Healthcare and the Public Option for Debate

So for those who can stand a few more comments from me on the issue of healthcare I have a very short piece over at the National Review Online . Whatever misgivings I have about the details of Obama’s various proposals aside, his approach to passing the legislation is a good example of his technocratic interpetation of governance—the view that the contests of honor and morality that so often characterize political life can be decisively overcome by bureaucratic expertise. The political problem with such a view is that technocratic competence is inconsistent with participatory democracy not merely because it closes off political deliberation to the non-specialist but also because its passion for certainty bristles at the needlessness of public debate. For those blessed with programmatic certitude, all that is left of public deliberation is the ad hominem assassination of their benighted enemies.