennedy do anything on the international scene to prompt memorials?

In South Africa, Ted Kennedy will be remembered for his steadfast opposition to apartheid; in the Middle East, he will be recalled as an evenhanded proponent of peace between Israelis and Arabs; and, in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, Kennedy will be acknowledged as a Boston politician who helped to urge peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict.  Significant, yes.  But this was a politician of domestic social issues.

Still the Kennedy connection to Berlin will always remain special.  I had the pleasure as a U.S. Cultural Attache to visit the JFK Institute in the 1990s and recall that Bobby Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, once visited the Institute.  But, as Dan Schorr reminds us, the first Kennedy brothers to visit Berlin were Bobby and Teddy, in 1962, where Teddy marked the birthday — his 30th — that made him eligible to run for the Senate seat that his oldest brother had vacated to become president.  It was one family, one clan, one brand.  A museum, “The Kennedys,” stands today on Pariser Platz, underlining the fact it is hard to celebrate just one Kennedy brother:  their histories were inseparable.

So, in February 1962, his brother Jack president, his brother Bobby Attorney General, Teddy Kennedy was an unaccomplished youngest brother of an elite American dynasty visiting a city encircled by Soviet troops.  Bobby made a speech, presaging the landmark speech JFK would make a year later.  Teddy was not the center of attention.  Within two years, Jack would be killed.  Another five years, and Bobby would be killed.

Teddy Kennedy, the Kennedy Berliners tended to overlook, would go on to serve another forty years in the U.S. Senate, never a president, never an international leader, but someone whom 80 of his Senate colleagues respected enough to come to rainy Boston today to pay their respects to.  He was given, as President Obama said, the gift of time that his brothers were denied.  He used that gift, not always well, but politically to good effect, which gave him a stature far beyond his promise as a young man.  JFK and Bobby left more institutions marked with their names, but Teddy left more legislation marked with his.

It’s turning out to be a long, hot summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  No, not the dreadful sort of heatwave that Europe remembers from six years ago, when thousands of the elderly died from withering heat in their homes or at shelters or even hospitals that seemed incapable of providing necessary relief.  This year the summer heat is of the political kind, generated by a high pressure system hanging over Washington and covering the North American continent with hot air.  As voters confront politicians, there are reports of stormy encounters over the Democrats’ health care plans.  So far, no clearing of the air.

Health care is now a red hot issue in the United States, which is a pity, because complicated issues like how to pay for expensive health care require sober, reasoned, open-minded debate.  Those who have inflamed this debate — a large part of the Republican Party — have done so knowing that hyperbolic rhetoric is something they can gin up but then can’t control.  Sarah Palin, the ex-governor of Alaska, has called the Obama Administration’s plans on health care “downright evil.” Rush Limbaugh, a radio rabble rouser and the country’s best known Republican, compares Obama to Hitler:

One of Hitler’s major domestic priorities was to complete and politicize the process of nationalizing all aspects of German health care.  And a good friend of mine, Andy McCarthy, sent me a long article today published in November 1993 by a US doctor who saw the health care issue as a perfect example of the inevitable pattern of socialism: Taking something that was initially the province of individual choice — guided by, of course, the individual Judeo-Christian notions of charity for the poor. You take something initially the province of individual choice, you move it to the ambit of state responsibility on the welfare state theory that it is government’s responsibility to redistribute resources to ensure everyone’s needs and you finally get the dictatorial control.

For 75 years, America has had a modest social safety net of government pensions for the elderly and the physically incapacitated.  For almost 50 years, America has had a system of federal support for medical care for the elderly and the poor.  The last President, Republican George W. Bush, actually expanded this system to help cover expensive medicines for the elderly.  None of these popular government programs turned the U.S. into a socialist state.  The current proposals to expand the U.S. government’s role in regulating insurance payments for health care may be imperfect, even ill-advised, but they are hardly the start of national socialism in America.

Yet this is the state of play in domestic American politics this summer. Members of the U.S. Congress who gamely sought to engage their constituents in dialogue about paying for health care found that

Seeing Red

addressing a town hall meeting was like hitting a hornet’s nest.  Will they come back to Washington next month wary of taking any action, lest they be accused of being Nazis or Communists?  Since Obama made reforming health care in the U.S. a top priority of his Administration, how would a failure on health care affect his ability to be effective on other issues, including foreign policy?

The fairest arguments over the Democrats’ health care plans have to do with the cost of reform.  Obama has claimed that his plans will eventually pay for themselves.  Americans have trouble remembering any time such a promise from Washington has been credible.  And, because they are economically vulnerable, Americans today are fearful of incurring any new costs.  Ironically, in such circumstances they are more likely to lose their current health insurance, which is precisely why further government efforts to ensure coverage are warranted, no matter how hot the summer.