My letter to the president

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Times-News Online

February 19, 2017

Mr. President (with a copy to James Baker):

Have you noticed all the viscous black fluid on the floor of the Oval Office, Mr. President? I’m confident you have since there is so much of it. It’s oil. The White House is leaking oil. With all respect, Mr. President, you are responsible for the mess.

Once your staff gets you copies of what I have written about you in my columns over the past year and a half, I suspect that this letter will have little beneficial effect, although in my defense I’ve been far more critical of Hillary Clinton than of you. But I offer the advice that follows because I believe all Americans are obligated to help any president succeed. Because when the president succeeds, the nation is well served.

I had the privilege of serving as a federal employee for 36 years from 1964-2001. During that time, I was staff director of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Health Subcommittee, an NIH associate director and a member of the Senior Executive Service. My tenure spanned the terms of seven presidents from LBJ to Bill Clinton, more than enough to see the good, the bad and the ugly.

The challenges you now face, having won an election that most of official Washington and its allies in the media, academe and private sector believed to be impossible, are historic and daunting.

You know Washington is broken. You know the government no longer serves the American people because it spends its energy and our money serving itself. You know that both political parties are part of the problem, not the solution. And you know that you aim to fix that problem. But aiming to fix the problem and knowing how to fix it are not the same thing.

The magnitude of what you hope to accomplish is staggeringly large and complex. The odds of success, even under the best of circumstances, are de minimis. There is no room for unforced errors in your effort to make America great again.

And yet there is abundant evidence that, since your inauguration, there has been a cascade of unforced errors flowing from the White House. Such errors only serve to reinforce the deep and intractable divisions in Washington and in the heartland. Those errors better enable your opponents to thwart your ambitious program.

You can’t reform the Washington leviathan by shooting from the hip, especially 140 characters at a time. You can’t expect a White House staff to serve you and all of the rest of us well when its strength is running a political campaign and not reforming a government that is systemically broken, unaccountable and out of control. The bureaucracy, its allies on K Street and Democrats on the Hill do not regard you and your team as the “Christmas help” for nothing.

Here’s a sampler of the unforced errors: First off is the inaccurate and inappropriate response you made to Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday when O’Reilly referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderer.”

As you know, Vietnam war hero Gen. Barry McCaffrey reacted to your comments by saying, “I’m actually incredulous that the president would make a statement like that. One could argue that’s the most anti-American statement ever made by the president of the United States. To confuse American values with Putin ... .” McCaffrey’s reaction, sir, shakes me to the core. You, too, should find it jarring.

But there is more, much more. It’s now clear that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence with respect to his telephone call to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, concerning possible sanctions against Russia. His resignation was inevitable.

Press secretary Sean Spicer’s behavior has harmed your administration’s relations with the press and enabled “Saturday Night Live” to butcher him to the delight of its many viewers. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s inappropriate lambasting of Nordstrom in defense of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line has led to a bipartisan call from Capitol Hill for an investigation by the Office of Government Ethics.

And on the Sunday talk shows last weekend, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said that “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” Anyone familiar with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution knows that such questioning, called judicial review, is part of the fabric of our government.

If I could wave a magic wand, Mr. President, I would rid your White House of several more of the key individuals you have put in place. They are not serving you well not because they are disloyal. They are not serving you well because they don’t have the skill sets that would give them a fighting chance to properly advise you. I would replace them with individuals equipped to help you govern this great nation.

However, I have no such magic wand. So here’s an alternative suggestion: Pick up the phone and call James Baker. Tell him you need his immediate advice and counsel. Be prepared to hear him out one on one, and be prepared to not like what you hear. Then follow his advice and clean up the oil slick on the floor of the Oval Office, by tasking Pence, not Priebus, to put this right.

Although your administration is young, Mr. President, the hour is late.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. I welcome comments.  Please contact me at:

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Will the Senate pull the nuclear trigger - again?

Will the Senate pull the nuclear trigger - again?

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Asheville Citizen-Times

January 22, 2017

The inauguration of President Trump ushers in a period of change and tumult that does not occur frequently. But Trump came out of nowhere and won the Republican nomination and the presidency when almost no one expected that he would do anything but flame out.

The 2016 election is one for the books. It was a stunning upset that put egg on the faces of many professional pollsters, and left the Democrats gasping for breath. It gave the voters a crystal clear choice between continuity and change. Change won. Now the Republicans must stand and deliver.

