Obama: Vote on Healthcare, Then Evaluate the Bill

By Ed Kaitz

In Wednesday evening’s Fox News interview with Bret Baird, Barack Obama struggled to maintain the image of a cool, cerebral, reassuring and trustworthy Chief Executive laboring tirelessly on behalf of the general welfare.

The President’s breezy confidence, in other words, is a product of his conviction that ObamaCare is “the right thing to do” for the American people:

“[The] reason I'm confident that it's going to pass is because it's the right thing to do.”

And although President Obama was both convinced of the bill’s rectitude and supportive of the unorthodox procedures for getting it passed, when pressed by Baier the President admitted that he wasn’t entirely sure what exactly was in the bill:

"By the time the vote has taken place, not only I will know what's in it, you'll know what's in it because it's going to be posted and everybody's going to be able to evaluate it on the merits.”

In other words, the chief marketing strategist for ObamaCare wants you to take a chance on his product without either of you knowing exactly what’s in it – a product that will plant deep federal roots in one sixth of our economy for generations to come.

Somehow Barack Obama developed the quite astonishing belief that Americans should allow a vote on the fundamental restructuring of their entire lives before evaluating the merits of that same transformation. And if Democrats get their way it will be a non-refundable transformation.

I think I understand now what Obama means by the “Audacity of Hope.” But if history teaches us anything, it is that societies prosper through merit, not hope.

As Sir Francis Bacon once said: “Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”