"The ability for elected officials to say things that are untrue, and I would say the ability to say one thing to one audience, and another thing to another audience has ended... There is no such thing as off the record. There is no such thing as a 'closed to press' meeting. Anybody with a cell phone can pick up the video.
"Senator Obama himself learned that when he told a fundraising group in San Francisco in March... He made some comments about people who owned guns in small communities that ended up, of course, costing us a lot of votes in rural Pennsylvania... Anything you say you should expect to be on Youtube...
"The premium for what ... I might just call being honest is much higher than it used to be: that what people could get away with even 4 years ago isn't going to happen." Anita Dunn, White House communications director for the first year of the Obama administration, speaking at a Jan. 12, 2009 event in the Dominican Republic on Obama's media tactics. (Minutes 4:40-6:32 of Youtube video)
Anita Dunn reminisces about the lost "ability for politicians to say things that are untrue" or more precisely, "to say one thing to one audience and another thing to another audience." What? Politicians lie?
Dunn acknowledges a premium for a politician speaking truthfully. Robert Reich (D) alluded to the same phenomenon in his September 26, 2007 speech at Berkeley, where he listed the goals of government-run healthcare.
According to Dunn, politicians can't "get away with" being honest about their goals any more. She even notes how her politician, Obama (D), unfortunately found he could no longer speak so truthfully in public settings. In Obama's case, he revealed his distaste for small town gun owners and people who "cling" to religion out of frustration (Youtube video).
The premium to politicians for revealing the true goals of their policies to the people is that those politicians might not get to inflict their visions on anyone. To paraphrase Lincoln, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool anyone if you actually tell them the truth about your plans for them. Imitating a doctor or nurse, but on a grander scale, politicians pretend they're saving the world with their "re-forms," lying to you that "it won't hurt a bit," right until they jab the needle in. Healthcare "re-form" will hurt, but according to the politicians, it's for our own good, so it's ok for them to lie; we can thank them later.
Politicians know what's best for us--just ask them.
Obama and the Public "Option"
On August 11, 2009 in Portsmouth, N.H., in his pursuit of healthcare "re-form," the President carefully made "a distinction between a universal plan versus a single payer plan" (video):
Q: "Mr. President, you've been quoted over the years -- when you were a senator and perhaps even before then -- that you were essentially a supporter of a universal plan. I'm beginning to see that you're changing that. Do you honestly believe that? Because that is my concern. I'm on Medicare, but I still worry that if we go to a public option, period, that the private companies, the insurance companies, rather than competing -- because who can compete with the government; the answer is nobody. So my question is do you still -- as yourself, now -- support a universal plan? Or are you open to the private industry still being maintained?"
PRESIDENT: "Well, I think it's an excellent question, so I appreciate the chance to respond. First of all, I want to make a distinction between a universal plan versus a single-payer plan, because those are two different things.
"A single-payer plan would be a plan like Medicare for all, or the kind of plan that they have in Canada, where basically government is the only person -- is the only entity that pays for all health care. Everybody has a government-paid-for plan, even though in, depending on which country, the doctors are still private or the hospitals might still be private. In some countries, the doctors work for the government and the hospitals are owned by the government. But the point is, is that government pays for everything, like Medicare for all. That is a single-payer plan.
"I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that I believe would be too disruptive. So what would end up happening would be, a lot of people who currently have employer-based health care would suddenly find themselves dropped, and they would have to go into an entirely new system that had not been fully set up yet. And I would be concerned about the potential destructiveness of that kind of transition. All right? So I'm not promoting a single-payer plan."
The President wanted to make a distinction between a universal plan and a socialist single payer plan because he pretends that one will not lead to another. He says he is not "promoting" a single payer plan, but we do know he is "a proponent of a single payer universal healthcare plan" as he said in 2003 in this video of his speech to an AFL-CIO group during his US Senate campaign:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.”
As late as 2007, then Senator Obama was advocating a gradual move to a universal single-payer healthcare plan. Forty seconds into this May 2007 video of then Senator Obama during his campaign for President, he described how the US could gradually be moved to a single payer plan:
“But I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process — I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out...”
Why do you think they call it "single payer" and not socialism?
Today the President says he wants only mandatory universal healthcare, not single-payer. The proposed mandatory universal healthcare includes a curiously named public "option." The public "option" will be mandatory--if you don't have healthcare insurance, the government will force you to buy it. President Obama is not telling Americans that he ultimately wants universal single-payer healthcare because healthcare "re-form" would not pass in Congress if he advocated socialism directly. Most Congressional "re-form" supporters pretend for the public that individual Americans will still be in control of their healthcare after healthcare "re-form" legislation passes. "Re-formers" are rushing to pass legislation in Obama's first year because of the fleeting nature of political capital.
As Anita Dunn said, pols can't be "honest" with Americans about their real vision for America; no longer can a politician "get away with" what they could just four years ago. Dunn is right, and President Obama has learned his lesson: he can no longer pay the premium for honesty. The President is lying because he thinks he knows what's best for Americans. Remember: it's for your own good, it won't hurt a bit, and you'll be thanking them later.
Or will you?
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