Sense on Cents

One does not need to grow up in an urban setting and receive a large serving of ‘street smarts’ to understand that phrases such as “intentionally misspoke” or “willfully deceived” mean one thing.

The scarlet letter attached to these more genteel descriptions is the “Big Red L.”

Say what you want about our current President, but the simple fact is after his scrambling of the last few days, he has crossed the Rubicon and broken the sacred bond that is supposed to come with his occupying the highest office in the land and the most powerful position in the world.

Mr. President, you should know that you cannot lie to the American public.

What is even more troubling than lying to the American public is that rather than manning up and acknowledging that fact, our President thinks the American public must be totally stupid so that they will now buy his retraction. Do you see and understand anything different in the following two statements issued by our President?

“If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

He repeated that statement and iterations thereof too often to count from his 2008 campaign and over the next 4 years. Just yesterday we learned from The Wall Street Journal that he sold this admittedly deceptive pitch against the advice of some of his own advisors. And what did President Obama say last evening?

“. . .  what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”

Let’s compare those two statements. Does anybody in the audience think those two statements are the same and provide the same impact on many millions of our fellow citizens? While some citizens might care to provide cover for the President, I ask those in that camp to raise the bar as to what is deemed acceptable in terms of political statements having broad impact on the American public.

I am sorry. Neither the President nor anybody else in the political or professional world deserves or has earned a pass when it comes to so boldly “lying” to the American public.

While Obama himself is already suffering the consequences of this travesty, who really loses? We all do.

Our nation is not only built upon a system of laws, but underlying that is supposed to be a sense of trust and integrity. I realize that those virtues are on life support these days after the travails on Wall Street. That does not mitigate the fact that in the course of playing politics neither President Obama nor any other individual from either side of the aisle can so boldly and blatantly manipulate and obfuscate words so that they are untrue regardless of the number of people directly impacted.

Mr. President, you crossed the line. Your credibility is suffering and should suffer. You do not get to intentionally deceive and misrepresent, that is “lie”, to the American public in order to advance your agenda.

You just don’t.

My suggestion to you: man up, admit your lie, ask for forgiveness, pass legislation that allows those impacted by your lie to retain their policies, and then let Obamacare sink or swim on its own merits. Otherwise, the very office of the Presidency and the manner in which legislation is passed in America will be cheapened. The costs associated with that reality are even far greater than amending your signature legislation.

As for everybody else, navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please pre-order a copy of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy, that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan on January 7, 2014.

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I have no business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 5th, 2013 at 11:55 AM and is filed under General, Obamacare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.