Why are pundits and politicians still debating the reasons for the President’s failure to sell his healthcare plan? They have all sorts of opinions: he misjudged the people’s estimation of the current healthcare system; he wrongfully construed his popularity as a mandate for a massive overhaul of the system; the Republican party is organizing to destroy the President. But no one is stating the obvious. The reason people are turning out in droves at town hall meetings and T.E.A. Parties is because they are angry. They want and deserve respect, and they aren’t getting it from the White House, Congress or the media.
People get angry for three main reasons: 1) they don’t think they are being respected, 2) they don’t think they are being listened to, and 3) they feel powerless. Look at what’s been going on for the past few months. People were already exasperated before the healthcare discussion began. The President and Congress, and the Bush administration before them, had already rammed through several very costly bills and a takeover of GM, sometimes acting in the dead of night and always with precious little transparency. Citizens responded by holding T.E.A. Parties.
And how did our government and our media respond to a very American show of exasperation? Well, President Obama mocked them. At a town hall meeting in Missouri, he sneered, “When you see, you know, those of you who are watching certain news channels which are not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term.” It was stunning: The President of the United States of America was mocking his own citizens! Not very respectful.
Speaker Pelosi dismissed the T.E.A. Party uprising as “astroturf”. She said, “This initiative is funded by the high end — we call it astroturf. It’s not really a grassroots movement.” She invoked the “astroturf” word again in her dismissal of citizens protesting the healthcare bill. Ironically, she found the voices of “disrupters” to be eloquent and articulate when they were protesting war; but when they protest her own pet project, she finds them “un-American”. Now, she and other members of Congress are calling town hall protesters “angry mobs”, again dismissing rather than listening to them.
As for the media, they ignored the T.E.A. Party protests as long as they could and then, like the President, they mocked them. Someone came up with the idea to apply the derogatory term “teabaggers” to these protesters. They’ve had a good ole time on cable television congratulating themselves for their own cleverness. Not very professional. And certainly not respectful.
The President and members of Congress have much greater access to powerful channels of communication than do average American citizens. The President was given an entire ABC special broadcast to sell his plan. He has hosted town halls and written op-ed pieces published in papers all over the country. Congressmen host and control town hall meetings. I couldn’t help but laugh when Barney Frank complained at his town hall that people weren’t listening to him and weren’t having a fair dialog. How could there be a conversation? He made a rule that audience members could only ask questions. They were not allowed to make comments. Like the President, he was basically saying, “Shut up and listen.” But his constituents get to listen to him all the time. They can listen to his press conferences. On C-Span, they can listen to his committee meetings and house debates. With his franking privileges, he has ample opportunity to express his opinions in newsletters and other mailings. When does he listen to them?
Most people agree that the healthcare system needs reform. But before the system as they know it is gone forever, they want a truly reasonable discussion about it. They don’t want to be condescended to. They want to be heard.
Besides the rallies, they do have one other powerful venue: the voting booth. If the President and Congress don’t start showing some respect and listening to the people, the citizenry will only get angrier. There will be more protests. And people will use that last venue and throw the bums out.
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