Mort’s dismay at how Obama is performing is the latest in a long line of mea culpas by Obama supporters. Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley have all written about their discomfort as they watched the Obama they praised during the election turn into a president who has befuddled them. However, none of them is more horrified and appalled at Barack Obama’s presidency than Mort Zuckerman. Today in the Daily Beast, he strips bare his shock. In some ways it’s uncomfortable to read because Mort is beside himself with worry about what Obama is doing to our country and he has laid it all out there for everyone to see:
This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.
In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.
Five states got deals on health care–one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.
Even that is not the worst part. He could have said, “I know. I promised these things, but let me try to do them one at a time.” You want to deal with health care? Fine. Issue No. 1 with health care was the cost. You know I think it was 37 percent or 33 who were worried about coverage. Fine, I wrote an editorial to this effect. Focus on cost-containment first. But he’s trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much. This is not leadership…
…One business leader said to me, “In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines.”
I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.
I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?
He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.
It’s very sad. It’s really sad.
Mort would have seen all of this coming if he had stopped cheer leading long enough to pay attention to Obama’s record and actually vet the man, which as a member of the media he was obligated to do. When Mort says with dismay that Obama’s trying to boil the ocean, I must ask him, what did he think Obama meant by “fundamentally transform America”? Regarding Obama’s disgusting payoffs and bribes: did Mort actually expect honesty and integrity from a corrupt Chicago politician who wraps himself in Alinsky’s rules for radicals?
He can’t claim he didn’t know. Those of us who did pay attention went out of our way to warn everyone about Obama’s radical ideology and were thanked by being smeared as racists. Mort is right when he says it’s really sad because now all Americans are going to suffer for years to come with an anemic economy and high unemployment rates because the so called “educated” class was too ignorant to see that Obama’s campaign was the nothing but a bait and switch scheme.
When you’re done reading Mort’s piece, take a look at the comment section. The criticism is brutal but Mort needs to pay his penance by reading all of it and engaging in a bit of self reflection about how he couldn’t or wouldn’t see the real Obama.
