Sterling Beard notes that, in the president’s weird, uninvolved interview with NBC about the mess that is Obamacare, President Obama admitted that his administration didn’t do a very good job crafting the law. That’s the understatement of the year, I would say.

But the sloppiness continues. Yesterday, Politico reported on a map put out by the White House showing which states are allies and which ones are foes in the effort to expand Medicaid (thanks to Jason Fichtner for the pointer). However, the map seems to have suffered from the same “crafting problems” that have plagued the law’s website:

“Nearly half of states are so locked into the politics of Obamacare that they’re willing to leave nearly 5.4 million of their own people uninsured,” a map circulated by the administration Thursday says. But the Medicaid map seems to count some potential allies as enemies and at least one expansion resister as a friend. . . .
Virginia is singled out for special treatment, listed as “committed” to expanding Medicaid because of the election this week of Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor. But that comes as news to local Republicans, who insist that expansion is no sure thing in the Old Dominion State, regardless of McAuliffe’s victory.
“As they have been throughout the entire Obamacare implementation process, the White House remains blissfully unaware of reality,” said Matthew Moran, spokesman for Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell. “The authority to expand Medicaid no longer rests with the governor.” A legislative commission must weigh in.

But it gets weirder:

Virginia’s designation is even more curious because of some other states the White House listed as opponents, like Florida, Montana, Missouri and New Hampshire. Those four states all have governors who have committed to seeking Medicaid expansion — and three of the governors are Democrats. But the administration puts them in the same category as Texas, Louisiana and South Carolina, fierce expansion enemies under Govs. Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley, respectively.
Tennessee, too, is listed as refusing to expand Medicaid, but Republican Gov. Bill Haslam has been in constant negotiation with the Obama administration about a potential pathway to expansion. He has proposed a plan similar to one in neighboring Arkansas that would rely on private insurers to cover the state’s low-income residents.
And Pennsylvania, where Republican Gov. Tom Corbett recently expressed support for expansion but only if accompanied by a lengthy list of controversial conditions, is listed by the White House as a state that’s already expanded Medicaid. A Corbett spokeswoman said the administration’s analysis contradicts Corbett’s promise not to expand the Medicaid rolls.

I wonder who’s proofing what is coming out of the White House these days. Actually, I wonder who’s managing the place these days, too.

On that note, it’s worth reading this piece by Keith Hennessey, former head of President George W. Bush’s National Economic Council, on presidential accuracy and honesty. It is interesting throughout and includes a bit on the discovery that they were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Hennessey concludes:

President Obama lied to the American public and to Congress when he was trying to enact the Affordable Care Act. He lied after the ACA became law. He repeated this lie more than two dozen times, including as recently as six weeks ago. And then two days ago he offered a new lie about what he had previously said. I can reach no other conclusion.
As someone who spent countless hours ensuring Presidential policy accuracy, the idea that an Obama White House staffer would lose such an internal battle, that they would give President Obama a speech staff knew was wrong, is beyond my experience. A White House Chief of Staff who permits President Obama to say something he knows is false violates everything I learned about serving a President. A President must not lie to the American people and Congress about a core element of his signature domestic policy initiative, even if doing so is necessary for that initiative to become law. When he did this, President Obama breached the trust America needs to have in her President.