President Obama whined on “The Today Show” yesterday that
politics was getting in the way of his noble effort to reform
health care on behalf of the American people. To her credit,
Meredith Vieira didn’t buy it. And if Meredith Vieira doesn’t buy
it, Obama’s got big problems.
Obama has always portrayed himself as the white knight riding to
the rescue of the people. It’s his heroic proposals vs. evil
special interests. Period. He was at it again yesterday morning,
but the veil of nobility is wearing so thin that even “Today
Show” hosts can see through it.
When Vieira quoted Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., saying, “”If we are
able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will
break him,” Obama saw his opening.
“All the previous questions you asked, that’s the answer to,” he
said. “This is not about ‘do we need a little more time to get
this right, to be constructive, to talk to the policy analysts.
This is all about politics. That describes exactly an attitude
that we’ve gotta overcome. Because, what folks have in their
minds is that somehow this is about me, it’s about politics, and
the ability to win back the House of Representatives. And people
are thinking back to 1993 when President Clinton wasn’t able to
get health care, right after that the House Republicans
won…”
At this point Vieira interrupted.
“But this is about politics, Mr. President. This is a key issue
for you. You have a big stake in this. If this falls apart, that
is not good for you.”
Obama pulled his pensive stare-at-the-floor look, shook his head,
and brought up “the people.”
“Meredith, I, I, all I can say is that this is absolutely
important to me. But this is not as important to me as it is to
the people who don’t have health care. I’ve got health care. This
isn’t as important to me as the family that’s going bankrupt
because they got a bunch of medical bills that they thought the
insurance companies would cover. It turned out they weren’t
covered. So, yes, absolutely, I am deeply invested in getting
this thing done. But this isn’t Washington sport. This isn’t
about who’s up and who’s down. This is about solving an enormous
problem for the American people.”
It’s all about the people! You’d think Obama was Zorro, he talks
about “the people” so much.
Earlier in the interview, Vieira asked him why he set an August
deadline for getting a health care bill passed through Congress.
He actually said that it wasn’t his deadline, it was the
people’s.
“The deadline’s not being set by me. The deadline’s being set by
the American people.”
You remember voting on that, don’t you? Signing that petition to
Congress to have health care reform passed by the August recess?
Me neither.
Obama can pretend all he wants that only the other side is
playing politics, but someone among the White House press corps
ought to ask him this: Isn’t proposing a government revision of
17 percent of the entire U.S. economy inherently political?
How is it that proposing massive government-initiated overhaul of
the entire health care sector is not political, but opposing such
a step is nothing but playing politics?
The president assumes that his rhetorical sleight-of-hand will
get health care reform as he envisions it passed. But his
assertions are transparently false. They are, in short, purely
political. If Meredith Vieira can see that, the rest of the
country can, too.