Some of those changes President Trump will be able to accomplish unilaterally with the stroke of a pen by annulling executive orders put in place by his predecessor. And in foreign relations, the president also has great freedom to act without having to seek congressional approval. However, for the most part the changes that the president will seek will require affirmative action by Congress either in the form of new law, appropriations, or both.

The agenda is mind-boggling, complex and controversial. Here’s a sampler: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, tax reform, energy independence, border security, Supreme Court nominations, the infrastructure rebuild, immigration reform, job creation, homeland security, and the fundamental rewrite of federal work rules that will enable the President to separate the wheat from the chaff in the calcified and unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

On first blush it would appear that the way is clear for the newly minted president to put his program in place. The GOP controls both houses of Congress. But there’s a fly in the ointment, a lethal fly.

Although the GOP controls the Senate by a 52-48 margin, they are far short of the 60 vote super majority that is now necessary to pass legislation or approve nominations to the Supreme Court. The likelihood that at least eight Democrats will vote with the GOP on these matters is nonexistent. Thus, absent something extraordinary, the Senate will be the graveyard for most of the president’s program.

The Senate has brought itself to its knees by its abuse of the filibuster. The abuse has been bipartisan, led by whichever party happens to be in the minority. Current Senate rules require a 60 vote super majority to end a filibuster or threatened filibuster. Those rules have eviscerated the Senate.

The filibuster is not a part of the Constitution. In fact its birth in 1806 was accidental and stemmed from a revision of Senate rules recommended by its presiding office, Vice President Aaron Burr. One of the changes was the elimination of a rule that allowed a simple majority to end debate. That rule change created the filibuster. The first filibuster did not occur until the 1850s. Filibusters remained rare from then until well into the 20th century. However, since the early 1990s, the use of the filibuster by the minority party has skyrocketed to the point of absurdity. Now it’s routine for the minority party to filibuster or threaten to filibuster all major legislation and many judicial nominations.

The Senate can, if it wishes, circumvent the suffocating effect of the filibuster and the 60 vote super majority. It can do so by triggering what is known as the nuclear option. Invoking the nuclear option would enable the Senate to approve measures with a 51-vote majority.

In November of 2013 then Senate majority leader, Democrat Harry Reid, invoked a limited version of the nuclear option thus enabling all presidential nominations to the executive branch and the federal judiciary, excepting the Supreme Court, to be approved by 51 votes.

Senate Democrats and President Obama enthusiastically supported Reid’s move. Republicans, led by their Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, cried foul.

Now Senate Majority Leader McConnell needs to return Reid’s favor and expand the use of the nuclear option to legislation and to nominations to the Supreme Court. If McConnell has not the backbone to end the abuse of the filibuster, he will bear the responsibility for having been responsible for, in my opinion, the single most destructive act of political malpractice in modern times.

If McConnell invokes the nuclear option, the Democrats will predictably go berserk. But it’s not the end of the world for them or the nation. They have recourse. They can develop better policy prescriptions and better candidates for national office and reclaim the governing mandate at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. It’s called democracy, and, unlike the filibuster, it is in the Constitution.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock and can be reached at:

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Demystifying the success of Trump

Demystifying the success of Trump

By

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BlueRidgeNow.com

Times-News Online

January 15, 2017

Nobody, and I mean nobody, took Donald Trump’s candidacy seriously.

At the beginning in 2015, such universal disregard was predictable and understandable. After all, he was a Democrat turned Republican of sorts. He had little or no political experience. He was unorganized, a loudmouth, and demonstrated little or no knowledge of domestic or international policy issues.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he was a joke whose demise appeared inevitable.

But in early 2016, he began to win Republican primaries. As his victories piled up, his Republican opponents, the conservative intelligentsia, most of the print and electronic media, and the Democrats chose not to wise up. Somehow they deluded themselves into thinking he would be rejected at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

When that didn’t happen, they then assumed Hillary Clinton, with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle in tow, would pulverize him on Nov. 8. When that didn’t happen, the sore losers predictably needed scapegoats to blame — FBI Director James Comey, Russian hackers, fake news stories, and angry white men. Now they believe Trump will destroy America.

