Democratic representative Keith Ellison offered a defense of the president’s broken promises about his health-care law: He had the right intentions.
“Everything the president said and did was in pursuit of trying to get Americans health care, so I think, even though he might have said, ‘If you like your decent insurance, your insurance that works,’ I think people really get that,” Ellison argued. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had explained earlier in the program that the president’s deceptive promises would remain a problem throughout the law’s implementation.
Ellison argued, in fact, that the president’s quasi-apology was a sign of his character: “He said, look man, if you misunderstood what I was trying to say, I’m sorry about that. I think that shows integrity. He didn’t do anything to self-promote. . . . I think good intentions count.” (One might note that this means the president was apologizing for his ostensibly good intentions.)
When Republican representative Tom Cole then explained that Congress and the White House knew the president’s promise would be broken, Ellison seemed to deflect the blame off himself, saying, “I didn’t know.”
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