He’s smooth, all right

WHATEVER your opinion of The Hon. Mike Beebe, governor of Arkansas and old smoothie, and ours is high, there’s no doubt the Guv can be counted on to even out the rough edges of a political question, even if the substance of it remains the same under his expertly applied varnish.

This week’s example: his assurance-made from Washington, of course, capital of the United States and of smooth talking points-that this state’s Private Option is more than an expansion of Medicaid. He’s right, but note that the governor didn’t deny it’s largely an expansion of Medicaid. Nobody could.

Here’s another example of the master’s touch. Speaking of support for the Private Option/Medicaid Expansion, the governor assured the folks back home, where a good word for Obamacare could be the touch of death for politicians who are up for re-election this year: “This is not an endorsement of Obamacare in Arkansas.” Note that he didn’t deny it’s impossible to separate the two. You might as well have tried to separate Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese twins. One depended on the other. An innocent listener might not realize as much, listening to our governor talk about another pair of now joined twins, Medicaid and the Private Option.

It would be unfair to call the governor’s statement from Washington clintonesque-that smooth it wasn’t, thank goodness, and it didn’t depend on what the definition of is is. Let’s just say it was smooth, all right, but not slick.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 02/27/2014

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