I know I'm a day late on it, but Matt Miller's column is worth a 48-hour comment-cycle, so off we go. I should start by saying that I like Miller. His book, The 2% Solution, is one of my favorites, if for no other reason than it presents policy ideas in an engaging, readable format, which is the political publishing equivalent of a solar eclipse. But Matt's got a special "New Democrat" pathology which should be talked about a bit more, as he's not the only one carrying the bug. His book castigates Democrats for using the 1994 health care debacle as an excuse to give up on big ideas. It then spends a few hundred pages laying out a set of ideas that, while good, are not big, they're just stretched out.
To Miller, that's what a big idea is. It stretches across the ideological binary till both the left and the right are warmed by its fuzzy embrace, and then it becomes legislation. And it's right there, in that bit of bipartisan Schoolhouse Rock, that Miller's mistake comes clear. He seems to believe that the left and the right, standing on apparently opposite ideological poles, can be won over if they each get a bit of what they want. That's the myth of centrism, that partisans are willing to split the difference rather than demand perfection. It just ain't true. So Miller's argument that Democrats need to take a holistic view of our coming demographic crisis (go here for a debunking of that) and realize that we give the right what it wants (a cut in Social Security's growth) in order to get other things that we want (money for universal health care) is nonsensical, at least if you don't live in Miller's head.
It's unfortunate to say it, but Congress is myopic. They do one thing at a time. Social Security will be solved, sabotaged, or saved on its own terms, its fate isn't going to be decided as part of some grand equation including Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending, and the AMT. And that's why Democrats can't adopt Matt's smiley vision, because if we walk around arguing that we need to cut Social Security's funding in order to improve health care, the right is liable to help us slash Social Security and then block all non-HSA action on health care. Maybe faith-based programs will be better funded or another tax cut will be pushed through, but the cash isn't going to single-payer.
