Strategic Error

This Health Care debate has become unnecessarily muddled because of a major strategic error by Barrack Obama and his advisors. They laid their plans based on two assumptions.
First, they studied the failed Clinton Health Care initiative from the 1990s. Hillary and her staff designed a well crafted proposal and then tried to sell it to Congress. They failed. Obama and his staff concluded that they could not sell a plan to Congress, but would need for Congress to actually write the proposal, thus buying into it from the beginning and voting for it.
Second, since both Obama and most of his White House staff rose from the ranks of ACORN, the community organizers, they had been long drilled in the notion that within a neighborhood or community the people must be brought into the process and nothing can be imposed from the top down.
Both assumptions were false.
The Clinton Initiative ran aground for several reasons. First, Hillary faced Newt Gingrich and a hostile Republican majority. Second, Hillary not only held no elective office, but had never in her life held any elective office. She had no credibility when she stepped before Congress. Third, the huge American middle class still had health insurance provided by their employers and were not dissatisfied. So back home, Congressmen were receiving no pressure to act. Finally, the internet was new and no one had figured out how to use it to mobilize public response.
Today, all of these factors are reversed. Obama rode a huge wave of support into office, he has a Congress of his own party, he IS the president and has all the powers of the White House at his disposal, he is a former Congressman, that huge middle class has been hit by massive job loss and even some who still have jobs have seen their health insurance discontinued or reduced, and the internet is now a powerful tool.
The ACORN community organizer model is also a bad analogy for getting things done in Washington.
ACORN organizers deal with mostly lower class, undereducated, underemployed residents of marginal neighborhoods, people who for their lifetimes have been ignored, mistreated and put off by government agencies and private businesses. They are grateful for any input, any role, any respect.
Congressmen are the exact opposite. They have had the best education, the best jobs, the best incomes, lived in the best neighborhoods, and for their lifetimes always or at least mostly gotten exactly what they wanted. They are accustomed to not only having input, but being in charge.
While ACORN clients are trying to fix up a building or a vacant lot, Congressmen are trying to protect the special interests who donate millions to their campaigns.
It is a different game and requires a different approach.
Where Obama's ACORN tactics were appropriate was in using the internet to arouse public support back home, so Congressmen would be flooded with emails, letters and phone calls urging them to support the president's initiative.
But for actually dealing with Congress, he needed to come with a plan. He then needed to sell that plan in ever widening circles. First to a core of five, including Nancy Pelosi and a Blue Dog representative. When one of them objected to Tort Reform or Mandatory Purchase, compromise needed to be negotiated within that room. Once they were agreed on the plan, the circle neecded to be widened to perhaps 20 or so. Again compromise and negotiation, behind closed doors, away from the media and the lunatic fringe. Finally, the plan could be taken to the whole Congress.
Meanwhile, the ACORN veterans could be out there working the general population.
The President has finally come around to this understanding, but only after much time lost and opposition unnecessarily created.
Have no doubts : we will see some sort of health care reform enacted, and it will be before the 2010 elections.
But the eight month false start we have witnessed may result in one that is more flawed that it should have been.