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07.31.2009 0

Under the Cover of a Backroom Deal

  • On: 08/26/2009 10:40:58
  • In: Health Care
  • By William Warren

    Excuse me, but weren’t we just talking about health care?

    After scanning news this week, one might notice a startling dearth of health care stories making headlines. Surprisingly, for most media outlets—be they liberal, conservative, a major news network or a basement blog—stories regarding public options, death panels, Obama’s waning support, insurance companies, and the like were nowhere to be found.

    Their absence might make the average news junkie feel like he’s entered a non-parallel universe. But please don’t be alarmed: it is entirely calculated.

    Simply put, it’s not that health care is no longer newsworthy; it’s just that Barack Obama is deliberately making his news bigger to block it out.

    As a self-described “gifted” orator, Mr. Obama has demonstrated a clear understanding and flawless execution of one of the most crucial strategies of effectively dominating the conversation: changing the subject when the discussion gets too uncomfortable. Health care, it seems, was becoming too difficult of a conversation for the gifted one to stomach.

    Something had to be done. So, in the past two days alone, the President and/or White House officials have announced:

    With such an onslaught of manufactured news fodder—all “breaking” in two days, mind you—it is no wonder the health care debate got pushed off the front page. And that’s exactly what Barack Obama intended. Some schemes are best hatched undercover.

    The fact is: the national health care debate had become far too politically damaging for the Obama Administration. Ever since kicking his government-run healthcare plan into high-gear at the beginning of the summer, Mr. Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted as a direct result. According to Rasmussen Reports, Barack Obama had a +7 approval index on June 1st. As of August 25th, the President scored a -11 on the approval index. That’s an 18-point swing in three months.

    What Obama clearly intended to be the sparkling set-piece of his “transformational” Administration has quickly become a burgeoning blight destroying his lofty approval rating – and already threatening his all-important legacy as well.

    Moreover, Barack Obama’s minions—the multitudes of Democrat representatives, senators, and White House officials scattered across the nation during the August recess—have likewise felt the burn from hordes upon hordes of Americans upset with the Democrats’ plans for government-run health care. Despite the best—no, make that worst—efforts of the Administration and Obamaton media to paint the concerned American people as “angry racist mobs,” the embarrassment and sinking poll numbers are as plain as the lengthening nose on Obama’s face.

    Their embarrassment is Obama’s embarrassment. And all of the Administration’s prevarications about “misunderstandings” aren’t going to change the hardscrabble facts.

    So, for Obama and Co., now is the perfect time to avert attention by changing the subject.

    Abandoning their health care agenda, however, is far from the goal.

    Displacing health care with a barrage of other news stories needs to be seen for what it is—a cynical cover up for a backroom deal.

    With both the media and the public looking the other way, the President can quietly take the health care debate off the front page and return to the kind of backroom, bare-knuckle politics he truly enjoys—those that don’t involve the American people. After all, it’s become increasingly evident that if Mr. Obama involves the American people, his sweeping government-run health care scheme would never be carried out.

    So while the politically-damaging health care chaos may have been pushed from the front page, it won’t end up on the obit page—buried and forgotten. If Barack Obama has his way, it will next appear as a “Second-Coming Headline” proclaiming, “Obamacare Passed Without Debate” as America’s healthcare industry is scrapped under the obscene cover of a backroom deal.

    William Warren is a Contributing Editor of ALG News Bureau.


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