Chuck Todd, with NBC, did what few reporters seem to do in the White House Press Corp when he injected a moment of honest journalism into the Obama-groupie press corps. Asking Jay Carney a tough question is like playing a frame of “the Charleston” for Fred Astaire: Carney laces up his tap dancing shoes for a series of evasions, accusations, and distractions.
NBC’s Chuck Todd asked a simple question:
Five days before the launch, the president said it’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health care plans, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak. Who misled him? Who misled the president on this? Are you telling me five days before that somebody let the president go out to the American public to give this speech and say this and make this promise? In fact, the next line is: I promise you, this is a lot easier, it’s like booking a hotel or plane ticket. Who let him down? (Click here for the video)
The moment of journalism was accepted with reluctant babbling, and repetitive (and often un-related) talking points from the chief White House spokesperson. Todd’s presumption that the Chief Salesman for Obamacare (AKA: President Obama) was simply naive in his comparison, is a cute tactic to paint the Official White House Press-Jester into a corner. But it is off base.
The fact is, the President hasn’t the slightest clue what the private sector is actually like. To progressive liberals such as our campaigner in chief, the “private-sector” is a theoretical source of tax revenue.
Remember when Obama compared the Obamacare exchange “glitches” to a glitch in the newest batch of Apple operating software? The President actually suggested that the implementation of Obamacare was nothing different than predictable glitches in computer software.
Well. . . Aside from the obvious fact that citizens are not mandated by the Federal Government to purchase i-phones (well. . . Not yet. . . Apple should work on that) his ignorance of consumer demand is stunning. Businesses die every day for having failed the expectations or demands of its potential customer base.
As Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, once said, “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” A tech company that implemented a new product or service with Obamacare’s comical lack of competency would, no doubt, find itself at the mercy of a disgruntled and shunning public.
Of course, government has no need to worry about such market forces. They can simply siphon off more taxes from the Sam Waltons of the world.
And Obama’s ridiculous sale’s pitch to the American people – that signing up on an Obamacare exchange would be like booking a hotel room – is no different than his tortured and cartoonish analogy to Apple. Chuck Todd made an astoundingly unexpected moment of journalism amidst the beltway lapdogs reporters in the room: either the President was lying, or he’s terribly incompetent as a chief executive officer of the United States of America.
Because, when viewed through the lens of Todd’s question, our Pitch-Man-in-Chief either intentionally misled the American people on Obamacare’s eventual efficiency; or he himself was misled by a bunch of incompetent fools who wrote 5 million lines of untested, and obviously insufficient, code.
Don’t, however, expect Carney’s little dance session with the NBC reporter to make much of a difference in the public’s opinion of the process. Just this morning the President read a speech on the success of Obamacare from his teleprompter. Three of the fifteen human props behind him had actually enrolled in the exchanges. (Three. . . Out of 300 million US citizens, the Obamacare-defending Administration was able to track down three success stories. Also in attendance: A unicorn and Leprechaun.)
So while American citizens struggle with the new law that mandates the purchase of an increasingly expensive product, our Public-Sector-CEO will continue to spin tales about the success of the law’s Rube Goldberg implementation. Carney will continue to tap dance, Obama will continue to campaign, and a handful of outlying journalists will quietly stumble across moments of actual journalism.