What’s best or what’s possible?
What are Harry Reid’s duties on healthcare?
Writing for Daily Kos, Laura Clawson criticizes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for emphasizing the need to move a healthcare bill to the Senate floor over prioritizing a so-called “public option.” By his own account, Reid has one job above all others:
“But I have a responsibility to get a bill to the Senate floor that will get 60 votes that we can proceed toward.”
“That’s my No. 1 responsibility,” Reid continued, “and there are times I have to set aside my personal preferences for the good of the Senate and I think the country.”
Clawson isn’t convinced:
According to Reid, his responsibility is to get a bill, any bill to the Senate floor that can get 60 votes. Doesn’t matter if the bill does what it needs to do, what the people of this country need it to do. Nope.
This may be a trickier ethical situation than Clawson is willing to admit. There a few ways to imagine this problem. The following do not represent my views, just a few ways Democrats might look at it:
Version 1
(A) Reid has a duty to bring the most morally desirable bill to the floor
(B) Only a bill with a public option is morally desirable
Therefore (C), Reid has a duty to bring a bill with a public option to the floor
Version 2
(A) Reid has a duty to improve healthcare in America
(B) A bill with a public option is the most morally desirable bill
(C) Passage of no bill is the least morally desirable outcome
Therefore (D), ???
Version 2 is harder to figure out. How do we balance the most morally desirable outcome against the least? Some people would say the following:
Version 3
(A) Reid has a duty to improve healthcare in America
(B) A bill with a public option is the most morally desirable bill
(C) Passage of no bill is the least morally desirable outcome
(D) Limiting moral damage is more important than promoting moral good
Therefore (E) Reid has a duty to ensure a healthcare bill passes
These are just two ways to imagine the moral calculus. There are others, and it’s not clear the premises of these arguments are entirely sound. But people who quote Bismarck (who said politics “is the art of the possible”) usually have something like Version 3 in mind. Sometimes something less that the best is better than nothing at all.
–Sam
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