Apparently, during his campaign for president, Barack Obama made a powerful case for health care reform by talking about his mother who died from uterine and ovarian cancer. As the story goes, Obama's mother was denied insurance coverage because of her pre-existing condition. Parker quotes Obama as saying, "I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment."
Parker writes, "Thus, the story of Obama, Ann Dunham and corporate America's inhumanity toward pre-existing conditions became an inviolate holy trinity of immense political power."
Then, her bombshell: "If only it had been true."
The rest of the article describes how Obama, who actually acted as his mother's lawyer during her illness, basically fabricated the part of the story where his mother couldn't get insurance. In fact, Parker writes, "According to Janny Scott, a New York Times writer and author of the book A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother, Dunham's cancer treatments were covered by her employer's insurance policy. She was denied disability insurance, which would have helped Dunham pay her deductible or unreimbursed medical costs. These apparently ran into the hundreds per month."
So the president embellished the story of his mother's insurance coverage in order to "sell" America on his health-care plan. Is that OK?
Not in my book. Whether it's right or wrong for insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions (and I believe it's wrong), the president of the United States manipulated the facts, fabricated part of his mother's story, in short, lied, in order to accomplish his objectives.
This tendency on President Obama's part--to distort and manipulate the truth in order to accomplish his objectives--is one of his failings, not only as president, but as a person.
I remember back when George W. Bush was president, Bush-haters (members of my extended family included) accused him of lying to justify the Iraq war. One famous bumper sticker went something like this: Clinton lied: Hillary cried. Bush lied: People died.
Very clever. The thing is, Bush didn't lie. President Bush did what he thought he had to do for the security and safety of the country, based on the knowledge and intelligence that he was faced with at the time. And it's important to note that he was not alone in making the decision. He assembled a coalition of other countries. He went to Congress, and Congress approved. One can't help but contrast Bush's approach to Obama's, which was not only to not ask Congress for approval to go to war in Libya but then to refuse to comply with Congress' request to seek its authority after 90 days because, according to Obama, "American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities." More rhetorical legerdemain.
The point is, it's easy to call someone a liar when their policies offend you. People hated George Bush, so the assumption that he "lied" about Iraq fit nicely into the narrative they had created about him, not only that he was inept, but that he was evil.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, is, in fact, dishonest. Kathleen Parker was too gracious to call him a liar: "It is too much to say that Obama told an intentionally tall tale to mislead the public," she writes. "But it is also incorrect to say that he told a true story."
Maybe Obama doesn't lie outright. But he does midlead. He is disingenuous. He fabricates, distorts, and exaggerates. It's typically subtle, done for rhetorical effect, and generally accomplishes what he hopes to accomplish: i.e., shovel a bill through Congress, change the subject, place blame on others (usually his predecessor or members of the Republican party), buy time until he can come up with yet another misleading rhetorical appeal.
Another example of his duplicitiousness: telling a CBS news anchor that he couldn't guarantee that Social Security, disability, or veterans' checks would be delivered by August 3rd if Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling because "there may simply not be money in the coffers to do it." That sounds scary. Those who actually take the time to punch the the numbers, however, say there actually is "money in the coffers."
The federal government takes in roughly $180 billion every month. (It also borrows $135 billion a month.) Social Security payments are about $60 billion a month, payments to all military personnel (veterans and otherwise) are about $12 billion, and payments to disabled veterans are about $6 billion. That totals about $78 billion. To say that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers” to pay for these items is plainly false. One might even call it “engaging in scare tactics.” (Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard).I'm not sure which is more frustrating: that Barack Obama can't be trusted or that people apparently still take him at his word. I'm also not sure why people would vote to re-elect him. He's proven to be an ineffective and even petulant leader. But the one thing that completely disqualifies him in my book, trumping all other failings, is his dishonesty. I for one would not "re-hire" him as my president. And that's what this next presidential election is (or should be) all about: deciding whether to "re-hire" Barack Obama as our president.
Give me an honest man for president, even one who makes mistakes, over a duplicitous one, any day.
