President Obama’s hollow promise that Americans who liked their own healthcare plans would not have to give them up under Obamacare may prove to be another tempest in a tea party teapot, but it might also balloon into a political gale that blows away the highest hopes for his second term in the White House.
Winning reelection to the presidency is often a triumph before a fall. Richard Nixon won a second term in a landslide; two years later, the Watergate scandal forced him to resign. Ronald Reagan too won a huge reelection victory, but his second term was tarnished by the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton handily won four more years, but then along came the Lewinsky sex scandal and the first presidential impeachment in 130 years.
Despite the best efforts of congressional Republicans to puff up the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal on par with those that rocked past second-term presidencies, there simply is not enough there, besides shortsighted incompetence, to make it much of a threat to the Obama White House.
The botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act, however, has done some serious damage. Liberals may be right that once enough people begin to enjoy the benefits of the new healthcare regime, the near meltdown of the healthcare website in its first weeks will be forgotten. That could also be wishful thinking. No matter how much things improve, a sense that someone failed to get it right might also linger.
