Why the healthcare debate is so…healthy

For years, Americans have been exposed to the rankest form of ideological debate. Vitriol, invective, ad hominem attacks.

Unfortunately, most of the wrangling has involved “culture war” issues that don’t affect most of our lives.

But healthcare is a bread-and-butter issue. It’s a massive chunk of our economy and an intimate part of all our experiences.

And over the last year, we’ve watched how government in a democracy actually gets done.

Ideologues on both sides have their vision of how this should all work: Put simply, their ideas should prevail.

There is a strong current of lazy utopianism out there, both within the tea party movement on the right and the MoveOn.org crowd on the left.

What we’ve seen in Washington has been the nitty-gritty, feet-of-clay reality of debate, compromise and incremental reform.

Are special interests wading in with both fists? Sure. Are outsized personalities (Joe Liberman, Howard Dean) throwing their weight around? Absolutely.

It’s disappointing to people who want clean revolutions and upheavals that lead to perfect solutions.

And especially disappointing to people who don’t read enough history to know that in a free society big change comes incrementally.

Bottom line? Health care reform has stymied our society for the better part of a century.

To borrow a phrase, this beat-up, battered version of healthcare reform now beign debated is the product of the worst form of government imaginable.

Except for all the others that we’ve tried.