Congressional Quarterly on the latest, and perhaps most expensive, difference yet between Barack Obama’s words and deeds,
One Tough Sell: Paying for Health Care Overhaul
Last year, candidate Barack Obama zeroed in on a feature of John McCain ’s health care plan that would have taxed workers’ benefits, branding it history’s largest middle-class tax increase and saying it was too radical a proposition to seriously consider.
Eight months later, President Obama appears ready to roll the same type of tax hike into his ambitious plan to overhaul the U.S. health system — if enough Democrats in Congress are willing to go along.
Finally, a few on the political left are awakening to the reality that Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. He’s as double talking and cynical as they come. Here is David Sirota at Salon, a leading liberal news site,
Obama’s trail of broken promises
The prophet of hope now doesn’t even bother with explanations when he reneges on his campaign pledges.
It’s true that politicians have always broken promises, but rarely so proudly and with such impunity.
We once respected democracy by at least demanding explanations — however weak — for unfulfilled promises. Then we became a country whose scorched-earth campaigns against flip-flopping desensitized us to reversals. Now, we don’t flinch when our president appears tickled that a few poor souls still expect politicians to fulfill promises and justify broken ones.
The worst part of this devolution is the centrality of Obama, the prophet of “hope†and “change†who once said that “cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom.” If that’s true, then he has become America’s wisest man — the guy who seems to know my kids will laugh when I tell them politicians and voters once believed in democracy and took campaign promises seriously.
If he read Pundit Review during the campain, he’d be a lot less surprised, that’s for sure.
UPDATE: Well, what do you know, here’s another reversal,
Washington Post: Obama says OK to mountaintop mining
DURING THE campaign and after his election, President Obama left environmentalists in coal country with the distinct impression that he was going to do away with mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachians. That’s where coal companies expose coal seams by stripping the dirt and rock covering them or blasting the tops of mountains to bits with dynamite and then, under legally defined conditions, dump the debris into valleys. It’s a particularly destructive practice, but it’s legal. And it will remain so under a memorandum of understanding the Obama administration will announce today.
…While Mr. Obama may have wanted voters to believe otherwise, he never flat-out said he would end this brand of mining. His decision reflects energy and political realities.
Oh, so it’s not a broken promise but a broken insinuation. That makes sense. Here’s a tip for Obama supporters, ask to see both hands next time he’s telling you what you want to hear,