What we’ve got here is a combination of political correctness prejudice, the blind leading the blind and the Keystone Kops. Let’s try to unpack this nonsense to see how Trump won and what it may portend for his presidency.

The election of Trump is understood by grasping two points, both important, but one of pre-eminent significance. The lesser of the two is that he faced a fatally flawed and deplorable adversary in Clinton.

Clinton demonstrated in 2008 that she knew how to turn victory into defeat. She wrongly assumed her nomination and election were inevitable. She was a terrible campaigner, wooden and defensive. She surrounded herself with a staff of haughty yes-people. And she woefully underestimated the strength of her rival, Obama.

In 2016, she doubled down on those same mistakes and added more. She was never able to get in front of the crisis she created with her home-brewed email system. She never had a message of change in a change election. She wrongly assumed that demonizing Trump would take her to the promised land. Instead, it took her to Chappaqua, N.Y.

However, Clinton didn’t lose this election. Trump won it. How and why he won it remains opaque to most Americans because Trump does not fit the normal pattern of behavior we know about politicians.

And there’s more. The institution in America that one would reasonably and properly expect to help us comprehend how atypical Trump was as a candidate, and how atypical he likely will be as president, is the press. But the press failed us by failing to follow its prime directive, to report the news whether it liked it or not. Instead, most of the mainstream print and electronic press spent the campaign behaving as if it was an extension of the Clinton campaign. Its hatred of Trump was palpable.

The withering anti-Trump onslaught from Andrea Mitchell, Katy Tur, Kasie Hunt and Hallie Jackson on NBC and MSNBC was a lesson in journalism at its worst. What’s more is that these folks and many of their colleagues in the press brainwashed themselves in the process into believing Clinton’s victory was in the bag.

The best example of that was there for all of us to see on the Sunday before the election when, on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopolus,” the time came for its power panel to predict the outcome of the election. That’s when lead panelist Matthew Dowd predicted that Clinton would win at least 431 electoral votes and would win the greatest diversity victory in the nation’s history.

Dowd’s prediction was delivered with certainty and glee. The following Sunday, Dowd was nowhere to be seen.

Trump won because he’s qualitatively different than the 15 opponents he defeated in the GOP primaries and the Democrat he defeated in the general election. Unlike all of his opponents, Trump sensed the fury in the heartland that has been building for years against Washington.

Correctly sensing that fury enabled Trump to successfully declare war not only on Clinton and the Democrats but also on the Republican Party. In so doing, he has brought both to their knees, a stunning accomplishment that the press has yet to tell you about! There is good reason to believe he will remake the GOP. Whether the Democrats comprehend that they face an equally daunting challenge is anybody’s guess.

OK, so Trump won. But how will he govern? Will he now become indistinguishable from the swamp creatures he follows, like Obama and Bush? I doubt it for two reasons. First, he really is different. He’s not a Washington insider. He loathes and distrusts them. More importantly, he knows that if he doesn’t deliver on draining the swamp, he’s a goner in 2020.

In fact, we already have evidence of how profoundly different the Trump presidency will be. As its first act of business, on Jan. 3, the House GOP Caucus voted to gut the independent U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The move was inappropriate and stupid. The optics politically were incomprehensible.

Trump did not duck and cover. Instead, he immediately launched a twitter blast at his own party members. They promptly turned tail and reversed course.

A new day is about to dawn in Washington. It’s long overdue.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  

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Trump needs a new Marshall plan

Trump needs a new Marshall plan

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

Citizen-Times

December 19, 2016

As World War II ended, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had the vision to propose the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan.

Europe lay in ruins. Its nations’ economies had been devastated, and their infrastructures pulverized. Although the war had been won, peace was by no means assured, and the future of democracy in western Europe hung in the balance.

The United States faced a monumental decision. It could turn inward, rely on the ephemeral protection of the two great oceans that appeared to buffer it from the war’s devastation and the emerging Soviet threat. Or it could take the lead in confronting these problems. America chose to engage.

In 1944 President Roosevelt proposed the GI Bill. Once enacted it opened the door to education and job training for almost eight million American service men and women. Then President Truman and Gen. George Marshall proposed the Marshall Plan. Both programs won bipartisan support.

Today we need another, a very different, bipartisan Marshall Plan and GI Bill, one that is tailored to America’s 21st century needs, and one that will create an American renaissance.

