From George Will:

It took two years and the loss of 52 Democratic House seats in 1994 to compel Clinton to miniaturize his presidency. Like Lyndon Johnson, and Harry Truman before him, Clinton wanted to make his mark by enacting a health-care entitlement that would complete Franklin Roosevelt’s project of binding all Americans to the central government with hoops of steel. Health care failed, and the remaining six years of his presidency produced headlines like CLINTON WILL ADVISE SCHOOLS ON UNIFORMS (The New York Times, Feb. 25, 1996) and CLINTON ANNOUNCES NEW CHILD SEAT RULES (Feb. 28, 1999).
It took just 13 months and the loss of one Senate seat to cause Obama to decide that the state of the Union would be improved by faux frugality. Yet Obama continues to engage in grating overstatements, such as this when speaking to ABC’s Diane Sawyer about the health-care bill: “Every health economist out there who’s serious about this stuff will tell you it’s a vast improvement over the status quo.” That is simply false—unless it is tautological. Unless health economists who are unenthralled are, by definition, unserious. Tautologies are, however, vacuous. And repeated assertions that particular topics (e.g., climate change) are no longer debatable corrode confidence in the administration.

More here.