The Thinkers And The Doers.



The Thinkers and the Doers.  As the Obamacare debacle continues, it appears to me that a clear pattern is emerging from the Democratic side of this issue.   The academic and intellectual architects of the ACA, such as Z Emanuel, are unapologetically defending the wisdom of the program and apparently have no doubt that all we have seen so far constitutes nothing more than a bump in the road on the way to the nirvana of healthcare they have always envisioned.  In fact, if you listen closely to their interviews and articles, they seem to be practicing a bit of “I told you so” with their partners in crime; the ones who helped them birth this thing.  Those partners are the ones I will refer to as the “doers”; the aforementioned architects shall be labeled the “thinkers”.   The thinkers had been working on this project for decades but despite their best efforts (remember Hillarycare?), had been unable to pass it into law.  That task fell to the doers, of which Mr. Obama is the consummate professional.  It is amusing to see how Emanuel and his fellow wonks are entirely mystified as to why Obama and Reid and Pelosi chose to willfully deceive the nation about what the ACA is all about.  In their minds, it is so damn right that it couldn’t be wrong; no way, no how.  But the doers knew.  They knew that if the people could understand the philosophy behind Obamacare, really understood how it was nothing less than the establishment of a new entitlement that would ultimately serve to redistribute the earned wealth of this nation, then not only would they not support its passage into law, they might not even continue to support the Democrats who were proposing it.

In the minds of the thinkers, this is nothing less than “foundation of the nation” business; the type that literally transforms what this nation is and will be in the future.  To them, there is sufficient gravity to this move towards single payer that any means will justify the ends.  They are truly puzzled why anyone would oppose such policy in the first place and frankly feel quite put upon when asked to defend the reasoning behind Obamacare.  This is the type of attitude that in the past has kept them from obtaining the legislative victory necessary to move the ACA into the realm of law.  Enter the doers.  Once the Democrats were able to get a man who was a “thinker wannabe but a doer at heart” into the White House and simultaneously hold sway over both Houses of Congress, the potent brew had reached critical mass. 

But herein lays the problem.  The thinkers have the luxury of debating issues based on theory; on the lightness of academia and the condescension of intellect.  They can pretend to be ordained with the power to know better what is good for you than you know yourself and get by with it.  Their conversations and rhetoric are discussed by people who have jobs that do not depend on performance, but are largely ignored by the overwhelming majority of the public who actually work for a living.  In other words, the thinkers are largely ignored…and it disturbs the hell out of them.  The doers on the other hand are the ones who are in charge of getting things done (normally at this point, I would say “in charge of paying the bills”; but the Dems gave up on that principle when Mr. Clinton left the White House).  They can practice deceit and dance around the truth, but eventually consequences (both intended and unintended) will raise their collective heads and they will have to be dealt with.  They live and work in the real world.  For a few critical months, the thinkers in the Democratic Party won a victory beyond their wildest dreams and that led to an unthinkable accomplishment.  Not only did the moon and stars align properly to constitute Democratic control of the Legislative and Executive branches of government, but more importantly they were able to get the doers to act like thinkers.  The Democrats in the Senate and the House got so embroiled in the quest for all-out political victory that they forgot they were doers.  They forgot that reality would one day come calling and the wages of political over-indulgence would have to be paid.  For a brief moment in time, they made the mistake of assuming liberties that are reserved only for the thinkers among us; liberties like “We must pass it to find out what is in it”.  Several of them, especially the ones scheduled for races that might be termed competitive, are thinking very hard about that right about now.