The Dietocracy

So who made this call in the White House?  Michelle Obama has been cut loose on her fledgling political career as the new head of a program to address diet and exercise.  Now it’s obvious that this project wasn’t thrown together over the weekend.  It was planned in advance to be deployed in the shadow of what was supposed to be successful health care reform.   And tucked inside a centrally planned bureaucracy designed to give the government power to regulate diet—which a taxpayer funded health care system would have given them—controlling behavior could be justified as a way to save taxpayer dollars and even sold as a way to reduce the deficit.  “Help cut the fat from America’s diet and the fat from America’s deficit at the same time.”  (just as long as we forget how the deficit got that big) 

But America doesn’t want to forget, and they don’t want what the Obamacrats have on the current menu.  And recent events have galvanized that opposition to such a degree that even democrats in the House are no longer willing to walk in lock step with the leadership or allow themselves to be bullied by Chicago politics and late night deal making.   As a result the current health care framework has stalled, and may be dying a necessary death, and while something may rise Phoenix like from the ashes, for now there is a void where a massive entitlement was meant to be.   

So back to my original question.  Who made the call in the White House to deploy the Michelle Obama dietocracy despite the risk to Michelle in the absence of a program to support it, and in a hostile political environment that is leaning away from top down meddling in matters of personal health?  Michelle Obama?  Desiree Rodgers?  Rahm Emanuel?  All of the above? 

Whoever the stage manager is at the Obama Show they should perhaps consider that anything and everything that does not address the problems of jobs—which are taking a nose dive again as I predicted—will be viewed as arranging deck chairs on the titanic.   People want to be left alone, and all this does is expose Mrs. Obama to the kind of scrutiny that will only distract everyone from the real problems at hand.  Or maybe that’s the idea.