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September 8, 2009
Thomas Sowell: What Obama Says Vs. What He Does
Topics: Political News and commentariesThomas Sowell writes:
[...] The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.Read it all ...The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.
No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?
If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?
If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?
If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.
Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.
Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.
Interestingly, Sowell's observations are similar to what Peter Wehner wrote regarding essentially the same topic back in June of this year - well before the health-care debate heated up:
No one doubts Obama speaks exceedingly well; he uses soothing words that come across as reassuring and reasonable. The problem comes when you examine what he says versus what he does. And by that standard, Mr. Obama is turning out to be almost promiscuously misleading. He is not yet Bill Clinton, who belongs in a category all his own -- but Obama is taking up residence in the same zip code, which is troubling enough. And for those of us who thought Obama, whatever his political ideology, would bring intellectual integrity to his words and his tenure, it is disappointing. It is hardly the change we were promised. But I imagine that it will catch up with him sooner or later -- and when it does, the man who promised to be the antidote to cynicism will only deepen it.Given Barack Obama's propensity to say one thing and do or mean another, what does this say about what we should take away from his speech on health-care Wednesday night?
Posted by Richard at September 8, 2009 12:29 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
- Thomas Sowell: What Obama Says Vs. What He Does - Sep 08, 2009
