The incompetence of our neo-monarchy
By Mark Steyn
It is a condition of my admission to this
great land that I am not allowed to foment the overthrow of the United
States government. Oh, I signed it airily enough, but you’d be
surprised, as the years go by, how often the urge to foment starts to
rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far as constitutional
government goes, the president of the United States is doing a grand job
of overthrowing it all by himself.
On Thursday, he passed a new
law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having
ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the
president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with
Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a
law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory
bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your
health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your
health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The
insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of
Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce
Obamacare.
“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former
Vermont governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing
wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to
“pass” a “law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same
president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep
their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that
effect: It only counts if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at
the Associated Press obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.”
It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it.
The reason for the
benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is that millions of
his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no fewer than 27
times during his press conference — have had their lives upended by
Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the mountain of
human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t make an
omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to order
that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original
shells. Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work,
he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance
companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .
The
most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the
boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of
reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is
complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should
have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the
economy. By “we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder
provinces of his decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how
complicated insurance is. What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of
Sclerosis? But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the
vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are
entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry
could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them
eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever passed her lips, but
certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you like your cake, you
can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back with “What we’re
also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.” That contribution
to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await the reign of
Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have slipped over
his eyes.
Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day
after his election, he’s “probably the smartest guy ever to become
president.” Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us
five years ago, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than
my policy directors.” Well, apart from his signature health-care
policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I was not informed directly that the
website would not be working,” he told us. The buck stops with something
called “the executive branch,” which is apparently nothing to do with
him. As evidence that he was entirely out of the loop, he offered this:
Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.
Ooooo-kay.
So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart
enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to
inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough
to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people
what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough
to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well
it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s
smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know
enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the
very best of hands.
Michael Beschloss is right: This is what it
means to be smart in a neo-monarchical America. Obama spake, and it
shall be so. And, if it turns out not to be so, why pick on him? He
talks a good Royal Proclamation; why get hung up on details?
Until
October 1, Obama had never done anything — not run a gas station, or a
doughnut stand — other than let himself be wafted onward and upward to
the next do-nothing gig. Even in his first term, he didn’t really do:
Starting with the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus, he ran a
money-no-object government that was all money and no objects; he spent
and spent, and left no trace. Some things he massively expanded (food
stamps, Social Security disability) and other things he massively
diminished (effective foreign policy), but all were, so to speak,
preexisting conditions. Obamacare is the first thing Obama has actually
done, and, if you’re the person it’s being done to, it’s not pretty.
The
president promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Certainly,
other men have succeeded in transforming settled, free societies: Pierre
Trudeau did in Canada four decades ago, and so, in post-war Britain,
did the less charismatic Clement Attlee. And, if you subscribe to their
particular philosophy, their transformations were effected very
efficiently. But Obama is an incompetent, so “fundamentally transformed”
is a euphemism for “wrecked beyond repair.” As a socialist, he makes a
good socialite.
But on he staggers, with a wave of his scepter,
delaying this, staying that, exempting the other, according to his regal
whim and internal polling. The omniscient beneficent Sovereign will now
graciously “allow” us “folks” to keep all those junk plans from
bad-apple insurers. Yet even the wisest King cannot reign forever, and
what will happen decades down the road were someone less benign —
perhaps even (shudder) a Republican — to ascend the throne and wield
these mighty powers?
Hey, relax: If you like your constitution,
you can keep your constitution. Period. And your existing amendments.
Well, most of them — except for the junk ones . . .
1 comment:
Excellent piece Mr. Steyn. This is the piece I would've written (if I had your talent for word-play). Since I do NOT enjoy that talent I am relegated to the comment section. Thank you!
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