Lying in State

On a previous occasion, I have written of my mixed views re political commentator, ex-presidential candidate, and celebrity pundit Pat Buchanan. I greatly admire his writing style, pugnaciousness, and disregard for political correctness and fashions--I much doubt that he ever will get  Bethell's "Strange New Respect" Award. He, however, has more than the whiff of the racist and anti-semite about him, and that turns me away from him. That said, when he's on point, there is nobody who states it more clearly. He has written an interesting--flawed, but interesting--take-no-prisoners column which is well-worth reading. Much like a columnist I do admire, Frederick Douglas, he has a brutal way of using words that leaves no doubt where he stands.

Posted November 1, in "Human Events", and titled--provocatively--"THE FIRST HUSTLER RUNS THE BIG CON," his article is a raw, powerful, merciless take-down of Obama and his woeful misadministration,

“Nothing is lost save honor.” 

So said Jim Fisk after he and Jay Gould survived yet another scrape in their corrupt and storied careers in the Gilded Age. 

Fisk’s dismissal of honor came to mind while watching Barack Obama in Boston smugly explain how his vow — “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it!” — was now inoperative. 

All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler. 

In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled. 

That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were “substandard” plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of “bad-apple insurers.” 

“So if you’re getting one of those letters (canceling your insurance plan), just shop around in the new marketplace. … You’re going to get a better deal.” 

Behind the arrogance is the realty: Obama has the veto power. No alteration of Obamacare, except for changes he approves, can be made before the winter of 2017. And by then, Obamacare will be so deeply embedded in law and practice it will be beyond repeal. 

We won, you lost, was written across Obama’s face.

Writing about the misadministration's lies about the increasingly and obviously disastrous Obamacare bungle, Buchanan goes on to note that,

He conned the people into believing something he knew to be false — that all Americans would be allowed to keep the health care plans that they had and liked. 

This assurance, repeated again and again, helped disarm the opposition. Americans who liked their doctors and insurance plans and were repeatedly told they could keep both were not only relieved; they became more receptive to the idea of helping the less fortunate. 

Hard to disagree with Buchanan, thus far. He then, however, makes what I consider a mistake that cheapens his argument and, in fact, without need makes the colossal and unique nature of Obama's lie, less so on both counts,

Obama’s assurances of keeping your insurance plan if you like it now enters presidential history alongside George H.W. Bush’s “Read my lips! No new taxes,” Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” and George W. Bush’s tales of yellow cake in Niger and hidden arsenals of WMDs.

The examples he uses are nowhere in the league with the lie foisted on the American people by Obama.  G.H.W. Bush's "No new taxes!" was a political pledge which he failed to keep when he got outmaneuvered by the Democrats and pushed into a bad deal by GOP stalwarts such as Bob Dole. He got outplayed, and forced into something which he didn't want but came to own and paid for it in the 1992 elections. Clinton's statement was, of course, a lie, but it is the cheap lie of a philandering husband who doesn't want his wife, in this case the fearsome Hillary, to beat the crap out of him. It did not cost people's jobs, income, or health insurance, it did not threaten a giant industry, and promise to blow a hole in the budget for years to come. Buchanan is particularly unfair, and this shows his strange bias in favor of corrupt Arab regimes, in grouping George W. Bush in this assortment. When it came to Iraq and nuclear WMDs, the second Bush was reporting and acting on what his intel services--as well as the intel services of nearly the whole world--were telling him. He was not lying. There is no purpose in making Obama's behavior seem one of a piece with a long line of presidential "liars." Presidents, politicians, ordinary mortals can be wrong without being liars. I am sure even the sharp mind of Buchanan has failed him on occasion without making him a liar.

In the Obamacare roll-out we have something almost unique. The evidence gets stronger almost daily that Obama and his minions knew that what they were saying about Obamacare was not true. They knew that many people, millions, in fact, would not be able to keep their existing plans and doctors, but went ahead a stated that they would, and blasted anybody who suggested otherwise.

Lying is an integral part of this misadministration's governing ruling style. We have rulers who do not hesitate to lie, and to lie big. We see it, for example, in their handling of "Fast and Furious," and the accompanying lie that the guns in Mexico come from American gun shows and stores; in the cover-up of the IRS' targeting of  conservative political groups and donors; the lies about our policy toward Syria; and, of course, in the grotesque mendacity present in the Obama misadministration's handling of the Benghazi murders. We have seen it again in the promotion of Obamacare, perhaps the most ill-conceived and executed big government program in American history.

William James, one of my favorite philosophers, stated in his brilliant essay, "The Will to Believe" (Note: Everybody should read it!) that, "In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark." We don't know the future, in fact, we often don't know the present or the past. We rarely can be certain that a politician is lying to us or just wrong. In Obama's case, however, there is no doubt. He is a liar.