HuffPo’s Howard Fineman On Obama’s Biggest Mistake: Health Care Reform

Mediaite.com:

On his show today, Chris Matthews asked his panelists to name President Obama’s biggest mistake in office. Howard Fineman, Editorial Director at the Huffington Post, suggested it was none other than the controversial health care reform bill pushed through the Congress last year.


The other panelists had less surprising offers: focusing on Afghanistan as a war of necessity and not closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay were two of the ideas thrown out there. But Fineman and fellow panelist David Ignatius agreed that the president’s focus on health care reform was the biggest mistake of his presidency.


Fineman’s take:


His decision to spend all of his political capital and a year-and-a-half of his time on the health care reform law, I think, was his biggest political mistake.


Ignatius echoed Fineman’s sentiments, also pointing out that President Obama did not have that much political capital on health care reform to begin with.


The idea of watching a major change in social legislation without having a consensus in the country and in Congress about what that should look like was a mistake. That’s not how the president makes good policy.

NOW they say it was a mistake. Funny that.