With Obama claiming that he never campaigned for the public option a new probelm is presented – the “fix it later” argument. This comment by Obama has taken a lot of people by surprise. Even Ezra Klein, a strong bill backer, is calling the President’s bluff on this:

Oy. I’ll defend the argument that the health-care bill that looks likely to pass is structurally similar to the health-care proposal released by the Obama campaign. But it’s impossible to defend Obama’s statement that “I didn’t campaign on the public option.” For one thing, it was in his campaign plan, which is to say, he campaigned on it. The proposal (pdf) assured voters that Obama’s plan will “establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers.”

The White House argues that they didn’t emphasize it in public speeches, and according to Salon’s Alex Koppelmann, that’s true. But speaking as someone who did a lot of reporting on their health-care plan, they emphasized it privately quite a bit. It was, in fact, their answer to a lot of the other flaws in their proposal. So whether Obama used it in his speeches, his campaign purposefully pushed it to, at the least, some reporters, which is to say they worked to ensure that people knew about the public option’s important role in their health-care thinking.

Obama’s latest statement on this is hair-splitting at best and misleading at worst. That’s even more true given how often he mentioned the public option after he got elected. And it’s a good example of why the left is losing its trust in Obama. Obama could have given an interview where he expressed frustration that the math of the Senate forced his administration to give up the public option but nevertheless argued that the rest of the health-care bill was well worth passing. Instead, he’s arguing that he never cared about the public option anyway, which is just confirming liberal suspicions that they lost that battle because the president was never really on their side.

Ezra has also been at the front of the “fix it later” movement, but it’s really hard to say that when our man in the White House isn’t willing to realize the faults of the legislation.

What really upset me about Obama’s statement yesterday was the simple fact that he is willing to sell out his campaign promises in the name of his legacy. Forget the fact that the public option will help keep costs lower, Obama would much rather just look like he “won”. That is an insult to every progressive.