The Enemy of Good

In all the hullabaloo over yesterday's Supreme Court Ruling on Obama's health care act, we forget that Obama didn't come up with the plan. Ironically, a large part of the plan was cribbed from Richard Nixon's own plans. Believe it or not, Tricky Dick wanted to reform health care, and he actually had an ally in Senator  Ted Kennedy. However, because the plan wasn't exactly what Kennedy wanted, because it was just good and not perfect, Kennedy scuttled the whole thing.

Kennedy died before any actual health care reform bill was passed. One of his biggest regrets, aside from inconvenient lakes (zing!), was sabotaging Nixon's plan because it wasn't perfect. Kennedy learned a hard lesson, one we should all be wary of: perfect is the enemy of good.

I'm not here to talk about the specifics of the Affordable Care Act (or "Obamacare" for short). No, I want to talk about the perfection trap, the lie that everything must be perfect or it isn't good. That if you can find one fault, one flaw, then we need to tear everything down and start over.