The most widely quoted professor of the recent news cycle, Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT now says:
“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference. I was speaking off the cuff. I basically spoke inappropriately. I regret having made those comments.”
Mr. Gruber had said, essentially, that the language of the Affordable Care Act was crafted to exploit the average voter’s lack of … ah, sophistication.
(The full quote was: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”)
He meant it when he said it, of course. He doesn’t now say that he was mistaken. Merely that what he said was “inappropriate.”
And does anyone doubt that this is exactly what people drafting the bill were thinking? They were trying to slip something past people they believed were too stupid to know what is good for them … and the country. It’s the sovereign way of doing things in Washington. Think Johnson and Vietnam. The people were too stupid to understand either the necessity of the war or the wisdom of waging it in a way that assured we would lose. Best and the brightest, don’t you remember, in top form.
One point. The sleight of hand in drafting and selling the ACA certainly was not meant to fool only those who would have been opposed if the thing had been subjected to some truth-in-advertising scrutiny.
Gruber and his co-conspirators also meant to hoodwink supporters – both in and out of Congress – as well.
