By Jonah Goldberg
Thursday, November 07, 2013
Many of the president's supporters are in barely
concealed panic over the fact that he didn't tell the truth when he was selling
the Affordable Care Act.
In an oft-repeated vow, he told the country that "if
you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan,
period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
This was, by any common-sense measure, a lie. It was a
lie because President Obama understood that one of the central aims of the Affordable
Care Act was to squeeze out the individual insurance market (and the small
business market), forcing those Americans on to the HealthCare.gov exchanges.
You can't force people out of one insurance product and into another while
simultaneously letting them keep their plan. That'd be like a car salesman
promising a great price on a new vehicle if you trade in your old one, while
still promising you can keep your old car.
This simple fact of logic is causing many liberals to
flee for what they believe are rhetorical safe harbors.
The first refuge is that he was simply being
"unclear." The "White House could have been clearer in laying
the groundwork for this political argument," writes The Washington Post's
Greg Sargent. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., says, "I think we
should have been more precise." The New York Times' Editorial Board says,
"Obama clearly misspoke when he said that."
In most dictionaries, misspeaking is defined as a slip of
the tongue. Is it really misspeaking when the president repeats a poll-tested
pledge dozens of times, often reading from prepared remarks on his
teleprompter, straight into the camera? Is it really a slip of the tongue when
the White House puts out videos and talking points centered on this false
claim?
Obama wasn't telling the truth unclearly; he was telling
a falsehood very clearly. When he said "no matter what," it even left
the impression that, if in some unforeseen way the law did cause people to lose
their plan, he would remedy the situation. (If that were so, the White House
would support congressional efforts to let people keep their plans.) The
"period" in "you'll be able to keep your health care plan,
period" means no ifs ands or buts. Now we are getting a barrage of
"buts."
On Monday night the president grasped for a rhetorical
do-over. "Now, if you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care
Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep
it if it hasn't changed since the law passed." Except for the fact that's
entirely untrue, it's pretty persuasive.
The most popular alibi is, "Yes, people are losing
their plans, but they're getting better ones." The New York Times and the
president have embraced this line. But even that isn't necessarily true.
Some people already know they don't think the new plans
are better. In many cases, they're more expensive with higher deductibles and
stiffer co-pays. Better for the consumer and better for bureaucrats or
progressive social planners don't always mean the same thing.
Even if turns out to be true, as Obama insisted in Boston
last week, that the majority of Americans will get better coverage than they
had before, that's no rebuttal to the charge the president lied.
If a landlord promises you can keep your dog when you move
into an apartment, but then after you sign the lease he takes your dog and
replaces it with a stuffed one, he wasn't telling you the truth. The landlord's
view that the new dog is better ("No mess! No noise!") is utterly
irrelevant to the question of whether the landlord lied -- and it doesn't make
you a fool for preferring your old dog, either.
It's good that liberal supporters of the law admit that
what the president said wasn't true, even if they can't bring themselves to
call the president a liar. But they might want to think a bit about the
standard they are establishing.
Do they really want to say it's OK for presidents to lie
if it is for a good cause? Surely, some presidential lies are painfully
necessary. (Franklin Roosevelt lied quite a bit in the lead up to World War
II.) But Obama's lies (including his promises that the Affordable Care Act
would "bend the cost curve" down and that the average family would
save $2,500 a year in health care costs) were in the service of partisan legislation
that has never been popular.
Many liberals forgive Obama for his noble lie. I doubt
they'd be as forgiving if a Republican president similarly lied to impose an
unpopular partisan agenda.
No comments:
Post a Comment