I’ve known for some time that Valerie Jarrett was a longtime bud of the Obamas. I’ve also been cognizant of her main function in the White House: viz., to help the president find and recruit Marxists like Van Jones (clip here) and other radicals to help “transform” the country into a European-style social democracy. It wasn’t until this morning, however, when I saw this transcript of her appearance on “This Week with George Stephanopolous,” that I knew Jarrett’s actual title, Prevarication Czar.
Stands to reason, really. With all the truth-stretching that Obama does (his imaginary “saved” jobs statistic, for example), it makes perfectly good sense that he would have someone on board to dream up these little fictions while he’s busy out on the links or taking the missus on promised dates. (I wonder if Jarrett is also the guiding force behind his Straw Man Initiative — one of the hallmarks to date of his presidency.)
So there Jarrett was yesterday on TV. And there Stephanopolous was, doing his best frankly to keep it real. And did Jarrett respond in kind? You be the judge. Consider this opening exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: [O]ne year ago this week, . . . President Obama accepted the verdict of the country’s voters. [. . .]
One year later, the president’s economic plan has passed, but with no Republican votes in the House, only three in the Senate. It sure looks like right now no Republicans support the health care bills as they are going forward in the Congress. And our polling shows that this partisan divide persists on issue after issue after issue. Why has that core promise of the president’s campaign, healing the divide, gone unfulfilled?
JARRETT: Well, you should ask that question to the Republican Party. I mean, frankly, just listening to the president’s words again, it brought back terrific memories, and I think his message was a profound one. And he has stayed true to that message. He has reached out. He has listened. He has reached across the aisle.
Reached across the aisle, has he? Ask the Republican Party, should we? That latter point is a capital suggestion.
We go back to May of this year, when GOP leaders sent a letter to the president expressing a desire to work with him to find “common ground” on healthcare reform. What was the administration’s response? A tersely worded letter stating that they had healthcare reform under control.
In early June, a group of 10 key Republican senators, 9 of them from the Senate Finance Committee (one of the two panels responsible for health care legislation), sent another letter to the White House. The gist this time was to highlight seemingly insurmountable differences Republicans and Democrats on health care and to underscore the importance of a bipartisan effort. The reply from Obama on this occasion? Nada. Nothing. He wasn’t in the White House, or even the country, to receive the letter. He was in Paris, sightseeing with his family.
But what about all the White House meetings with members of Congress? Surely, the Republicans got a chance to air their proposals at one of those confabs. They might have had they been invited, but the GOP leadership has not been invited to the White House since April.
OK, back to the show. After Jarrett took a brief recess to put out the fire that her pants were on, Stephanopolous pressed her, noting that Obama has not incorporated any of the Republicans’ ideas into his health care proposal.
JARRETT: Well, actually, that’s not true. There have been examples of where he has included their ideas. And ultimately whether they vote for a piece of legislation or not doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been an open and fruitful process.
And those ideas would be . . . [drum roll]. The administration and Democrats in Congress have turned a deaf ear on the recommendations to sell health insurance across state lines, which would encourage real competition, and tort reform. (Obama did say he would “look into” the last of these suggestions, which I believe has the same meaning as when parents answer a “Can we. . . ?” question from their children with “We’ll see.”)
Finally, there is this exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Our latest polling shows that there is not majority support for the president’s health care plans.
JARRETT: Well, we actually think that there is. And I suppose it depends upon what poll you’re looking at. . . .
This is actually true up to a point. For example, if you look at this New York Times/CBS News poll, you see that there is, as the Times reported, “wide support for government-run health care.” Just don’t look too close because the poll was conducted back in June. If you look at this poll, conducted by the same organization in September, you see that much of that support has eroded.
And this is one of the more optimistic polls. The Rasmussen survey, which interviews likely voters, shows a steady decline in support for health care reform and an equally strong opposition to it between June and October.
Obama ran on all sorts of promises, including transparency and a change in the way Washington politics are transacted. So far, those promises have proven to be false. Job well done, Val!
Comments 7
Nice art!. Just the other day my brother suggested over coffee that a longish nosed friend of ours could easily prep for the Halloween dance. Put on a floppy green hat and go as a puppet, he suggested. Then followed a several minute question and answer period. Who knew there were people our age who never heard of Pinocchio?
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@ Sully:
Who’s Pinocchio?
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Let me try this one:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
A fellow officer with whom I served on the USS John F Kennedy was an Egyptian-American who grew up in Egypt and Iraq (he was a teenager in Iraq’s naval cadet school in Basrah when Saddam mounted his coup in 1979, and had to escape Iraq on a fishing boat in the weeks after the Iran-Iraq war started).
We learned for some reason one day that he had never heard the nonsense word replicated above. Of course — he didn’t grow up watching Mary Poppins, or even reading Mary Poppins, and had probably never heard anyone sing “Hum-diddle-iddle-iddle-umm-dee-lie!”
We tested him frequently on American cultural minutiae after that, which he took in good part. Of course he knew about Star Trek (and Star Wars); but imagine being an American of his age and not recognizing Lassie, The Sound of Music, or Laugh-In.
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:48 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
I’ll always have an imperishable soft spot for the carrier navy. After I passed a verbal board before him and the department heads the captain of the Big E said to me, “Congratulations, Mr. A, you’re now qualified as underway OOD of the largest warship in the history of the world.” Reflecting on it later I realized that the CNO probably gave him his orders to take command with the same words.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 pm
If Republicans do well tomorrow, expect the 3 volcanos to erupt. Michelle, Valerie and Mister Peanut will be mighty pissed.
What I see there is a kind of simmering rage, an entitled attitude which says, ‘we know because we just know and nobody better cross us.’
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Louise Hay, who was chair of the UIC math department when I first came here in the 1980′s, had fled Europe with her family when she was a child to escape from the Nazis, and moved in with relatives in New York. Her hosts had a child of the same age as Louise. Neither of the two spoke a word of the other’s language, but they quickly discovered that they both knew the name “Pinocchio,” and that was enough for them to get along fine.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
@ Peter Shalen: That’s a rather charming little story.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm