Don't Tell President Obama Bad News! He Can't Deal with 'the Drama'!

Today on NRO

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY: The White House expected most people to lose their existing plans under the ACA. Obama's '5 Percent' Con Job.

CHARLES C. W. COOKE: Obamacare: Hard-working Americans might wonder, "Why bother?"Obamacare vs. the Dutiful.

JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: A Nevada union's proxy war with the UFC keeps the sport illegal in New York. The Fight for Mixed Martial Arts in New York.

BETSY WOODRUFF: A city in New Mexico would be first in the nation to prohibit late-term abortions. Albuquerque Votes on Late-Term Abortion Ban.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The Fed can improve its policy, but not by listening to doom-mongering gold bugs. The Fed in the Age of Yellen.

ANDREW JOHNSON: Democrats miss no opportunity to claim discrimination. The Left and the 'War on Women'

SLIDESHOW: Philippines Relief Effort.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

November 18, 2013

The Easy Way to Fix HealthCare.Gov: Redefine What 'Fixed' Means

The next big broken promise from the administration will be Jeffrey Zients' promise that "by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users."

"Vast majority" means fewer folks than you think: "The Obama administration will consider the new federal insurance marketplace a success if 80 percent of users can buy health-care plans online, according to government and industry officials familiar with the project… As many as one in five Americans who try to use the Web site to buy insurance will be unable to do so."

I don't ever want to hear another federal worker object to the phrase, "close enough for government work," or complain that they're unfairly maligned as incompetent, slipshod, or unreliable.

Now the right-wing doubters are sneering loudly: "And I'm not convinced it's going to be fixed -- you know, I've seen a lot of tech rollouts. We don't do those well in this country. My rule for them is -- and no matter what -- electronic medical records or the tax department, it takes twice as long, costs twice as much and often you have to do it twice."

Er, wait, scratch that. That was Howard Dean this weekend.

Don't Tell President Obama Bad News! He Can't Deal with 'the Drama'!

A fascinating bit of political journalism from Gloria Borger:

It's a real head-scratcher. Most powerful man in the free world. Most important issue. Most politically explosive, particularly coming on the heels of the government shutdown. Consider the context: Republicans had just tried to defund Obamacare, and they lost in a heap of public humiliation. So the rollout of Obamacare had to be really impressive, because the Republicans had to be proven wrong.

And yet, as the dry-runs continued to produce red flags—over and over—the president remained in his steely cocoon. If this were the presidency of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, the obvious theories would abound: the chief executive is disengaged. Or incurious. Or worse. But since Obama is none of the above, what gives?

Notice how she just flatly asserts that Obama is not disengaged, incurious, or worse. But what's even more amazing is that her very next paragraph confirms the possibility she just denied:

This much is clear, after speaking with both past and present senior administration officials: no one was really in charge, so no one knew for sure how bad the overall picture was. What's more, and—perhaps most telling—no one wanted to even hint to the president that this techno-savvy administration possibly had a website stuck in, say, 1995. "People don't like to tell him bad news," says an ex-White House staffer. "Part of it is the no-drama culture."

It is flat-out impossible to be a good president if you don't want to hear bad news.

Scott Walker Isn't Saying He's Running . . . But He Sounds Like He's Running

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dropped by the National Review D.C. offices Friday.

He's out promoting his new book, Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge, and his publisher asked that we not quote him about the book until the official publication this week.

Walker is quick to emphasize the book isn't an autobiography; it's mostly about his years as governor so far, the high-profile fights over pension reform and controlling spending.

Walker's key messages Friday is that as disastrous as the Obamacare rollout has been, Republicans cannot be seen as gloating or "spiking the football"; he says that as a governor who did not expand Medicaid or set up a state exchange, his role is to do his best for the people in his state who "slip through the cracks" -- who have lost their existing insurance plans and can't buy or afford a new one through the dysfunctional federal website.

I asked Walker about his reelection outlook; most polls have him in a good but not great position, leading his only announced challenger, Democrat Mary Burke, by a few percentage points but below 50 percent. Walker said he governs a state that is roughly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and that he thinks it's fair to say he has a ceiling of about 52 to 53 percent. He also said that while he won the recall by a margin that surprised many, 53 percent to 46 percent, he recognizes that some of that margin came from voters who disagreed with the recall on principle, not because they agreed with everything he was doing. The governor's decision to make that point, unprompted, represents something of a declaration against interest. Give him some points for honesty and modesty.

You may have noticed that Walker's getting some presidential buzz. Walker said he couldn't guarantee he would finish his term, and said he had never given that sort of assurance in any previous race. It seems safe to interpret the lack of a blanket denial of a presidential bid as a sign that Walker isn't ruling it out.

If Walker ran, he might be one of the strongest hybrid or consensus Republican candidates in the field. Tea-partiers should love him, as he may be one of the most spectacularly effective budget-cutters in the country, successfully changing the collective bargaining process for most public employees in Wisconsin. Membership numbers are plummeting for Wisconsin's public sector unions, as are membership dues.

PolitiFact quibbles a bit with Walker's boast of turning a "$3.6 billion deficit into more than a half-billion-dollar surplus." . . . but we're really talking about the margins here:

That $3.6 billion shortfall that preceded Walker's first budget is best compared to the projected shortfall Walker faced in his second budget. That number was actually a positive one -- $177 million, according to Walker administration reports. That underscores Walker's success at reducing budgeting tricks in the first budget.

So, the swing isn't more than $4.1 billion, it's more like $3.77 billion.

The apples-to-apples view still favors Walker, just not quite as much as he portrayed.

The "establishment" should like Walker because he has a lot of experience in government; actually accomplished big, serious, consequential reforms; and he's blunt but not prone to fire-breathing statements. He said that while he isn't aiming to give advice to Republicans in Congress, he thinks the party should try to avoid another government shutdown. The party's wealthy donors love him.

So what would hold back a Walker presidential bid? If you look at the names being mentioned for the 2016 Republican field these days -- Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio -- they're all big, bold personalities, almost larger-than-life figures. Walker is an even-keeled, plain-spoken kind of guy. It's easy to imagine him getting lost on a stage crowded with candidates, or being a bit like Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty -- another accomplished, reform-minded governor with a Midwestern personality deemed too boring by the grassroots early on.

Arne Duncan Laments White Suburban Mothers Can't Grasp His Brilliant Policy

The Democrats' arrogance knows no bounds. Arne Duncan sometimes feels like the cabinet secretary that the world forgot, but the sheer asininity of his latest statement ought to catch up with him:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it "fascinating" that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from "white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were."

Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about?

In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core State Standards — which were approved by 45 states and the District of Columbia and are now being implemented across the country (though some states are reconsidering) — Duncan has repeatedly noted that the standards and the standardized testing that goes along with them are more difficult than students in most states have confronted.

The Common Core was designed to elevate teaching and learning. Supporters say it does that; critics say it doesn't and that some of the standards, especially for young children, are not developmentally appropriate. Whichever side you fall on regarding the Core's academic value, there is no question that their implementation in many areas has been miserable — so miserable that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a Core supporter, recently compared it to another particularly troubled rollout:

You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse.

There's a LOT to object to in Duncan's statement . . . but one point that jumps out at me is his assertion that white suburban moms are objecting to Common Core. Only white ones? Say, he wouldn't be inserting the issue of race into the debate in order to deflect from criticism?

And no suburban dads?

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