When in trouble, presidents have ways to escape the hubbub, deflect attention from what’s causing the problem, and wait for the whole thing to pass. In 1974, as Watergate was engulfing his presidency, President Nixon traveled to Egypt. A million people lined the roads to see him. Nixon aides quipped that “a million Egyptians can’t be wrong.” But they were wrong, and Nixon resigned a few weeks later.
That's what I'm talking about!
In 1987, President Reagan was beset by the Iran-contra scandal. His advisers came up with a clever idea for him to emphasize in speeches, an “economic bill of rights.” Its acronym was EBOR, so it was half-jokingly referred to at the White House as “ebor.” Talking about it was preferable to addressing Iran-contra. But the press and public stayed focused on the scandal.
In the firestorm over Obamacare, President Obama has few of these tools of evasion at his disposal. His ability to change the subject from his embattled health insurance plan is limited. This is mostly his fault. Thus he was forced to yield last week to pressure to address the chorus of complaints generated by the cancellation of millions of individual policies....
Obama is in a bind. To save Democratic incumbents in the 2014 election, he’ll have to accept further changes that mollify critics while undercutting Obamacare’s fragile financing scheme. For Republicans, there’s a lesson here: Keep pressuring Obama to stop forcing people to buy more insurance coverage than they want or need, offer an attractive health plan of their own, and await the day a Republican president buries Obamacare once and for all.
IMAGE CREDIT: The Looking Spoon, "Here's a couple of Obamacare "Got Insurance" liberals didn't create (but they should have)..."
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