My CNN piece: ObamaCare the “death spiral” of White House credibility
posted at 5:35 pm on October 24, 2013 by Ed Morrissey
Earlier today, CNN asked me to write a column on what the ObamaCare rollout fiasco means. They just posted my answer:
Constituents fear dealing with IRS penalties for failure to buy insurance through a system they can’t access and HHS can’t fix, or even predict when it will be fixed. Even those who have managed to buy insurance through the site now have to wonder whether their insurers have their correct data. Meanwhile, Obama and Sebelius now want to reassure Americans that they have a grip on the problem … by bringing in the private sector to fix what the government failed to execute.
Rarely have we seen such a confluence of incompetence, irresponsibility, and prevarication all at the same time. The death spiral of White House credibility won’t just damage Democrats in the short run, but it will damage the agenda of advocates of activist government for years.
Also, I’ve already linked my column today at The Fiscal Times, but here it is one more time:
When I first started reading comic strips more than 40 years ago, one of the most popular was Bil Keane’s Family Circus, a lighthearted look at childhood and family dynamics. One running gag had to do with the typical child’s response to accountability for errors and mischief.
Keane would draw a ghostlike figure running through a scene, behaving badly with a manic sort of glee while the mother demanded to know who had broken the lamp, created a mess in the living room, or let the dog out. Keane gave the ghost character the name of the inevitable response from the children – Ida Know.
Welcome to the Ida Know administration. …
In short, the ACA was the Obama administration’s own bid to prove that activist, large-scale government was superior in innovation and competency. Instead, it has become a signature example of the lack of accountability, incompetence, and rank dishonesty that activist, large-scale government creates and protects. And that was just on performance. Despite the 42 months lead time and the outlay of $400 million, the web portal failed immediately, and two successive weekends of repair couldn’t make it work.
When the media demanded to know what happened, the White House responded with a battalion of Ida Knows. How many people had succeeded in actually purchasing insurance through the federal exchange? Ida Know,White House sources told the Associated Press this past weekend when trying to brag about having 476,000 user accounts set up in the portal. Did insurers actually get their data and have them enrolled? Ida Know. When will the system actually work? Ida Know, OMB Director Sylvia Burwell told Bloomberg News.
Be sure to read them both!
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/10/24/my-cnn-piece-obamacare-the-death-spiral-of-white-house-credibility/
