THE ANTI-GEORGE WASHINGTON

By Jack Kelly

Friday, 20 July 2012

Our first president was so revered for his integrity that most believed Parson Weems when he said that even as a child, George Washington could not tell a lie. Can our current president tell the truth?  It's a legitimate question.  Amb. Fred Eckert filled a 188-page book with "untrue, duplicitous, arrogant and delusional" things Barack Hussein Obama has said.  We could call him the Anti-George Washington. Joel Wade is fond of advising us that you get good at what you practice.  But evidently not always, for constant practice has not made Mr. Obama a good liar.  A good liar tells plausible lies, and lies only when the truth could do him substantial harm. President Obama tells preposterous lies.  He lies when the truth wouldn't hurt.  He lies so often and so obviously about so many things it is doubtful lying for him is merely a tactic.  It's an integral part of his character -- or lack of it. Admittedly, often when we say something that isn't true, we aren't lying, because we think what we are saying is true.  We are ignorant or careless or both, but we aren't trying to deceive.  And when a politician says one thing while seeking office, but does the opposite in office, it may not be a lie.  Sometimes a new president learns stuff that causes him to alter stances he took during the campaign. This could be why Mr. Obama reneged on his pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But when a politician promises "an unprecedented level of openness," and then runs the most secretive administration since Nixon's, that's straight out mendacity. Further, hypocrisy is a blood relative of lying.  Mr. Obama attacks Mitt Romney for outsourcing jobs. Yet Obama himself invests in firms which outsource jobs; has taken contributions from outsourcers, hired executives from Romney's firm to work in his administration. An Obama supporter was in charge at Bain when the layoffs the president decries took place. Team Obama's attacks on Mr. Romney for outsourcing are lies.  The Washington Post calls them "bunk." Much of what we thought we knew about Barack Hussein Obama is false. Biographer David Maraniss found 38 instances where what Mr. Obama said in "Dreams From My Father" wasn't true. It was Mr. Obama himself who first claimed he'd been born in Kenya. Mr. Maraniss dismisses the falsehoods as literary license.  But the British are steamed by Mr. Obama's claim they tortured his grandfather.  His mother died because her insurance company wouldn't pay for a cancer treatment, Mr. Obama said.  The president repeated this false claim often while marketing Obamacare. Hers isn't the only health care horror story he made up. Most of what the president told Americans about Obamacare isn't true: *Obamacare won't add to the deficit, he said. National spending on health will grow 28 percent faster because of Obamacare, the actuaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated in June.  *Obamacare will "bring down (health insurance) premiums by $2,500 for the typical family," the president said.  MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who helped draft the law, says now Obamacare will increase premiums by 19 to 30 percent. *You can keep your private health insurance if you want to, he said.  Obamacare will cause between 30 percent and 50 percent of private employers to drop their health insurance plans, the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimated last year.  A survey by the House Ways and Means Committee in May indicated 71 of the top 100 companies could drop their health plans. * "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor," he said.  Because of Obamacare, 83 percent of physicians are considering quitting the practice of medicine, according to a survey in June.  Mr. Obama makes surreal claims for jobs "created or saved" by his failed stimulus bill and his green energy boondoggles.  He pretended to support the Keystone XL pipeline while he was killing it.  Then there is this whopper: "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years," Mr. Obama said in May. Spending in the 2012 fiscal year is expected to be $3.796 trillion, $814 billion or 27.3% more than in FY 2008, the last for which George W. Bush was fully responsible.  Mr. Obama justifies his preposterous claim by attributing the $787 billion he spent on the stimulus, and on auto company bailouts, "cash for clunkers," and mortgage subsidies to Mr. Bush. The national debt has doubled since Barack Hussein Obama became president.  But he says it's the Republicans who "run up these wild debts." Barack Hussein Obama often claims "historic" achievements, so perhaps he'll be pleased to be remembered for more than as the president who attended the most fund-raisers, played the most golf.  He'll go down in history for being the biggest liar ever to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.