Is Obamacare This Century's Equivalent of "Who Lost China?"

In 1947, President Harry Truman engineered the passage of an aid package to Greece and Turkey.  At the time, both countries feared Communist takeover.  He used it as a foundation of his famous Truman Doctrine, which simply promises aid to any country resisting Communist takeover.

The very next year, Chiang Kai Shek fled China for Taiwan, leaving the massive mainland portion in the hands of the bloody Communist Mao Tse Dong.  Although "losing China" did not lose Truman the 1948 election, it frightened Democratic presidents for a generation.  They knew the electorate saw them as soft on foreign policy so they endeavored to not lose again.  Kennedy and Johnson fought in Vietnam for American, but also Democratic Party credibility.  Losses of both in Vietnam convinced future Democrats, rightly or wrongly, that course was unwise.  Could the Obamacare disaster do the same to their Big Government ideals?

The health care law is called the Affordable Care Act.  Since October, Americans have found out how Orwellian that moniker is.  Premiums have skyrocketed; millions lost their plans altogether.  The government system, based mostly on a $634 million website, does not work.  It is also only about 60 percent completed.

You might say that the healthcare.gov site gave Americans a crash course in why it should not run a business.

Meanwhile, Obama's poll numbers sank.  One might expect a serious dip in job performance.  But for the first time, a majority of Americans find him both dishonest and incompetent.

The long term effect of this on American politics could be profound.  The "who lost China" effect made Democratic presidents more bellicose for the next two decades.  At least one pundit believes Obamacare could make Democrats very gun shy about pursuing massive overhauls on this level again.

The cumulative effect of the first two presidential administrations on the country could be a body blow to backers of aggressive government action in any sphere.  Many still see the Iraq War (which the United States actually won) as a breakdown and a failure.  Obamacare has crashed a major segment of the country's economy and thrown millions into suffering and turmoil.  Both of these add up to further popularize libertarian concepts of government's role.

Time will tell whether this cows the Democrats and leads to a long term revision of what Americans expect from government.  But in the short term, confidence in government in any sphere is extraordinarily low.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing.