Positively Nixonian

It's Called Lying Like a Rug

In support the idea that he will put his name to anything marked healthcare reform, barack Obama gave an interview to the Washington Post, and he told a complete and utter lie:

Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year. The House bill includes a government-run insurance plan favored by progressive Democrats; the Senate version does not. "I didn't campaign on the public option," Obama said in the interview.

(emphasis mine)

It takes about 15 minutes on Google and Youtube to see that it's a lie, see the video on the right.

It certainly wasn't something that he pushed hard during the campaign, unlike, for example, his support for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, and family benefits for gay couples, where his administration is now aggressively fighting to prevent real progress.

With this level of hypocrisy, it's no wonder that Drew Westen, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and political scientist whose book The Political Brain was widely considered to be the bible of the Obama campaign just wrote a scathing article condemning Obama's unwillingness to lead:

As the president's job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it's time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those "pesky leftists" -- those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

………

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can't tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

………

What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November.

(emphasis mine)

As I've said before, the problem is that he believes that he is likable enough that he can bring people together even when there is no common ground, and the idea of people actually having honest differences of opinion, or of having legitimate political reasons for opposing his policies, appears to be completely beyond him.