Obama Lied, People Did Not Die

Friday night on Real Time, Bill Maher hosted a discussion among three guests supportive of Barack Obama, including U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida.  Wasserman-Schultz argued not only that health care reform would usher in utopia, but that President Obama did not lie when he promised that no one would lose his or her insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, unless the President was completely unaware of what is going on in one of his cabinet's departments- Health and Human Services- he knew after HHS wrote regulations implementing the ACA (sometime after passage) that some individuals would not be able to keep their insurance plan. For her part Wasserman-Schultz, if President Obama stated that it will snow in most of the country tomorrow, two days hence would say he was only warning Americans to prepare for a potentially brutal winter.

That brings us, as is my habit, to Rush Limbaugh.  Leave it to Rush- in the interests of fanning outrage among his listeners-  to take a serious shortcoming of Obama (misleading Americans about their health options) and blow it up into something unrecognizable to the informed.  On Friday, he maintained

Folks, this is a huge lie.  This is a purposeful, huge, fraudulent lie known by everybody in the regime with the intention of deceiving the American people for the express purposes of electing Barack Obama in 2008 and reelecting him in 2012...

This is huge, folks.

It's a purposeful, deceitful, fraudulent law.  I think Obama's lie about keeping your insurance may be the biggest lie ever told by a sitting president.  This is not an error.  It was not a mistake.  This was a calculated, purposeful lie...

It was not a lie when during the uncertainty of 2008, Senator Obama wanted voters to believe no one would lose his or her insurance.  But perhaps that's nitpicking. The claim that Obama's lie "may be the biggest lie ever told by a sitting president" represents a monstrous effort to mislead Limbaugh's audience. (It's not, however, a lie given the qualification of "may be."  It may be the biggest lie. It may be the smallest lie.  Or it may be- oh, you get the point.)

"Richard Nixon resigned over a lie nowhere near this big," Rush claimed.  Admittedly, Watergate- a word he was sufficiently crafty to avoid- was such a long time ago and committed by a president who aside from being corrupt was superior to any of his party since that time.    (But then, "otherwise, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?")

Bush II, however, was such a short time ago.   In June, 2003 Christopher Scheer of Alternet compiled ten lies the Administration told about Iraq in order to gin up support for the forthcoming war.   Seven were uttered by President George W. Bush and the others by Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld. Complete with explanation, the Bush 7 cited are:


LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." -- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."-- President Bush, Oct. 7 .
LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.
LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003


My favorite is Scheer's #2 because, although Saddaam Hussein had not "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," it appears not to be a lie because Bush seemed to be contending only that the Administration had been told it had transpired.  But days after that infamous State of the Union address, Michael Kinsley explained

Bushies fanned out to the weekend talk shows to note, as if with one voice, that what Bush said was technically accurate. But it was not accurate, even technically. The words in question were: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush didn't say it was true, you see—he just said the Brits said it. This is a contemptible argument in any event. But to descend to the administration's level of nitpickery, the argument simply doesn't work. Bush didn't say that the Brits "said" this Africa business—he said they "learned" it. The difference between "said" and "learned" is that "learned" clearly means there is some pre-existing basis for believing whatever it is, apart from the fact that someone said it. Is it theoretically possible to "learn" something that is not true? I'm not sure (as Donald Rumsfeld would say). However, it certainly is not possible to say that someone has "learned" a piece of information without clearly intending to imply that you, the speaker, wish the listener to accept it as true. Bush expressed no skepticism or doubt, even though the Brits qualification was only added as protection because doubts had been expressed internally.

It is not possible to "learn" something that is not true.  But as Bush likely understood, it would have been foolish to state "the British government has said."  A lot of people discount what someone says he has heard or read: "Do you believe everything you read (or are told)" is a common reaction.  It's much wiser, though in this case dishonest, to claim "we have learned" or "they have learned" because "have learned" suggests the information already has been confirmed.

So in the context of lies told by other Presidents (not only Bush II and Nixon), President Obama's lie "if you like your plan, you can keep it" is not historic (unlike his election which, we all were told, was historic.). Controversy over the Administration's statements should draw attention to the improvement of insurance benefits gained by most individuals who do lose their plan- and to the reality that President Obama's policies are superior to the man himself.



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Creating A Storyline



Asked by CNN's Christine Romans "why is it not hypocrisy for the president to take campaign donations from private equity when he's attacking private equity and making that a central part of his campaign?" Democratic National Committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz responded in part

Accepting a contribution from a particular person involved in venture capital and criticizing Mitt Romney who has made his record as a venture capitalist at Bain the central focus of his credibility and his qualification for being president are completely different things.    Who contributes to Barack Obama has little to do with that because those contributors are not running for president.

"Who contributes to Barack Obama" would pertain to the President's "attack" on venture capital and taking "campaign donations from private equity when he's attacking private equity" would be hypocritical.... if Obama had attacked venture capital.   Initially, he stated

...And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off, and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so they can attract new businesses. Your job as president is to think about how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody's paying their fair share, that allows us then to invest in science, and technology, and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is "I knew how to make a lot of money for investors," then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity. But that's not what my job is as president...

Later clarifying his remarks, the President commented

My view of private equity is it is set up to maximize profits.  And that's a healthy part of the free market. That's part of the role of a lot of business people. That's not unique to private equity.  I think there are folks who do good work in that area, and there are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries.

Now it's not only Republicans, but also members of the mainstream media who are wrestling with the English language.       The primary objective of private equity, to maintain profits, "is a healthy part of the free market" which is "not unique to private equity."    In so doing, "there are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries."
The President could have said "private equity is set up to maximize profits while incurring massive debt, generally cutting workers' benefits and jobs."    But he didn't.   He took pains not to criticize private equity, not to criticize Bain, and not even to criticize Mitt Romney.    Rather, he simply explained that the skills those managers display are not transferable to the role of a president, which "is to make sure the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now."

Or Obama could have proposed that Bain Capital make public (which, as a private company it is not required to do) a list of the companies it has purchased.    The President might have noted, as one union official has, that Romney's "entire management experience at Bain Capital is buying companies and loading them up with debt and then looting the balance sheet.    It's the very model that drove the American economy off the cliff then left other people to manage the wreckage."  

But President Obama decided, in part so there would be no contradiction between his analysis and acceptance of money and advice from the industry, to take the high road.    So, too, did Wasserman-Schultz, accusing Romans merely of "not just comparing apples and oranges (but rather) comparing apples and coconuts."    It was an accurate and polite response from someone who might have begun by observing that the premise of Christine Romans' question should not have been a simple restatement of a Republican talking point designed to excuse the looting of American jobs and pensions by multimillionaires.



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