During President Obama’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress, the President’s claim that illegal aliens weren’t covered in the legislation met with incredulity from the few people present who read and understood the bill. But Republican congressman Joe Wilson said out loud what the rest were thinking. “You lie!”
Wilson’s honest reaction to a dishonest sales pitch was widely condemned on both sides, and Republican leadership even directed him to tender an apology, which he did. This despite the fact that Democrats routinely called President Bush a liar (and much worse), from Senate majority leader Harry Reid on down. (Reid apologized for calling the president a “loser,” but pointedly refused to apologize for calling him a “liar”). The main difference with Wilson was that he had the courage to tell the President to his face, while Reid and the other Democrats mostly insulted Bush to crowds of enthusiastic supporters (in other words, journalists).
Still, it leaves us with a question: How does a member of Congress respond to a President telling whoppers of the magnitude of Obama’s claims that a government-run health care system won’t add one dime to the debt, will save half a trillion dollars by eliminating waste and fraud, and will serve millions more people than the market-based system we have now?
If two-word outbursts like Congressman Wilson’s are frowned upon, then we must have an appropriate way of communicating the sentiment, “Pull the other one, there’s a bell on it.” Hillary Clinton, during President Bush’s speeches, would always find some way of looking disgusted, rolling her eyes, or just sneering as if she’d found a blue dress in her closet that wasn’t her size. But this all seems hopelessly poor-sporty, and there’s no guaranteeing C-SPAN will catch less renowned members exhibiting such expressions.
If one were good-natured, as Senators and members of congress usually are--unless they’re Democrats coming out of a town hall meeting–they could respond as one would to an entertaining teller of tall tales. “Ha!” one could exclaim, laughing out loud, slapping one’s knee, and exclaiming, “nobody can spin a yarn like that youngster from Chicago!”
Since the Obama administration wants to create over fifty new bureaucracies with this new health reform bill, perhaps they could create one more for Truth Content. This office might assign varying colors to degrees of truth in the President’s speeches, as the Department of Homeland Security has done for the terrorist alert level: green for highest truth content, yellow for some stretchers, red for out-and-out-fibs, and perhaps neon orange if anyone actually spots the President crossing his fingers behind his back. Memembers could be given paddles with different colored panels to flash their reactions from their seats.
Perhaps, instead of the usual tepid response from the opposition party, the Republicans could arrange for some sort of simultaneous translation, with a close-captioned text crawl at the bottom of the screen. As the president says, “It will cost not a dime more,” the text crawl could read, “not a dime more than two or three trillion.” The same effect could be achieved by an inset box in the bottom corner of the screen, with an on-screen interpreter providing the truthful translation. To protect her from retribution, she could be seen only in silhouette, her voice distorted, and her true identity hidden behind the pseudonym, “Polly Graf.”
But none of these has the power and directness of congressman Wilson’s from-the-heart response. Wilson, by the way, has enjoyed a tremendous surge of support and increase in donations since his outburst, and seems destined for greater things. This is even more galling to the Democrats, whose name-calling is so routine that if Republicans aren’t pilloried by Harry Reid, they send a reminder to his office asking if they’re being ignored on purpose.
Still, we must wonder why Democrats exhibit much greater outrage at having their honesty questioned than the GOP does. Perhaps being accused falsely is frustrating, but being fairly caught is all the more painful.
