Jonah Goldberg - The Ironic Presidency - Granite Grok

Jonah Goldberg – The Ironic Presidency

Jonah GoldbergThis weeks G-File is pretty awesome.  You really should go to National Review and sign up for it.  Until then, here is this weeks pilfered remarks, which represent less than 20% of the whole.

Consider the fact that Obamacare is now simply untethered from law or policy. This week the administration announced that you can get a hardship waiver from Obamacare if your hardship is . . .wait for it . . . Obamacare. This is like getting out of doing push-ups during basic training if you can prove that doing push-ups would be difficult for you, defeating the point of doing push-ups in the first place. The White House is quite simply making it all up as they go along. You can’t really point to a thing that is Obamacare because doing so would be like pointing at the blob in a lava lamp and saying “that looks like Michael Caine eating a badger.” Maybe it looks like that right now. Give it a second.

Sure, the defenders will admit, more people have lost their insurance than gained insurance because of Obamacare. Yes, yes, the website is the screen-doored submarine of websites. Sure, the president is simply disregarding countless laws and regulations he and his supporters once considered so sacred only racists, psychopaths, and Koch brothers could oppose. But good God, “DON’T YOU WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE INSURANCE, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!?!?!”


Obamacare has ceased being a thing for its defenders and has instead become an idea, a vision. To question the greatness of Obamacare is to miss the point of the greatness of Obamacare.

And so has been so much else with this presidency.

Even when he comes down from Olympus to deal with reality, he does so in a way where it’s more like he’s playing the role of president rather than being president. His “Year of Action” is the political equivalent of Beatlemania (“it’s not the Beatles but an incredible simulation”). “Action Mania! It’s not action but an incredible simulation.” I mean, am I the only one laughing that the Democrats filibustered themselves this week to talk about the crisis of climate change? They control the senate but stayed up all night to talk about how something must be done while refusing to propose actually doing something.

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