Greg Sargent takes a look at recent poll numbers showing that the American people are losing confidence in the government's ability to handle health care:
This could be ominous not just for the prospects of good health care reform but also for Obama’s broader agenda: The new CBS News poll’s internals show confidence dropping fast in the idea that government can be an effective provider of health care coverage.
That's problematic. It raises the question of whether the broader, renewed faith the public had in government when Obama took over is receding, perhaps dramatically.
Asked whether “government” or “private insurers” could do a better job of providing health care coverage, only 36% chose government — down a surprising 14 points from June.
Meanwhile, nearly half, or 47%, said government would do a worse job — up 13 points from June. Both of those are pretty big swings.
When the GOP was in power, it used massive, irresponsible government failures like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that were the direct result of Bush administration incompetence to argue for "shrinking government" -- by which they meant shrinking the social safety net. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: The Bush administration's failure to abide by its duties "proved" that government was ineffective and couldn't handle serious problems.
Now that they're in the minority, the GOP has managed to deploy the same self-fulfilling process by confusing voters on health care, deliberately gumming up the legislative process and refusing to negotiate in good faith. If people have been paying attention to the debate for the last few months, it makes sense that they'd lose faith in the government's ability to handle health care -- after all, look how legislators have handled the past few months of negotiation. The GOP's strategy has more than just confused the issue -- even if you're aware of how misleading their claims are, the gridlock in Congress might be enough to erode your faith in government's ability to get things done.
-- A. Serwer
