Time columnist says health care battle reveals how government is ‘screwed up’

By J. Patrick Coolican

Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Joe Klein has been writing about American politics for four decades, first at New York magazine, then The New Yorker and now Time. He’s pretty much seen it all, from war zones to nine presidential campaigns. Although a fairly traditional liberal, he’s been known to raise the ire of the left in recent years, especially on national security issues. A self-professed policy nerd, he knew the Clintons long before their rise to the White House, and then wrote the fictionalized “Primary Colors” about the big personalities of the famous couple and their universe. At UNLV this morning, he’ll discuss health care — a fortuitous subject given today’s health care summit in Washington. (For more on Klein, see the Sun’s Sunday Political Memo.)

Can you tell us what you’ll discuss today?

This is my second health care horror experience. And the history of this incredible process is a history in how our government is so screwed up.

How is it screwed up?

First, every special interest known to humankind is lobbying one way or another on this thing, which has distorted and distended the ultimate project. There have been embarrassing ones like the “Cornhusker kickback” and concessions to labor unions, but everyone is in on it.

Isn’t the push and pull of interest groups precisely what the authors of the Constitution had in mind?

They were hoping for a system that was conservative. But it had to be a system that would enable government to deal with long-term abstract crises. And, this is a crisis. Health care costs will eat our entire budget. And then there’s the short-term moral crisis of more than 40 million people with no health insurance.

You mentioned one aspect of government paralysis; can you discuss the others?

The second thing is the hyperpartisanship that arose in the 1970s, when the parties became ideological in nature. It makes the parties more extreme. In a democracy you need a strong center.

Third, the media atmosphere plays to heat rather than light. And increasingly sophisticated technology has accentuated that factor.

Back to the special interests, you have both sides, such as MoveOn on the left, and groups on the right, that ran focus groups, and determined the public option was hottest thing around which to organize and raise money, but it was really a small part of the legislation. So the whole debate was about death panels that didn’t exist and the public option, which was a small part of the legislation.

And, finally, the complex problems we face call for greater degrees of citizenship, and we’ve lost our habits of citizenship.

You’ve written a lot since 9/11 on foreign policy and traveled extensively in the Middle East. How would you grade President Obama on foreign policy?

An incomplete. He’s made some mistakes, but the general thrust of trying to do diplomacy is much more in the American tradition than what President Bush tried. There’s a good chance he’ll be able to unite the world around sanctions against Iran. We’ll be able to leave Iraq without too much mess. The war on al-Qaida is going extremely well. They’ve put a dent in the power of al-Qaida, notwithstanding individual terrorist events. And that started with Bush’s decision to put more resources into human intelligence.

How was your relationship with President Clinton after the publication of “Primary Colors”?

It was misinterpreted as an attack. It wasn’t. He asked me, “Why did you write that book?” I said, “Mr. President, I saw it as a tribute to larger-than-life presidents.” Hillary happened to have come in the room, and she snorted derisively.

I said, “Larger than life strengths and larger than life weaknesses.” And she said, “Yeah, that’s for sure.”