I have to say that this was one hope that I had for the current administration before he took office. Trump said the entire current health system was a mess before he got elected. Since he wasn’t beholden to either party and his strength came from his base, he could have pushed something good through and conservative politicians would have to go along.
Most of the ACAs faults were caused by Congress not being able to improve it without the parties working together.
It would have been an “only Nixon can go to China” moment.
I don't think the “only Nixon can go to China” was ever meant to be prescriptive. Using it as a voting tactic would basically always mean voting for the candidate opposed to your ideas.
It's also doubtful that it is even empirically correct: Nixon may have gone to China, but Obama went to Iran and Cuba, and also made the most progress on health care since medicare and medicaid. All that was required of Trump was not to destroy that progress, which is strictly easier than expecting any progress from him.
The phrase that “only Nixon could go to China” meant that since Nixon was well known as being anti-communist, no one would suspect him of being a “secret Communist”.
Even if Romney had been elected and tried to implement health care reforms, he couldn’t do it. He had to disown his own accomplishments as governor because he had to work within the political system, Trump didn’t.
In tech terms, the only CEO of Apple that could have made the deal with Microsoft and Gates in the 90s was Jobs. No one was going to doubt Jobs loyalties were with Apple or that he was just there for a paycheck.
Nixon also didn’t do all of the legwork behind going to China. But he was the person seen making the deal.
But as far as Apple, who do you think was more effective? A random CEO who was at Apple for less than 100 days talking to random people at Microsoft or Jobs being able to call up Gates directly - someone who he worked with for both the Apple // plus (AppleSoft Basic was written by Microsoft) and with the introduction of the Mac - Gates was on stage at the introduction?
Amelio was at Apple for over a year; his memoir about it was titled, "On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple". One of his claims was that the Microsoft thing was already a done deal by the time he left. The only "Nixon" thing about it was how Jobs could (just barely) get away with standing on the stage at Macworld with Bill Gates ominously looming over everyone like Big Brother.
Fair enough (100 vs 500). But by your own admission, the analogy still holds. While Jobs could “just barely” get away with it, can you imagine Amelio trying to get away with it at all among the few at the time remaining Apple faithful?