This nation’s infrastructure is in shambles. The signs of decay and danger are everywhere evident. Makes no difference where you look: roads, bridges, the electric grid, underground pipelines, airports, railroads, dams, or nuclear waste, America is in trouble. The unavoidable truth is that our Rust Belt is not confined to the Midwest. It stretches from sea to shining sea. It’s what happens when the nation lacks the resolve to do what it must do to preserve its supremacy.

On Nov. 3, 2010 President Obama said, “it makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth — that used to be us.” He was right, but lamenting the obvious, while doing virtually nothing about it doesn’t cut it.

The deterioration of America’s infrastructure is well documented. Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issues a Report Card on the state of nation’s infrastructure. It last Report Card, published in 2013, doesn’t paint a pretty picture. It’s overall grade point average for the 16 categories it covers is D+--meaning, at risk.

Turning this sorry situation around won’t be cheap. In 2013 ASCE estimated it would require an investment of $3.6 trillion by 2020.

ASCE’s next report will be available in March, just in time to be relevant as Congress considers what is widely expected to be President Trump’s infrastructure initiative. If Trump is daring and proposes a 21st century Marshall Plan for America it will have another enormous benefit — jobs.

Since 2000 the nation has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs, as firms have closed plants and left the country, and as automation, technology and robotics continue to revolutionize the workplace. An infrastructure rebuild will immediately benefit many of those Americans who have been the casualties of our contracting industrial economy. A massive infrastructure rebuild will enable many, who now sit in despair on the sidelines of the American economy, to find good-paying jobs. For the near term future that will be magic in a bottle for them. But for the long term it will be woefully insufficient.

Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive director of the World Economic Forum, wrote earlier this year, “we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. The transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.”

The American workforce is unprepared for the transformation of the world economy now underway. If we permit that curve to get ahead of us, our national supremacy will sputter and die.

Thus, the infrastructure rebuild must also provide the funding that will place American workers in the forefront of what’s coming, an economy that will integrate physical, digital and biological realms in ways that are largely still unknown. Funding for this job training and creation effort should come from an earmark of the federal funding for the infrastructure rebuild that is then matched by all of the entities receiving such funding.

First in line for such advanced education and training should be those Americans whose jobs have been lost since 9/11 and veterans who have served honorably since 9/11 plus the 40,000 veterans who are homeless.

Want to make America great again? This is the beginning.

I welcome comments:  Please contact me at:  

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Menotti's enduring Christmas gift

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Hendersonville Times

BlueRidgeNow.com

December 18, 2016

Christmas is about presents, right? It’s certainly not about Christ or Christianity. There’s ample proof of that. We don’t count down the days till Christ’s birthday. We count down the SHOPPING days till Christmas.

It all begins with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which used to be called the Macy’s Christmas Parade. And regardless of what it’s called, we know Macy’s is in the business of selling stuff, not Christ. Heck, too many Americans now acquiesce to the notion that saying the words “Merry Christmas” is a form of religious intolerance. Political correctness demands we say, “Happy holidays.” How about we just say, “Happy stuff”?

Moreover, the selling frenzy has been taken to new heights. We’ve got Black Friday (which now begins on Thanksgiving), Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. And when we finally get to Dec. 25, the conversation is all about what we got, not what we gave.

So, since Christmas is all about presents, I want to tell you about my greatest Christmas present ever. I hope it may cause you to think, or rethink, what your very best Christmas present has been, or could be.

Come back with me now to Christmas Eve 1951. I was 13, and earlier that year we got our first TV. It was a black and white RCA with a 12½-inch screen. It was housed in a large wooden cabinet in order to accommodate its massive picture tube and its numerous and relatively short-lived vacuum tubes. For our family and millions of other families, it opened a wholly new and exciting world.

And on Christmas Eve that year, that TV brought into our living room the debut of what was to become television at its very best, the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” program. That Christmas Eve, it presented Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera for children of all ages, “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” It was broadcast live.

Don’t let the word “opera” turn you off. Back then, I couldn’t sing, read music or play an instrument, and that has never changed. None of those limitations was consequential that Christmas Eve as my family and I tuned in to NBC and went to the opera.

Menotti had been commissioned by NBC to write the first opera for television. While he intended to write an opera for children, he faced an oncoming Christmas deadline without any clear idea of what to write. But then, as Menotti visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in November, he came upon “The Adoration of the Kings” by Hieronymus Bosch. It reminded him of his childhood in Italy and how children there believed their Christmas gifts were brought not by Santa Claus but by the Three Kings. Bosch’s portrait of the Magi gave Menotti just the inspiration he needed.

After the dress rehearsal just days before Christmas Eve, Arturo Toscanini, director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, told Menotti, “This is the best you’ve ever done.”

Amahl, a disabled boy, and his mother live in grinding poverty near Bethlehem. They are Arabs. Amahl has an outsized imagination, and his mother does not believe him when he tells her of a gigantic star over their roof. She also does not believe him when he tells her that three kings are at the door and wish to rest for the night.

But the star is there, and so are the kings. They come from the east, and they follow a star. One is a Persian, another an Indian, and the third a Babylonian. Like Amahl and his mother, they are not Jews. They are on their way to offer gifts to an infant they believe to be the newborn King of the Jews.

Amahl and his mother also want to offer gifts to the child, but they have nothing — until Amahl offers to give his crutch to the kings to take to Jesus. When he makes the offer, his leg is miraculously healed, and he then leaves with the Magi as they complete their journey.

My takeaway from that splendid program was the miracle that healed Amahl. It took me another 38 years to realize that I had missed Menotti’s real meaning of Amahl.

Since 1951, “Amahl and the Night Visitors” has been performed on every continent and seen by more people than any other opera in history. Just before Christmas in 1989, it played at the Eisenhower Theater in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. My wife and I went. I wanted to see it again, and she had never seen it. The staging was remarkable with falling snow and real goats.

It was there that I first understood that opera’s real meaning. It all had to do with the juxtaposition of the three kings’ gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh with Amahl’s gift of his crutch. The Magi had immense power and wealth. Their gifts came easy. But Amahl’s crutch was not only the only thing he had, it was the one thing that gave him the ability to walk. He had no reason to believe that offering his crutch to the Christ child would lead to his miraculous healing.

And that is the magic in Menotti’s “Amahl.” It’s an enduring Christmas present for each of us, if we open our minds and our hearts.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:

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How Trump handles Obamacare will set his presidency's course

Commentary: How Trump handles Obamacare will set his presidency's course

By Stuart H. Shapiro

and LeRoy Goldman

Philly.com

The Inquirer Daily News

December 1, 2016

The most important question facing Donald Trump is whether he has the vision and the courage to serve as president of all Americans, as he proclaimed during his victory speech, or whether he will take the path of both his immediate predecessors and serve only the half of America that elected him. That choice is monumentally difficult. You only have to look at the recent protests in Philadelphia and elsewhere to witness the fear, anger, and dismay of those who won't accept the result of a free election that dealt them a surprising and profound loss.

What Trump chooses to do right out of the gate will set the tone for all that comes after. If he's going to go big, as he likes to do, then he's got to start big - and nothing is bigger than Obamacare.

President Obama chose, unwisely, at the outset of his administration to embark upon health-care reform. By jamming a bill through the House and Senate without careful consideration of the specifics of the legislation, he and the Democrats in Congress were both naive and unwise, and they paid dearly for it. Their tunnel vision cost them the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Since then, Obamacare has torn the nation in half. It has become a rallying cry for the right and a symbol of progressivism for the left. On Nov. 8, its chickens came home to roost on the White House lawn.

The Obama administration's assumptions about its costs and enrollment in Obamacare have been wildly wrong. The legislation is named the Affordable Care Act, and it's anything but that for those who have to pay for it. Today, it teeters on the brink of collapse as premiums skyrocket and insurance companies flee its marketplace.

The Republicans, for their part, have been just as unwise and bullheaded. The House has voted symbolically more than 25 times to repeal Obamacare, all to no avail. The Senate expended considerable energy and used the arcane budget reconciliation procedure to get a repeal bill on Obama's desk, knowing full well that he would veto it.

Now, with the election of Trump, most Republicans are licking their chops for revenge wanting to light a bonfire fueled by the thousands of pages of Obamacare. If Trump buys into that mean-spirited strategy, he will sacrifice his chance to be a transformational president. He must chart a different and better course.

