LESS THAN A CENTURY

While the historic passage of health care reform today had not a single Republican vote, we should give a nod to a couple of long gone Republican presidents who championed, but failed to achieve this overdue reform.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, one of the famous four on Mount Rushmore, made national health care a plank in his run for president, four years after he gave up the presidency in 1908. Although TR, who governed as a Republican, was running on the Bull Moose ticket, he was essentially representing the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which had been taken over by the conservatives during William Howard Taft's administration.

In 1973, Richard Nixon, who it turns out was a passionate proponent of national health care, proposed it to a Congress that was soon to focus on his removal from office for Watergate offenses.

The 178 unanimous and grim House Republican faces that said NO on giving health care to an additional 30 million while they champion trillions for senseless war, have amnesia when it comes to their two national health care forebears. TR's apostasy was being a progressive, the bete noir of current Republican propagandists like Glenn Beck who liken them to Nazis and communists. Nixon, has been largely erased from the Republican play book due to his disgraceful and early exit.

But in the Big Smoke Filled Room In The Sky a couple of Republican icons are surely smiling and gratified that their cause didn't even take a century to accomplish.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, March 24, 2010 and the Chicago Sun Times
March 25, 2010