Krauthammer: Does Obama Lie?

Charles Krauthammer asks the question: Does Obama lie?

It should be simple enough to answer, but it's not. There are complexities to Obama's business of deceiving.

Krauthammer proposes that Obama is too subtle to lie on health care reform. Instead, he misleads with all the slickness of Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton, but without the charm.

I was never under the spell of Clinton's charm. I didn't see it, but that's another issue. Put that aside for this discussion. I'll go with the premise that Clinton exploited his "nearly irresistible charm."

In his column, Krauthammer cites three examples to examine "Obama's relationship with the truth."

It's a rocky relationship.

Krauthammer writes:

Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.

(1) "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future," he solemnly pledged. "I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

...Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"

(2) And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

But more important, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.

That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Obama definitely has a rather strained relationship with the truth.

What's so awkward is Obama is the self-proclaimed personification of hope. But his vision can't be realized if that hope is based in fantasy and falsehoods. The hope itself becomes pure deception.

Krauthammer concludes:

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, nearly irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

If Krauthammer's assessment is accurate, the cool factor may be Obama's downfall.

Granted, many are in awe of Obama's coolness. However, in Obama's case, this coolness is not an admirable quality. It doesn't help him to be an effective leader. What works for a Hollywood celebrity doesn't work for a president.

Obama's persona allows him to hide behind a wall of dishonesty.

Bottom line: Being dishonest, intentionally intending to deceive, isn't a quality of a great leader.