“Town halls have become town hells,” says Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to President George W. Bush who supported Barack Obama in the November election. He was referring, of course, to contentious meetings between members of Congress and constituents on the subject of changes to America’s healthcare system. McKinnon, who used to serve with me on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, knows how to turn a phrase. But deep concern about the government’s healthcare activity is nothing new, and politicians who believe that the opposition to the Democrats’ plan is a put-up job are deceiving themselves and imperiling their own careers.

Such self-deception abounds. Paul Krugman, a cheerleader for the House healthcare reform package, recently wrote in the New York Times: “I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.” The responses, he wrote, are “something new and ugly.”

Actually, they are not new at all, and, in ugliness, it is hard to match an incident that occurred almost precisely 20 years ago.

The uproar over the lack of decorum at some of today’s town hall meetings is a sideshow. President Obama and many Democrats in Congress are trying to push changes in healthcare that Americans, quite simply, do not want.

The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was accosted by constituents angry about the passage of the Catastrophic Coverage Act, which expanded Medicare benefits and funded the change with a supplemental tax.

The Chicago Tribune reported on Aug. 19, 1989:

Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, was booed and chased down a Chicago street Thursday morning by a group of senior citizens after he refused to talk with them about federal health insurance. Shouting “Coward,” “Recall” and “Impeach,” about 50 people followed the chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee up Milwaukee Avenue after he left a meeting in the auditorium of the Copernicus Center, 3106 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the heart of his 8th Congressional District on the city’s Northwest Side.

Eventually, the 6-foot-4-inch Rostenkowski cut through a gas station, broke into a sprint, and escaped into his car, which minutes earlier had one of the elderly protesters, Leona Kozien, draped over the hood. Kozien, one of more than 100 senior citizens who attended the gathering, said she had hoped to talk to Rostenkowski, her congressman, at the meeting.

But Rostenkowski clearly did not want to talk with her, or any of the others who had come to tell their complaints about the high cost of federal catastrophic health insurance. “These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” the 61-year-old congressman complained as he tried to outpace his pursuers.

In fact, writes Stephen Bainbridge, “I think they understood too well.” I am indebted to Bainbridge, the UCLA law professor who writes the ProfessorBainbridge.com blog, for digging up the Tribune clipping (by the way, Krugman should also note that the story was covered by the New York Times in 1989 as well) and reminding people today of the anger directed against Rostenkowski and his colleagues at the time.

Deep concern about the government’s healthcare activity is nothing new, and politicians who believe that the opposition to the Democrats’ plan is a put-up job are deceiving themselves and imperiling their own careers.

David Hyman, on the excellent Volokh Conspiracy blog, points out a nice bit of irony: The leader of the protest against Rostenkowski was “Jan Schakowsky—then director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens—and currently Democratic representative from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois, and chief deputy whip” in the House. (Schakowsky’s boss, Nancy Pelosi, has been denigrating the town hall protests as emanating from “AstroTurf” rather than genuine “grassroots” concern.)

I remember the anger 20 years ago. I was running Roll Call, the congressional newspaper, at the time. President Reagan signed the Catastrophic Coverage bill into law in July 1988, and Congress repealed it in November 1989. Six years later, Richard Himelfarb published an entire book on the subject, Catastrophic Politics. He described in detail how seniors “angrily confronted lawmakers on their trips home.”

Nor is the concept of organizations getting people out to town hall meetings something new. Democrats used trade unions this way to help defeat President Bush’s effort to reform Social Security and stave off the system’s insolvency. As Steven Greenhouse reported in the New York Times on April 1, 2005:

The nation’s labor unions stepped up their campaign yesterday to stop President Bush’s Social Security plan, staging demonstrations in New York, Washington, San Francisco, and 70 other cities. The protests are part of a huge effort that labor has mounted, packing congressmen’s town meetings with union members, pressuring investment firms to stop backing Mr. Bush’s proposal, and collecting tens of thousands of signatures to denounce his call for personal Social Security investment accounts.

The truth is that the uproar over the lack of decorum at some of today’s town hall meetings is a sideshow. President Obama and many Democrats in Congress are trying to push changes in healthcare that Americans, quite simply, do not want. People are skeptical of plans that will vastly increase government spending at a time of record budget deficits—and they fear losing what they prize most: the ability to choose their own doctors and not suffer the kind of rationing that plagues European and Canadian systems. In addition, judging from history, they think that further government intervention will raise costs.

On July 31, the Gallup Organization summarized the findings of its recent polls on the subject:

– “Although the majority of Americans believe the U.S. healthcare system has major problems, less than 20% perceive that the U.S. healthcare system is in a state of crisis. This has not shifted significantly in 15 years.”

– “Americans are not convinced that healthcare reform will benefit them personally. This is, in part, because most Americans are satisfied with their current medical care and access to healthcare. Seniors in particular are not convinced that healthcare reform will benefit them.”

– While Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the cost of healthcare, they don’t see reform as lowering costs. Some 45 percent believe healthcare costs will rise overall with a new healthcare reform law, compared to 30 percent who believe costs will fall.

– “The push for healthcare reform is occurring in an environment characterized by high levels of concern about fiscal responsibility, government spending, and the growing federal deficit.”

Gallup concludes: “Americans also appear dubious about the benefits of what they perceive to be less-than-fully-informed representatives in Washington rushing into a new healthcare reform law when the need for such legislation is not the highest on the public’s agenda.”

Polling shows clearly that Americans want to wait before passing healthcare reform, but, as time goes by, it will become harder for Congress to pass a bill with major changes—in part because Americans are learning what is actually in the bill.

One example that I have cited lately is a measure, which has cleared a Senate committee, that would give drug companies exclusivity on biologic medicines—preventing any generic competition for 12 years beyond the life of patents on drugs developed using biotech methods. Competition would reduce drug costs, but an extended monopoly is the price that many members of Congress seem willing to pay in order to get pharmaceutical companies to support their overall healthcare plan.

Another example—defeated, at least temporarily—was a provision that would have opened the door to massive Medicare lawsuits, to the immense benefit of trial lawyers, an important Democratic constituency (this issue is called Medicare Secondary Payer). Who knows what further evil lurks in the heart of the 800-page bill?

The lesson of the town hall meetings—which so obsess the media—is not that Americans are ill-mannered (though some are) but that they seriously doubt that the sweeping changes will improve healthcare and lower costs. If the president wants reform, he will have to address the public’s utterly appropriate concerns. So far, he hasn’t.

James K. Glassman is president of the World Growth Institute, which promotes global economic development, and monthly investing columnist for Kiplinger's, Personal Finance.

FURTHER READING: Glassman also wrote “Obama’s Guantanamo Problem—And Ours” on how Gitmo requires deep thought, not glib pronouncements and "Trial Lawyer Medicare Bonanza Averted — For Now," on a stealth amendment to the healthcare bill would enrich trial lawyers and could pave the way for potentially massive class action suits.

Image by Darren Wamboldt/Bergman Group.