Word: specializes
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...Murphy said that her client—"the one person who did not overreact, a woman with no special training who nevertheless did everything right"—had not been asked to join Obama, Gates, and Crowley—"the three highly trained guys who reacted badly"—at the White House. She said that Whalen "doesn't like beer anyways" and joked that "maybe it's a guy thing," but added that she thought it was "strange" how little positive attention has been paid to Whalen...
...difficult things to do in a democracy is react to a problem that is real, but not immediately threatening. Obama is trying to do this in two monster areas, health care and climate change. "He's killing me," says Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, referring to the hordes of special-interest groups that have camped on her doorstep and clogged her phone lines. Stabenow is smiling as she says it. She supports the broad thrust of Obama's initiatives. "But you can't believe all the groups that want to make their case. There are the doctors, the nurses...
...long ago as 1982, the economist Mancur Olson made the argument, in The Rise and Decline of Nations, that as a democracy matures, special interests grow more entrenched. Their intense dedication to their own specific needs, Olson wrote, often trumps the broader, but less focused, interests of society. And that was before the rise of cable news and talk radio. It was before the utterly corrupting effect of televised advertising on politicians really kicked in - the need to raise money (from interest groups, mostly) and to exercise extreme caution lest one of your votes be used to decapitate...
...Bush enacted. Occasionally, responsible actions take place in the budget process. Bill Clinton spent most of his political capital on deficit reduction, which helped fuel the economic boom of the 1990s. Obama has just managed to kill the F-22, an anachronistic fighter jet. Very, very occasionally a special interest will take it on the chin - as the teachers' unions did when Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated a testing regimen the teachers didn't like. But the passage of landmark legislation like the health-industry reforms that Obama is seeking has become about as common...
...malpractice insurance cripples doctors - and drives up the number of tests and procedures they perform in order to bulletproof themselves against lawsuits. Obama has said he is open to malpractice reform, but congressional Democrats haven't included it in their bills because trial lawyers are a major Democratic special-interest group. Another Democratic interest group, organized labor, has blocked the most logical and progressive way to fund a universal health-care system - eliminating the tax exclusion on health benefits and replacing it with a progressive tax credit. The health-care exclusion is, at approximately $250 billion, the single biggest...