Looks like George and Yogi were right

It’s unlikely that philosopher George Santayana and the great Yankee catcher Yogi Berra ever knew one another. But they shared an understanding of human nature. Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and Yogi said, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

The unnecessary, futile and poisonous battle in Washington over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling has begun in earnest. It will play out over the next month and will be eerily reminiscent of what occurred in 1995-96.

Shortly after his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton began his effort to enact comprehensive health care reform. He asked the first lady, Hillary Clinton, to lead the effort. She headed the task force that developed the legislation that promised universal health care.

The health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry were adamantly opposed to the legislation and destroyed it with a nationwide campaign of television ads featuring Harry and Louise, who dramatized the complexity of the plan and the dominant role of the federal government. By September 1994, the plan was dead. Its demise was assured by its stupefying complexity and red tape. The Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress, never brought the legislation to a vote.

Not only had the Clintons failed in their effort to enact health care reform, they had also sewn the seeds of a Republican renaissance on Capitol Hill. Exploiting the unpopularity of the Clinton’s failed health care reform proposal, the Republicans captured the House for the first time in 40 years and also regained control of the Senate. It was a Republican revolution, and it was led by the GOP’s firebrand from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, with his Contract with America. President Clinton was humbled and famously and inaccurately announced that “the era of big government is over.”

It didn’t take long for the battle lines to be drawn between the White House and the House Republicans. And they were drawn around federal spending and the debt ceiling. In late 1995, Clinton vetoed a spending bill that the Republican-controlled Congress had passed with spending cuts in Medicare, the environment and education.

In addition, the developing crisis also threatened to risk a default by the government as Congress threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit unless Clinton agreed to its proposed cuts to the federal budget. The impasse resulted in two government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996 totaling 28 days.

The Republicans overplayed their hand by not recognizing the severity of the public’s opposition to the shutdown and the risk of default’s effect to the economy. Clinton exploited the House Republicans’ overreach to regain his standing with the public and to use that popularity in his successful effort to win a second term against Sen. Bob Dole later in 1996. Gingrich’s Republican revolution sputtered and died.

Most of the political class did not expect Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But once he did, there was no doubt he would be elected in November. President George W. Bush’s dismal performance for the previous eight years guaranteed that, just as it had guaranteed the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006.

As Obama took the oath of office, the nation’s economy was in free fall. The failure of Lehman Brothers the previous September had made clear that something really scary, really bad had infected the economy.

But rather than reaching out to Congress on a bipartisan basis to address the failing economy, President Obama chose to make the enactment of health care reform his top priority. Having made that strategic, unforced error, he then made the matter far worse. He turned the job of writing the bill over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

We know what happened. The nation was torn in half as the debate over Obamacare became ever more bitter. The public did not and still does not understand Obamacare. No Republican voted for the bill. Obamacare and the way it was handled on the Hill poisoned the well for all ensuing legislation.

Opposition to the bill helped give birth to a political force that has haunted Obama and his legacy ever since the 2010 election — the tea party. The tea party has become Obama’s nemesis, and he is its father! It now controls the House Republican Caucus. Speaker John Boehner is its puppet.

Tea Partyers loathe Obama. They will stop at nothing to repeal Obamacare, and they are willing to shut down the government and/or refuse to raise the debt ceiling and incur default in order to get their way.

Those leading the charge, including especially Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, refuse to recognize the futility of their doomed effort. The lessons of 1995-96 are lost on them. It is always thus for zealots.

All of this has significance for the 2016 presidential contest. Don’t be surprised if the Republican contest for the nomination turns into a death struggle among Cruz, Libertarian Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. The one thing they have in common is that none of them will stand a chance against the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

In her inaugural address in 2017, she will announce that first husband Bill Clinton will head a task force to fix Obamacare! It’s deja vu all over again.

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