I really enjoyed the film (500) Days of Summer. It’s probably the best romantic comedy I’ve seen in awhile. But watching the story line play out in health reform is quite disheartening.
On the one hand we have our wide eyed, hopless romantic Sen. Max Baucus. His heart is in the right place. He wants to do the right thing, the right way. Knowing that America needs health reform, Max did everything he could to do it the way the Villagers say it should be done. He held hearings on reform for a full year before Congress formally took up legislation. He rejected Dirty Fucking Hippie ideas like Single Payer. But most importantly, he included his Summer– Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley– in everystep of the process. Not only was Max committed passing reform, he was going to do it with his bussy bady by his side.
To be fair, Chuck was also smitten by this idea. Chuck also wanted what all young 70-something Senators want: to get things done like they used to in 1980’s– the bipartisan way! Chuck ignored his friends who said he was too young to be so committed to such niave and unAmerican ideas like providing quality health care to every American.
But as of late, it seems that Chuck’s restless Iowa spirit has lead him to say things like this:
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a key Republican negotiator in the quest for bipartisan health-care reform, said Wednesday that the outpouring of anger at town hall meetings this month has fundamentally altered the nature of the debate and convinced him that lawmakers should consider drastically scaling back the scope of the effort.
After being besieged by protesters at meetings across his home state of Iowa, Grassley said he has concluded that the public has rejected the far-reaching proposals Democrats have put on the table, viewing them as overly expensive precursors to “a government takeover of health care.”
Sigh. Max was just moving too fast for an old fashioned guy like Chuck. As in the original (500) Days of Summer, the audience has to sit through a period of prolonged angst and patheticness on the part of the Believer in All Things Love. Even though Chuck has told Max he wants to move on to “smaller” reforms to would require “80 votes in the Senate” Max is clinging to hope, telling reporters that things are “still on track” and will produce “bipartisan reform”.
I wasn’t entirely happy with the ending of the original (500) Days. I really wanted to see the Believer stand up to the Jilter. But in the end he didn’t have courage to do it. I hope this isn’t true of Sen. Baucus. Enough is enough of the futile attempts at bipartsianship. Sometimes you gotta know when to move on.
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