February 15, 2005

Bredesen for President? Not Without a Cogent Plan...

Larry Daughtrey, Tennessean columnist, had a column Sunday looking at why Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen keeps being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. I rarely say this about a Daughtrey column, but this time you really should read the whole thing. It's fairly good, though Daughtrey is clearly trying hard to boost Bredesen's stock.

Bredesen has shrugged off talk of presidential ambitions. But the context and content of two recent speeches, little reported in Tennessee, suggests that this is more than a fleeting fancy. The first was in Atlanta last month, to a gathering of Southern Democratic Party leaders pondering the choice of a new chairman. ''The next time, we want a 50-state platform, we want a 50-state party, and we want a 50-state campaign,'' Bredesen said flatly.

The problem with the party, he went on, is that it is captivated by ''sterile'' interest groups in Washington and has lost touch with people who believe in traditional values, including a belief in God. "The bottom line is: Our party needs to get off its rear and get back in direct touch with the people it wants to represent. I have no desire to belong to a party that represents the hopes and aspirations of non-profit public interest organizations in Washington. I dream about belonging to a party that speaks to the aspirations of construction workers and retail clerks in Montgomery and just-married couples in Pensacola."

The second speech was last week to a think-tank organization in North Carolina. In it, Bredesen laid out a cerebral, well-reasoned indictment of Medicaid, which goes by the name of TennCare here. "At budget time, it has become the gorilla that comes to the table and eats and drinks what it wants, and then education and public safety and state employees get to fight over what is left." His proposal for reform: Everyone pays something, pay for important things first, and pay only for what works rather than a catch-all program that invests billions in cold medicines and antacids.

In a speech on health care to eggheads, he managed to work in two references to "deep and personal religious values" and a lengthy passage about his love for hunting since an early age. Taken together, the speeches can be taken as the beginnings of an intellectual foundation for a presidential campaign.

Daughtrey contines:

The Medicaid problem is afflicting every state and straining budgets in the way TennCare has here. The National Governors Association is struggling to find a coordinated response to the problem, and Bredesen has been the first to step forward with a cogent strategy that goes beyond temporary adjustments.

If Bredesen had a cogent reform plan, he could implement it tomorrow by signing an executive order. Two executive orders, actually. The first would pull the plug on TennCare, which was created by executive order in 1994 by then-Gov. Ned McWherter. A program created by executive order can be canceled by executive order.

With a second executive order, Bredesen could replace TennCare with whatever cogent new state healthcare program Daughtrey is convinced Bredesen has up his sleeve.

Except ... Bredesen doesn't have a cogent plan, he has merely a cogent analysis of the problem. If he has a cogent plan, he certainly hasn't had the courage to act on it.

That's why for the past few months Bredesen has been reduced to begging a federal judge and groveling before a self-appointed group of "public interest" attorneys for permission to make changes to a dying program. Gov. Phil Bredesen is a wealthy former healthcare business exect who the people of Tennessee elected primarily to fix TennCare. More than halfway into his first term, he hasn't done it. Failure like that is a poor foundation for a presidential run.