Masters and Slaves of Deception

By CHARLES M. BLOW
NYT

President Obama made a huge mistake in pursuing health care reform. He tried to be hands-off when he needed to be knee-deep. The White House overcompensated for the Clinton-era defeat of health care reform by offering too little guidance and support to its own party’s lawmakers, who are now struggling to craft a coherent message out of a confusing bill. Adding to the challenge: this must be done in a bipartisan way.

But true bipartisanship, not withstanding candidate Obama’s grandiose visions of a post-partisan world, is becoming an increasingly quaint notion.

In this Washington, no outreached hand goes unmangled. Seeing an opening, conservatives have rushed in.

They have started Operation Master and Slaves of Deception — cooking up scary, outlandish claims about the plan and feeding them to a desperate base, eager to believe the worst about the man they loathe the most, President Obama.

(More here.)