Clinton Spins Obamacare

The Obama administration is worried about deeply dug-in resistance to its health-care agenda, and those worries have been compounded by its depleted political capital — most voters still disapprove of the health-care law, and the president’s approval–disapproval spread has collapsed by 18.6 points since his reelection — and so it has done what it does when the going gets tough: make a speech. The main difference this go-round is that the president commissioned Bill Clinton to make the speech on his behalf rather than deliver it himself, which is perhaps an indicator that Barack Obama no longer believes that he is his own best advertisement. President Clinton was President Clinton, meaning affable, glib, and equivocal.

President Clinton conceded that there are problems with the misnamed Affordable Care Act, suggested a few corrections, and went so far as to use the phrase “unintended consequences,” which, for anybody who comprehends the full meaning of the idea, counsels against ACA per se as well as most other federal efforts to impose political regimentation on the economy or subsectors of it. But being unwilling or unable to accommodate that insight, President Clinton instead made a faux-pragmatist argument that the country would be better off if those who support the ACA and those who oppose it agree on an effort to implement the law in an orderly fashion rather than continue to oppose it.

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