Team Obama did everything they could to get the unpopular Obamacare bill passed, even though the president’s party controlled Congress. This included cutting deals with the drug industry which reeked of cronyism, and Democrats insinuating that conservatives and Tea Partiers who were opposed to Obamacare were racists.
And now, as Obamacare has become more unpopular the more people learn about it, and may be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Team Obama still seems to know nothing but politicization.
In a piece in the New Yorker about what the Obama administration’s agenda in a potential second term would be, reporter Ryan Lizza quotes a former Obama aide who reveals how the White House intends to politicize Obamacare should the Supreme Court find it, or parts of it, unconstitutional:
Whether the Supreme Court overturns the law in part or in full, the White House will need to respond publicly. “The strategy is to just go on the offensive and say, ‘Look at Citizens United, look at the health-care decision, look at Bush v. Gore,” the former aide said. “We have an out-of-control activist court, and Romney will make it worse. That’s Plan A. Plan B is nothing.”
Even though it may be better for conservatives that Team Obama does not have a “Plan B” for more government control of healthcare, this is troubling for many reasons. First, it reinforces that Obama can only run by scaring his base. Second, even though, in this case, the lack of planning in the White House is better than any plan, for an administration to not have multiple contingency plans regarding their most significant domestic political accomplishment shows a make-it-up-as-you-go-along administration filled with people whose first — and oftentimes only — instinct is to politicize instead of effectively govern. This isalso troubling in areas like foreign policy in which where such an approach invariably does more harm than good and reinforces the belief held by many that the former community organizer and his so-called team of geniuses is in over his head in the White House.
Most importantly, though, this represents a White House out of touch with the public, who threw out the Democrats primarily because of Obamacare. Unlike former President Bill Clinton, who took the public’s rejection of his liberal policies and moderated to the right in his second term, eventually working with Republicans on welfare reform and balanced budgets, Obama seems to have no intention of taking the public’s dislike of Obamacare into consideration. A White House that heard the public’s dislike of Obamacare in 2010 would surely have contingency plans that took into consideration many of the frustrations small businesses, doctors, and patients had with Obamacare.
Not having a “Plan B” reveals a White House that is either incompetent or arrogant. Or both.