By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, October 06, 2016
Only amid the most bizarre, tawdriest, most addictive
election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively
obliterated, namely, that with just four months left in the Obama presidency,
its two central pillars are collapsing before our eyes: domestically, its
radical reform of American health care, a.k.a. Obamacare; and abroad, its
radical reorientation of American foreign policy — disengagement marked by
diplomacy and multilateralism.
Obamacare
On Monday, Bill Clinton called it “the craziest thing in
the world.” And he was talking about only one crazy aspect of it — the impact
on the consumer. Clinton pointed out that small business and hardworking
employees (“out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week”) are “getting
whacked . . . their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”
This, as the program’s entire economic foundation is
crumbling. More than half its nonprofit “co-ops” have gone bankrupt. Major
health insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealthcare, having lost millions of
dollars, are withdrawing from the exchanges. In one-third of the U.S.,
exchanges will have only one insurance provider. Premiums and deductibles are
exploding. Even the New York Times
blares, “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have to Change to Survive.”
Young people, refusing to pay disproportionately to
subsidize older and sicker patients, are not signing up. As the risk pool
becomes increasingly unbalanced, the death spiral accelerates. And the only way
to save the system is with massive infusions of tax money.
What to do? The Democrats will eventually push to junk
Obamacare for a full-fledged, government-run, single-payer system. Republicans
will seek to junk it for a more market-based pre-Obamacare-like alternative.
Either way, the singular domestic achievement of this presidency dies.
The Obama Doctrine
The president’s vision was to move away from a world
where stability and “the success of liberty” (JFK, inaugural address) were
anchored by American power and move toward a world ruled by universal norms,
mutual obligation, international law, and multilateral institutions. No more
cowboy adventures, no more unilateralism, no more Guantanamo. We would ascend
to the higher moral plane of diplomacy. Clean hands, clear conscience, “smart
power.”
This blessed vision has just died a terrible death in
Aleppo. Its unraveling was predicted and predictable, though it took fully two
terms to unfold. This policy of pristine — and preening — disengagement from
the grubby imperatives of realpolitik yielded Crimea, the South China Sea, the
rise of the Islamic State, the return of Iran. And now the horror and the shame
of Aleppo.
After endless concessions to Russian demands meant to
protect and preserve the genocidal regime of Bashar al-Assad, we finally
capitulated last month to a deal in which we essentially joined Russia in that
objective. But such is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for our president that he
wouldn’t stop there.
He blatantly violated his own cease-fire with an air
campaign of such spectacular savagery — targeting hospitals, water-pumping
stations, and a humanitarian aid convoy — that even Barack Obama and John Kerry
could no longer deny that Putin is seeking not compromise but conquest. And he
is prepared to kill everyone in rebel-held Aleppo to achieve it. Obama, left
with no options — and astonishingly, having prepared none — looks on.
At the outset of the war, we could have bombed Assad’s
airfields and destroyed his aircraft, eliminating the regime’s major strategic
advantage — control of the air.
Five years later, we can’t. Russia is there. Putin has
just installed S-300 antiaircraft missiles near Tartus. Yet, none of the rebels
have any air assets. This is a warning and deterrent to the only power that
could do something — the United States.
Obama did nothing before. He will surely do nothing now.
For Americans, the shame is palpable. Russia’s annexation of Crimea may be an
abstraction, but that stunned injured little boy in Aleppo is not.
“What is Aleppo?” famously asked Gary Johnson. Answer:
the burial ground of the Obama fantasy of benign disengagement.
What’s left of the Obama legacy? Even Democrats are
running away from Obamacare. And who will defend his foreign policy of lofty
speech and cynical abdication?
In 2014, Obama said, “Make no mistake: [My] policies are
on the ballot.” Democrats were crushed in that midterm election.
This time around, Obama says, “My legacy’s on the
ballot.” If the 2016 campaign hadn’t turned into a referendum on character — a
battle fully personalized and ad hominem — the collapse of the Obama legacy
would indeed be right now on the ballot. And his party would be 20 points
behind.
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