“How has your thinking changed over the past three years?”

Harold Pollack writes:

Over the past three years, we have experienced an amazing number of political, economic, and legislative trials. I suppose it’s human nature to respond to such events by doubling down on our own prior strongly-held beliefs. Health care reform/TARP/stimulus, whatever–that proves that I am even more right than I thought I was!

That’s really too bad. We’ve been through some hard trials recently, in multiple senses. We’ve been tested by difficult times. We’ve also had the opportunity to see many of our beliefs tested through real-world experiments that should challenge our ideological, strategic, and policy views. Anyone active and attentive should be thinking differently about _something_ important after having witnessed so much history being made so quickly on so many different fronts.

Have your own views changed on any basic issues of domestic policy? I’m not so much interested in your assessment of particular politicians or specific political tactics. Rather, I’m interested in some substantive position you’ve changed in light of evidence or experience.

My own [Pollock’s] views have changed in a few areas. Watching so many seniors oppose health reform and other measures to help struggling younger people, my attitudes have hardened a bit on issues of intergenerational equity. I’m more sympathetic towards Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health reform efforts. Many of us in the Obama camp identified the Clintons’ prior mistakes with greater alacrity than we proved able to anticipate our own. I’m more impressed than I was three years ago by the sheer power of the affluent in America to shape political outcomes in tax policy and in many other areas. I was surprised by the depth of the financial crisis, by the failure of nominally profit-maximizing institutions to avoid or ameliorate the financial crisis.

How about you?

I don’t have anything particularly useful to say about my own views, but regarding the specific issue of health care, let me to my article with Daniel and Yair and also an article from July 2009 by Bob Shapiro and Sara Arrow pointing out that the public opinion for Obama on health care reform was actually very similar to that facing Clinton in 1994:

2 thoughts on ““How has your thinking changed over the past three years?”

  1. I have been dismayed to witness the capture of the debate and policy by corporate interests and the wealthy. I am dismayed by the huge political inequalities and how they shape and perpetuate economic inequalities. I am dismayed by the role of the Koch brothers in destroying human rights in this country (by targeting the right to unionize and strike). I now view our democracy as not flawed but functioning, but broken. An uprising like that in Egypt to challenge deeply entrenched corruption (for this is corruption) seems enviable.

  2. Obama is too similar to Clinton in too many ways, health care is just one of them. I would like to see Times put him and Bill side to side instead of Reagan.
    health care, don't ask don't tell, change for America…just to list a few. But surprisingly, he fired Emanuel for having too sharp of an elbow.

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