When I first saw the headline saying Bill Clinton was advising President Obama to “honor his commitment,” I had to laugh. The idea of Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend as moral referee always cracks me up.
Then I got to wondering. Which commitment was Clinton talking about?
Is it the one Obama made to the Israeli people, that he had their backs and would never let Iran get a nuclear weapon? Or was it his promise to enforce a “red line” in Syria?
Or maybe it was Obama’s promise to “never rest” until we caught the terrorists who killed our ambassador and three other Americans in Libya?
Or was Clinton talking about the many times the president said he would “never rest” until every American who wanted a job had one?
Or maybe he was talking about the pledge to change the tone in Washington? Or to go through the budget “line by line” and cross out the waste driving up the deficit?
You get the picture — any of those whoppers would qualify. But, of course, Clinton was talking about the broken promise of the moment, the one where Obama vowed that “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.”
It ranks as one of the biggest presidential lies of modern times, all the more so because Obama repeated it 30 times. The fallout of millions being forced from their policies, an experience exacerbated by the hapless Web site, has created a crisis of confidence so vast, it threatens to swallow the second term.
So Clinton, who falsely swore he never had sex with that woman, spoke from experience when he told an interviewer, “The president should honor his commitment to those people and let them keep what they got.”
He knows the Big Lie is shredding Obama’s ace in the hole — his personal credibility. The key to Obama’s political success is that his job-approval ratings generally have been higher than the public’s view of his policies.
From the economy to health care to foreign policy, voters were mostly negative on the policies. But when it came to Obama himself, more Americans, often a majority, said they liked him, trusted him and believed he had their interests at heart.
ObamaCare is breaking that bond — and creating a domino effect. The public is turning ever harder against his policies, with only 31 percent now supporting him on the economy and 32 percent on immigration in the latest Pew poll.
Most important, they are also giving a thumbs-down on his overall performance. Pew finds that only 41 percent approve of his handling of the presidency, down 14 points since December, while 53 percent disapprove. And Quinnipiac late Tuesday found he’s hit a new low with 39 percent approval, while a majority said he’s not honest.
No president can lead from such a deep, discredited hole. And his ratings are likely to keep sinking because, once the Web site is fixed, millions more “shoppers” will get sticker shocks from the new policies ObamaCare requires. And next year comes the employer mandate, which will shake up the policies and prices of millions of others.
So Clinton’s advice that Obama “let them keep what they got,” is, in a vacuum, a perfectly logical escape route.
But even if it were possible, the reversal would be a dagger in the heart of ObamaCare. The whole Rube Goldberg scheme depends on using insurance policies to distribute wealth from healthy young Americans to older, sicker ones. Letting people keep the policies they have effectively repeals the president’s signature achievement.
Clinton’s advice, then, won’t fly. But if he, or anybody else, has another idea about how Obama can wriggle out of the mess he created, they should speak up very quickly. Otherwise, it will be too late to make a difference.
Liu-ser has a nerve!
Like a bad penny, John Liu won’t go away.
The comptroller is suing because the Campaign Finance Board denied him millions for his failed mayoral campaign. A report says he wants unspecified damages for “deprivation of civil rights, mental and emotional harm, loss of dignity, loss of earnings and professional reputation.”
Actually, taxpayers are the ones who suffered. They ought to sue Liu for being an expensive nuisance.
The campaign board rejected the Democrat’s bid for matching funds when a donor and an aide were indicted and later convicted in a scheme involving illegal donations. It cited a “pervasive” pattern of violations.
Voters didn’t think much of Liu either, giving him only 7 percent in the primary. Out of respect for their verdict, he ought to go quietly.
It Should Chill Bill’s Spine
That didn’t take long. Only four days after Bill de Blasio’s landslide, the mayor-elect got a taste of the terrifying mayhem that could wreck his tenure and the city.
An idyllic scene erupted into instant pandemonium when 16-year-old Corey Dunton allegedly sprayed gunfire into a crowd of skaters at Manhattan’s Bryant Park. The Saturday- night shooting wounded two innocent skaters, including a 14-year-old who may be paralyzed.
Dunton, despite his tender age, so perfectly fits the criminal profile that he might have been sent by Central Casting. Reportedly a member of the Bloods gang with at least six felony arrests already, Dunton was said to have used an illegal .22-caliber handgun. Police said he fired eight shots after the owner of an expensive parka he demanded brushed him off.
Each of those shots should ring an alarm in Bill de Blasio’s head.
The Democrat won black and liberal votes by denouncing the NYPD tactic of stop-and-frisk as racial profiling. It was a slander, but also a popular stance that had the added advantage of letting him avoid explaining how he would combat crime, which disproportionately involves young black and Latino males as both perpetrators and victims.
Indeed, 96 percent of all shooting victims are nonwhite men, police say, roughly the same percentage as those convicted or suspected of the crimes.
Cops took 800 illegal guns off the streets through stop-and-frisk last year. Imagine the carnage if even half had been used.
Corey Dunton is a reminder that the young guns aren’t waiting for de Blasio to concoct a politically correct strategy. They will keep blasting away until somebody stops them.
If not the police, who? And if not with stop-and-frisk, how?
Playing the race cad
A headline of our times: “White guy wins after leading voters to believe he’s black.”
The Houston, Texas, story tells how a conservative, white Republican won a seat on a community college board with sly suggestions that he, like nearly all the district voters, is black.
So black is the new white.
Moore’s vicious salute
Michael Moore is no ordinary creep. He marked Veterans Day with this tweet: “Today, as every day, 22 American veterans will commit suicide. Happy Veterans Day.”
Before you ask, the answer is no, he has no decency.