Posted on November 15, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien
It’s a truism to say that half-truths are more difficult to disprove than absolute untruths. So what about quarter-truths? And what do quarter-truths do in terms of journalistic agenda setting — or when political journalists from reputable inside-the-Beltway sources like the National Journal try to make these prophecies become truths? Put differently,this Ahistorical or Acontextual, well-written, declarative blog is one-quarter out of context about Obamacare.
Lame-duck presidents always face divisions (duh — you don’t even need a textbook to know this truism). So it’s true that Obama is facing it all “early,” but then again, Hillary Clinton is running historically earlier than ever — particularly for someone who held the second-most prestigious position, which gives her great cred to get her former boss’s job. (Also, Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been the only competition among potential women leaders who could challenge Hillary Clinton, so neither this nor the polls on this are news other than possibly to SLAMs and SCAMs – straight liberal or conservative Anglo-Saxon men.)
Yes, Obamacare is Obama’s “signature.” Yes, Obamacare constitutes the largest single hope that Obama will leave office with a legacy (positive is implied in the word). Yes, it’s frustrating that so few have signed up (and incomprehensible how the federal government could have the resources to maintain such impressive surveillance capability, particularly peeking into the offices of most or all of our world-ally leaders, but not the resources to roll out a universal health-care site).
But no, it was never supposed to be his “namesake law.” And who ever heard of Obama loyalists, at least after his first 100 days in 2009? (Bob Woodward and others say Obama is arrogant, but he’s not exactly a king or knighted — so is this an oblique “uppity” reference?)
President Obama and the Obama administration just gave up trying to get everyone to call it the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They switched strategies and decided to “own it.” Obamacare is Obamacare, since both the right and the left knew that for anything named Obama in the fall of 2009, the name was what endangered its passage.
Ruth Frick O'Brien 