Changing The Change

Brace yourself for Change and Hope Part 4 (or is it 5 or 6? I have lost track).

Posters and banners proclaimed it. A young inexperienced community activist promised it. Crowds of jubilant supporters chanted it. An entire nation became mesmerized by it.

Change and Hope were the mantra-like rallying cry of the masses. Nobody asked for a definition. None was needed. Change was coming and bringing with it Hope to the weary downtrodden voters who had been convinced that all their troubles could be cured by these two diaphanous, yet somehow proselyte verbs.

To his credit Barack Obama is about to once again deliver on his promise. Change is indeed coming, but not necessarily in the core issue.

The Change and Hope Obama will deliver is in the words he uses not in his intent. It’s what he does. It’s how he got to be where he is. He Changes the words and Hopes that nobody notices what he is saying is the exactly what he said before but with a new ring to it.

Hell, he even explained it when he gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame. Obama told the huddled masses of this far more political than Christian institution that while campaigning for the presidency he received an angry letter from a doctor complaining about his position on abortion as described on the official Obama for President web site. Obama, being a man of infinite vocabulary, took heed of the doctor’s complaint and changed the wording on the web site. Job done!

How very simple.

He did not change his position on the issue. He still supports abortion at any time including late term abortions and deplores anybody that would infringe on a “woman’s right” to kill her unborn baby. His views about abortion and Right to Life supporters remained exactly the same. He simply changed the words and hoped that folks would view that as him being amenable. And now, according to his chief political strategist and advisor, Chicago’s own David Axelrod, he’s about to try it again.

So far his various approaches to sell ObamaCare haven’t caught on the way he had hoped. He started by talking about the uninsured but got no positive response. He switched his direction toward the insured and only made matters worse. Folks who currently receive pretty good healthcare became vocally outraged at getting more than a rectal thermometer shoved up the old ying-yang. So now he’s going to flip through his well worn thesaurus and see if he can’t find a whole new way to say the same thing.

There are no advanced copies or drafts of the President’s proposed speech but I figure it will go something like this:

Republicans are unwilling to negotiate in good faith.
The current system of healthcare in this country is broken.
Did I mention that this is the Republicans fault too and they are not willing to negotiate?
Everything that you have heard so far is untrue. And even the stuff you haven’t heard is untrue.
The Republicans are spreading these lies because they are not willing to negotiate.
Nothing in the new plan will forbid you from seeing your own doctor.
It’s the Republicans who will make it impossible to see your old doctor because they are not willing to negotiate to fix the broken healthcare system.
None of the billions of dollars cut from Medicare will reduce the care you receive. I even know some old people.
Republicans don’t know any old people and they are the ones that won’t negotiate.
ObamaCare will not take away your decisions for end of life care.
But if the Republicans don’t negotiate we’re all going to die anyway.

It is tremendously unlikely that he will mention that he doesn’t need a single Republican vote to pass ObamaCare through either house of Congress.

The speech is tentatively scheduled for early September. I am certain that ABC and NBC are already clearing their schedules to make room for it. It will be interesting to see if they even allow a Republican rebuttal afterward.

Change is coming, but remember: If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably an Anatidae.