http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-smug-obama-administration-duped-public-perspec-1114-20141113-story.htmlBy Charles Lipson
Arrogance and condescension have been essential to progressive politics for a century.
The viral video of the week, at least among policy wonks, shows one of Obamacare's key architects saying that the health care law passed only because the administration deceived the public. MIT professor Jonathan Gruber spoke candidly — and proudly — because he thought he was speaking only to a small audience of fellow academics. Unfortunately for Gruber, he was being filmed, and the video has now found a much larger, less sympathetic audience.
He cannot shrug his comments off as a momentary mistake. Two more videos have now surfaced with the same message.
Gruber speaks as an insider, someone who met directly with the president about the health care law and was deeply involved in crafting its provisions. He speaks with considerable authority when he says Obamacare passed only because of deliberate deception. He notes that some of the law's complex wording was added only because the American public would be "too stupid" to figure it out (his words).
Well the public is listening now and is not too dimwitted to grasp the message. That's bad news for the Obama administration and worse news for a health care law already in deep trouble.
Gruber's admission should be old news since we already knew the president sold the program in misleading ways. So what's new here?
Until Gruber's videos appeared, it was hard to prove the administration actually intended to deceive voters when it rammed through the legislation on straight party-line votes. Perhaps the president was simply making statements he believed to be true but later turned out to be false. That's not lying. That's an honest mistake.
The Gruber videos are devastating because they say flatly that the deception was premeditated and was used self-consciously to pass the law. The professor goes further and says the law would have been defeated if its central provisions had been known to voters.
Assuming Gruber's message is true, it means the Obama administration deliberately evaded our democratic process to pass its signature legislation. Its justification, which Gruber makes explicit, is not only that "we know what's best for you," but also that "you are too dense to know that yourself."
This arrogant, condescending approach extends far beyond Obamacare. It is an essential feature of progressive politics for the past century. From the outset, progressive politics yoked expert advice to expansive state action, especially redistributive policies to help the poor.
It says, "We are experts who want to help you, the great unwashed. You are too stupid and uneducated to know how to know what's best for you. Since we do know, and since we have your best interests at heart, we will handle those complex choices for you."
It's an intellectual's version of noblesse oblige.
We do need experts, of course. We need them to design satellites and sewer systems, plan interstate highways, set safety standards for food and skyscrapers, and defend our country.
But as a democracy, we need voters and their elected representatives to make the basic choices about what to do and which trade-offs to make. It is voters and their representatives who should decide whether to buy a new sewer system, wage a war, build a new highway or send rockets into outer space. Those choices ought to be made after vigorous public debate, not in the smug-filled rooms of the Progressive Policy Institute or MIT Faculty Club.
The condescending logic of progressive policy implementation is increasingly obvious. It is why school kids have to eat the skimpy, unappetizing lunches Michelle Obama thinks they should.
It's why New Yorkers were told they couldn't use large soft-drink cups. Mayor Michael Bloomberg knew what was best for them.
It's why farmers have had to fight the Environmental Protection Agency over endless regulations covering ditches, ponds and even dust on their farms.
Gruber, Michelle Obama, Bloomberg, the EPA and the president may well have good intentions. You can debate that. But even if their intentions are good, they are not enough.
First, experts don't always know what is best for us. We can only know that ourselves, though we do need honest information to decide.
Second, expert judgment should never override our democratic rules and procedures. The European Union is already sinking into that regulatory abyss, which it delicately terms "the democratic deficit." Friedrich von Hayek called it "the road to serfdom."
There's no reason why America should follow that catastrophic course. Let experts and bureaucrats give us their best advice and try to persuade us. Let them deal with technical problems of implementation, where their expertise is essential. But unless our choices violate basic constitutional protections, they have no right to override the public's decisions by administrative fiat or corrupt the legislative process by outright deception.
When they do so, as the architects of Obamacare did, they threaten our most basic democratic freedoms.
Charles Lipson is a professor at the University of Chicago.
