During the 1988 campaign, George H.W. Bush famously said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” In the fall of 1990, he wound up agreeing to raise taxes. In 1992 he lost re-election in a three-way race with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot
During the 2008 campaign and since (until recently), Barack Obama said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” Because of the schedule for the implementation of Obamacare, the fact that this was not true for everybody did not become obvious to the general public until very recently, and Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012.
So, what is there to say about these two pledges? First, a little history about George H.W. Bush’s pledge. President Bush made the pledge during the 1988 campaign. I believe (though some may disagree with me) that he meant it when he said it and that he intended to keep it. But then, that terrible thing, circumstances, intervened.
In the fall of 1990, President Bush was trying to get Congress to pass a budget. Over the Columbus Day weekend, there was a short government shutdown. President Bush was in a tough spot. He had promised not to raise taxes, but Democrats in Congress (and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress) would not pass a budget without a tax increase.* President Bush agonized:
“I had to decide between a compromise on taxes or literally to shut down the government. … When push came to shove and our troops were moving overseas**, we needed a fully functioning government. I simply had to hammer out a compromise to keep the government open ….”***
The Democrats would not give in, so President Bush did. He agreed to a tax increase. Whether that was the right thing to do or not, I don’t know. But that was the reason he did it.
Now to President Obama’s pledge: The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the President’s advisers have known for a long time that his pledge was not true for everybody. There were some people who had health plans that they would not be able to keep:
“At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said. Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president's message. …
One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama's ‘keep your plan’ promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. The White House said it was unaware of the objections. …
Richard Kirsch, the former national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which pushed for the 2010 health law, said the words were reassuring – and true – for the vast majority of the people, and so his group never raised concerns about that claim. Adding an asterisk to note that people who had ‘shoddy insurance’ might need to change plans was not practical, he said.
‘The actual, accurate statement is if you have good insurance, and you like it, you can keep it,’ said Mr. Kirsch, now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal policy organization.”
In other words, the President’s advisers knew that the statement was not true for everybody.**** There would be a “small number” of people who would not be able to keep their health plan. But “delving into details … could be confusing and would clutter the president's message.”
So, President Bush violated his pledge because circumstances changed and the nation might soon be at war. As for President Obama’s pledge, his aides**** knew it was never true in the first place, but it didn’t work politically to say it right.
President Bush’s reason for breaking his pledge versus
President Obama’s: You decide.
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* Some things never change.
** The troops were going to the Middle East to follow through on President Bush’s statement in August, 1990, about Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait: “This will not stand.” Back then, red-lines were red.
*** George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), p.380.
**** I would assume that President Obama knew this, too. He’s not stupid.
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