What is to be done? Here are the essential elements that Trump and Tom Price, the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, must make part of a of a bipartisan solution: Terminate the Obamacare mandate that forces Americans to enroll in it. Terminate the program's tax penalties. Abolish the crumbling exchanges. Authorize insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Expand health savings accounts. Enact tort reform. Allow young people up to age 26 to remain on their parents' policies. Don't let insurance companies deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. Deem eligible for Medicaid anyone now covered under Obamacare if they cannot find or afford coverage in the private marketplace. These policies would hold harmless the 21 million people now covered by Obamacare.

After developing the broad outlines of this plan, Trump needs to explain it to the nation in a prime time address. Then he must take congressional leaders and key committee chairmen, from both sides, to Camp David. He and Price can present their plan, say they are open to improvements, stressing the need for bipartisanship, and make clear that the helicopters back to Capitol Hill will not be available until a deal has been reached. That was the bipartisan way the legislative process worked when each of us led the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health, and how it needs to work today.

If the new president does that, a new day dawns in Washington, one that is long overdue, and one that will be welcomed by the vast majority of the American people, no matter whom they voted for on Election Day. Indeed, if successful, Trump would prove that he is a master deal maker in the league with Lyndon Johnson, Tip O'Neill, Ronald Reagan, and Ted Kennedy.

The columnists can be reached at:

Stuart H. Shapiro is a former Philadelphia health commissioner. shapirostu@gmail.com

LeRoy Goldman is a former associate director at the National Institutes of Health. tks12no12@gmail.com

TRUMP'S OPPORTUNITY—OBAMACARE

By

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Asheville Citizen - Times

November 20, 2016

TRUMP'S OPPORTUNITY—OBAMACARE

The most important question facing President Trump is whether he has the vision and the courage to serve as President of all Americans, or whether he will take the path of both of his immediate predecessors and serve only the half of America that elected him. That choice is monumentally difficult because the nation is terribly and evenly polarized. You only have to look at the riots in Oregon and elsewhere to witness the fear, anger, and dismay of those who won't accept the result of a free election that they did not see coming and lost.

It's also the case that what Trump chooses to do right out of the gate will set the tone for all that comes after. If he's going to go big, he's got to start big. And nothing is bigger than wither Obamacare.

President Obama chose unwisely at the outset of his Administration to embark upon healthcare reform the way he did. In fashioning Obamacare he and the Democrats on the Hill were naïve and unwise in both what they did and how they did it. Their tunnel vision cost them the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Obamacare has torn the nation in half. On November 8^th Its chickens came home to roost on the White House.

The Obama Administration's assumptions about its costs and who would enroll in Obamacare have been wildly wrong. It's named the Affordable Care Act, and it isn't. Today it teeters on the brink of collapse as premiums skyrocket and insurance companies flee its marketplace.

The Republicans for their part have been just as unwise and bullheaded. The House has voted symbolically 50-60 times to repeal it, all to no avail. The Senate used the arcane Budget Reconciliation procedure to get a bill repealing it on Obama's desk that they knew he would successfully veto.

And now, with the election of Donald Trump most Republicans are licking their chops. What too many of them want is revenge, a bonfire that burns Obamacare and hangs Obama in effigy. If Trump buys into that mean spirited strategy, he will sacrifice his chance to be a transformational president. Instead he must chart a different and better course.

What is to be done? Here are the essential elements of a bipartisan solution: Terminate the Obamacare mandate that forces Americans to enroll in it. Terminate the program's tax penalties. Abolish the crumbling Obamacare exchanges. Authorize insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Expand Health Savings Accounts. Enact tort reform. Preserve the option of allowing young people up to age 26 to remain on their parent's policies. Preserve the requirement that insurance companies not deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. And deem eligible for Medicaid anyone now covered under Obamacare who chooses to enroll in it if they can not otherwise find or afford coverage in the private marketplace. That will hold harmless the 21 million people now covered by Obamacare.

After developing the broad outlines of this plan, President Trump needs to explain it to the nation in a prime time address, and then take about 20 key members of Congress to Camp David, including House Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi, Senate Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer plus the Chairmen and Ranking Minority members of the 4-5 Congressional committees that handle health care, including also the Appropriations Committee leaders. He needs to present his plan to them, say he's open to improving it, say he wants the final product to be a broad bipartisan accord, and say that the helicopters back to the Hill will not be available until they agree.

If he does that, a new day dawns in Washington, one that is long overdue, and one that will be welcomed by the vast majority of the American people.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock and can be reached at:

EmailMe