Matt Welch writes:
The president, who promised in both word and style to usher in a “new era” of Washington “responsibility,” routinely says things that aren’t true and supports initiatives that break campaign promises. When called on it, he mostly keeps digging. And when obliged to explain why American voters are turning so sharply away from his party and his policies, Obama pins the blame not on his own deviations from verity but on his failure to “explain” things “more clearly to the American people.”
This is not an occasional phenomenon. It has become an ingrained habit. As Welch details, Obama has insisted that he’s excluded lobbyists from government. (There are more than 40.) His repeated misstatements on his own health-care bill seem to assume no one is paying attention or is audacious enough to point out he is making stuff up. “It will cut the deficit.” Well, not with the Doc Fix or with any reasonable accounting method. “Special interests are against it.” Except for AARP, AMA, and Big Insurance. As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pointed out, Obama got the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United wrong, too.
And then there are the misdirections and twisted explanations on national security. He routinely says he “banned torture,” which, of course, was illegal long before he assumed office. (He should know this because John Yoo and Jay Bybee were hounded by a kangaroo Justice Department investigation for allegedly facilitating violation of torture prohibitions.) He pulls the rug out from the Czech Republic and Poland, denying the obvious — that it was meant as a sop to the Russians. In pursuing his Israel policy, he offers fractured history and denies the existence of past agreements by the U.S. on settlements.
Even when recounting his own actions, he strays from the truth. No, he really didn’t condemn Palestinian violence, as he claimed. No, he really hasn’t gone to bat for human rights, as he asserted in Oslo. And on it goes.
This was the president who was supposedly freed from ideology and who would operate on facts and evidence. The reality is that the Obami operate as if the president has no obligation to fact check and to adhere to a standard of accuracy worthy of the office. It’s just campaign time 24/7 — and the operating standard is whatever will fly. In a very real sense, Obama has never had his facts or his premises rebutted. He was treated with kid gloves during the campaign, where his garbled history was never questioned and his assumptions were rarely challenged by the mainstream media. And well into his first-year term, a probing interview taking on his facts is the exception, not the rule. He has grown accustomed to parroting liberal dogma with nary a concern that anyone might call him on it. And when someone does — at the health-care summit — he is peeved, condescending, and impatient.
The ultra-liberal president is at odds with the Center-Right country he is trying to lead. But more important, he is at odds with reality — with cold, hard facts. Neither is sustainable for very long. The voters and reality have a way of catching up with presidents who try to ignore both.
