Kathleen Parker November 5, 2013

Among the many rules I grew up with, two stand out. The first was tonever call someone a liar, which was considered the worst characterindictment one could issue. The accuser had best be prepared to fight or be fleet of foot.

The other was a dictum so oft- repeated that it is permanentlytattooed on my brain: “If you’ll lie by omission, you’ll lie bycommission.”

This first rule sheds light on why it was so shocking when in 2009 Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted, “You lie,” as President Obama was addressingCongress. Beyond an insult to decorum, it was widely viewed as anothertipping point in our descent into incivility.

Now that theAffordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, has beenreleased upon the land — sort of — Wilson is being regaled in Republican quarters as the voice of Cassandra, though his outburst was prompted by Obama’s saying the ACA wouldn’t insure illegal immigrants.

“The big lie,” as the president’s broken Obamacare promise is now known, was that everyone could keep his or her doctor and insurance policy underthe ACA. No one, Americans were justified in inferring, would beremotely inconvenienced by Obamacare. Instead, the reality iswell-known: Millions are expected to lose their insurance policies, while others will see their premiums skyrocket.

It is still jarring to my adult psyche to impugn another, especially thepresident of the United States, as a liar, so I won’t. But it is notpossible to pretend that the American people have been told the truth.Nor is it possible to pretend that Barack Obama has been completelyhonest.

The question is, how much dishonesty from a president istolerable? How can a dishonest president lead a nation? The truth is, if the president were not immune from such things, the American peoplecould file a class-action suit on grounds that they were sold a productunder false pretenses. In the private sector, we call that fraud.

Now the White House tells us that Obama always meant you could keep the insurance policy you like if it met the standards of the ACA. Apparently, plenty of people involved with the law, including the House minority whip, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who recently said so, have known for at least three years that between 40 percent and 67 percent of those in the individual market would lose their policies.

White House press secretary Jay Carney explained: “What the president said, and what everybody said all along, is thatthere are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Actthat create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that everyinsurance plan has to provide. . . . So it’s true thatthere are existing health-care plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for theAffordable Care Act.”

Well, as the guardian of the Emerald City gates said to Dorothy: “Bust my buttons! Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

We know why. This sin of omission wasn’t an accidental oversight. It was a feint because many Americans wouldn’t have followed the wizard had they known the truth.

There’s a reason the ACA implemented thepopular aspects of the bill first — allowing parents to cover theirchildren until age 26 and eliminating their children’spreexisting-condition barrier to insurance coverage — before the 2012election and postponed the nasty news until enough people were hooked on Obamacare’s sugar. And, of course, after the president was reelected.This is what Republicans were referring to when they wanted to impedethe law before the rollout because people might like it. Sugar isaddictive after all.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau tried to explain otherwise. The president kept repeating the promise — some 23 times — because the White House was trying to keep things simple so as not to confuse people with too many details, he said. This is not onlyinsulting on its face but also not precisely true. Some might have beenalarmed by the details, but they wouldn’t have been confused. Either the White House doesn’t have faith in the people or it doesn’t have faithin its own plan.

To sum up, the American people were duped; the administration did not misspeak, as the New York Times editorialized. The administration knowingly misled with a false promise and adeliberate omission. Worse, it did so for your own good because youmight be confused by the truth. Call it what you will.