What's next for year 2 of beleaguered U.S. president?

President Obama will not risk what remains of his influence as leader of the Democrats to press for adoption of the Senate health care bill by the House of Representatives. Nor is he likely to risk another major failure by pressing to get legislation that might emerge from a possible House-Senate compromise approved in a budget reconciliation process that requires only a simple majority for passage.

This leads to my prediction that no significant health care reform will emerge from Congress unless the Republican leadership plays the decisive role in formulating legislation that they would present as a Republican victory for freedom and American traditional values. But the Republicans have not shown any inclination to take on the insurance industry or to make health care universally available. Democrats won't go along, and we'll see only blame games ad nauseam.

The same prediction strikes this columnist as a safe bet for the fate of the rest of President Obama's ambitious legislative agenda. When election time comes in November and little has been accomplished, anger and a “throw the bums out” mentality will prevail among the minority of Americans who get to the polls and vote. The Democrats will lose substantial numbers of seats in the 2010 mid-term elections, but there will be enough blame to heap on the Republicans for getting the country into this morass that their election gains will not be sufficient to give them majority control of either the House or the Senate.

Goldsmith is a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan's Kaohsiung Office, and author of “Jade Phoenix,” a prize-winning novel of 1970s Taiwan that is offered in a Far East edition by Bookman Books Ltd. in Taipei. Goldsmith can be reached at syd.goldsmith@gmail.com

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