one that I’ve been asking as well, in his latest column:
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation’s medical care before the August recess—for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years—more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?
If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election? . . .
If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.
Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.
Hard to argue with Dr. Sowell’s conclusion.
Maybe this answers the question about his intelligence, from the other post – looks like he's smarter than I gave him credit for, LOL.
Interesting thoughts on this; rather eye-opening. Thanks, Rob. 🙂
I don't know–this is more the mark of a very facile sort of cleverness, the sort that isn't forward-thinking enough to realize it will be found out, than it is of true intelligence.
Glad you appreciated the post. Dr. Sowell's been probably my favorite writer on politics for a quarter-century now–I don't think I've ever known him to be uninteresting or not well worth reading.
Heh. I find it pretty easy to argue with the conclusion, primarily because the president does not write legislation. I sincerely doubt that the only postponing issue in a massive overhaul of our health care system is the president's whim and 'fascile' political calculation. One will have to produce a great deal more actual (non-circumstantial) evidence to make that one convincing. It is very common for presidents of both parties to push for legislation which will take effect after their terms are done, and every one of them have to negotiate with hundreds of ornery Congresspeople in order to make any of this happen. To present it as if the president is the orchestral conductor of the legislative process is what seems 'fascile' to me – and I'm not even a big Obama fan.
Whether he writes it is not the point. What he did in an effort to get it passed is the point. No, the President doesn't write legislation, but when his party's in power, he most certainly is "the orchestral conductor of the legislative process."
And no, the term is not "fascile," it's "facile."