It’s life, James, but not as we know it
Comey’s riveting testimony is all but lost in the Trump Administration chaos.
In another year, decade or recognisable universe, former FBI director James Comey’s testimony before Congress would have been the political event of a generation, the kind of thing that you remember where you were when everything turned and a presidency began to buckle under the burden of its original sins. But this is the Donald Trump Administration, so it was, you know, a Thursday. You could watch Comey’s utterly riveting description of the US President behaving like a second-tier mob boss with the mental equivalent of a split screen. One side of your brain registers that you are witnessing something historic, consequential, disturbing; the other side is still trying to process all the other historic, consequential, disturbing things that have happened since February and suggesting that there is probably another one on the way soon, so maybe you want to save your energy.
It is hard to convey the surreality of being in the US right now: norms collapsing amid normalcy. The electricity still works. It can be hard to stay on top of all the good TV shows. At the same time, there are so many unfolding crises and fast-moving, far-reaching policy shifts – any one of them enough to consume a normal presidency – that it’s impossible to register them properly. Here’s just one.
When Trump was elected, one of the greatest fears among Democrats was he would overturn Obama’s healthcare law just when it seemed to have escaped multiple Republican attempts to stymie it. Then, a new conventional wisdom set in: it was going to be a lot harder for him to meddle with the law than he realised. People were starting to understand its benefits. Republicans would never risk the blowback from kicking millions of people off their insurance.
Trump’s first effort to scrap Obamacare seemed to confirm this. His engagement was so superficial that he was busy pretending to drive a big truck for a photo opportunity when the news came through that his party couldn’t muster sufficient support for his replacement bill. Many people assumed this would be the end of it. Trump would lose interest and move on. Obama’s signature achievement would remain intact.
Trump definitely lost interest – to the extent he ever had any – but the effort to undo Obamacare has been faring far better without him. First, Republicans threw together a bill, held no open hearings, and rammed it through the House before the standard analysis could be completed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which assesses the cost and effectiveness of legislation. The CBO confirmed what experts had predicted: the law would result in 23 million people losing their insurance and wouldn’t protect people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Now, something very similar is occurring in the Senate. The assumption was the debacle would die there – that Republicans would purposely let a dog’s breakfast of a bill fail so they could say they had tried to fulfil their central campaign promise before moving to initiatives they are more excited about, such as cutting taxes. Instead, as the Russia investigation has gathered speed and Trump’s legal troubles have mushroomed, the Senate bill has been quietly inching forward – no sure thing but far closer to passage than anyone thought possible.
As Jonathan Chait of New York magazine has pointed out, the Senate legislation is no less catastrophic for Americans than the House version. It just delays the worst consequences for five to seven years – long enough to detach political cause from effect. It’s the kind of intentional malfeasance that used to be called a scandal. Now it’s just one more thing sliding through the chaos.
It is hard to convey the surreality of being in the United States right now.