Obama could use Truman’s backbone.

With universal health insurance now in tatters, withdrawn today as a serious component of President Obama’s prescription for health care reform, it is fair to say that Obama reached his Waterloo and – as the Far Right predicted — beat a hasty, shameful retreat.

I don’t know of a president who has sold out his core constituencies so quickly — almost offhandedly. In eight short months, Obama as piled up the disappointments, all of them important  issues to the people who elected him.

Today it was universal health care. Before that it was foot-dragging on closing Guantanamo,  a refusal to investigate Bush-era rights violations, dumping legislation to help homeowners renegotiate their loans, getting us deeper into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, not to mention his lackluster support for gay rights and the legalization of marijuana.

The question arises: what does this president stand for?

The answer is: everything. He stands and takes whatever punches the GOP and the Far Right throw at him. Instead of fighting back, he caves. And caves. And caves.

Universal health care, now known as the public option, has been a core principle of health care reform going back to the days of Harry Truman. We did not elect Obama to implement insurance reform, although that must necessarily be a part of health care reform. What we care about is providing health insurance to the 47 million Americans who don’t have any. Obama is now saying that left and right are “fixated” on the public option. We are no more fixated on universal coverage than anti-war advocates are fixated on peace.

As Alan Colmes put it, “When are Democrats going to stop letting Republicans railroad them?” Of course, the shame of it all is that the main Democrat getting railroaded is Barack Obama.

Although some argue that caving in to Republicans is in the Democrats’ DNA, Harry “Give ‘Em Hell” Truman was one Democrat who had a backbone and stood up for what he believed in.

Case in point: Just after World War Two the U.S. was threatened with a number of serious national strikes by steel workers, coal miners, and others.  As a Democrat, Truman’s sympathies were certainly with the unions, but he could not sit back and let them bring the country to a standstill no matter how powerful or influential they were.

In 1946 the last straw for Truman was a threatened strike by railroad workers. Truman and the White House worked hard to get the two sides to agree to a contract, but to no avail. Truman then went before Congress to say that any railroad worker who went on strike would be drafted into the Army. While many doubted that such an act would actually be constitutional, Truman was ready to issue such orders.

Simply by holding firm, using his backbone instead of caving into the unions, the strike was averted. In fact, the unions gave in just as Truman was delivering his speech to Congress.

Many point to Franklin Roosevelt as a model for Obama to follow. A better one, I think, is Truman. If Obama could stick up for his convictions and principles with the same tenacity and courage as Truman, the public option — covering 47 million uninsured Americans — would still be in play.

Of course, all this assumes that Obama truly has convictions and principles. Today’s capitulation to conservatives makes me wonder.