Journalist Mary Katharine Ham reacted Friday to President Obama’s interview with MSNBC last night, telling Fox News his excuses for Obamacare’s flaws proves he is “narrating the presidency, not actually holding the office of the presidency.”
Ham spoke with Fox’s Bill Hemmer and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York about Obama’s justification for his healthcare law’s stumbles. “It’s not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization,” he claimed. “We have these big agencies — some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”
Let me first say that I agree with the president that the federal bureaucracy is an obstacle for the government doing things well,” Ham said, “and that is one of the reasons that many people like myself were skeptical about them being able to undertake this and do it well.”
“But second, here he is again sort of narrating the presidency, not actually holding the office of president,” she continued. “Presumably he’s in charge of these things and could have made a difference. In this case, he says this is a problem that he knew about and will be solved sometime in the future, absolving himself and his administration of all the problems he’s caused in the meantime.”
Byron York said the president’s “open door policy” with his cabinet secretaries just isn’t working. “I think most management experts would say the president needs to seek out bad news, as well,” he said.
“This was his legacy law,” Ham agreed. “It’s hard not to look at this and go, ‘How were you not watching this every step of the way and making sure that it went, at least, better than this.’ And I think that was what many critics said when were going into Obamacare: ‘This is quite a bit to bite off — are you sure you can handle it?’ And it turns out, no, they couldn’t. And that to me is a big problem that he’s not taking responsibility for.”
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