Custer Had a Plan

I keep hearing that the Republicans don’t have a plan on health care. That charge is demonstrably false, but it persists. Just yesterday, a friend of mine posted a snide comment on Facebook, asking whether anybody really thought the Republicans would “start over” and do something about health care. The unspoken assumption is that health care is in terrible shape and anything would be better than what we have now.

The Democrats have a sweeping plan for radical change, and the Republicans don’t. Never mind the polls showing that people mostly like what we have now.

I readily concede that the Democrats have a plan. Custer had a plan, too. It was a bad plan based on a false assumption that Indians would never congregate in such large numbers. Therefore he believed he could send half of his troops to attack one end of their encampment while he led the rest around to the other end. No one was able later to ask Custer just how far away he thought the other end was or how many Indians he expected to encounter along the way.

So while the Democrats prove their willingness to go charging into the situation with no concern for the consequences, with no idea where they might come out on the other end, I find myself siding with Major Reno, who led the initial charge into the Indian camp while Custer set off to implement his grand envelopment. Reno recognized a disaster in the making and went into a defensive position, holding on until saner commanders arrived on the scene.