(Gruber not shown) (photo: laffy4k)

(Gruber not shown) (photo: laffy4k)

Needless to say, I have been reading a lot about MIT “health economist” and (now it can be revealed!) government contractor Jonathan Gruber (maybe you have, too), and I must tell you, this one really disappoints me.

It’s not like I haven’t been disappointed in the Obama Administration before—well, let me check that. Disappointment implies expectations, and, honestly, I did not expect that much. I knew Obama was no flaming liberal; in fact, I thought him a relatively conservative incrementalist. I did not expect an immediate and complete about face from the Bush years when it came to the policies I so despised, but I did hope, I admit, that this administration would at least behave better. I understood that they might not take things in the leftward direction I wanted, but I thought they would be, on the whole, more honest and above board in the process of governing. I thought they wouldn’t try to do things the way Bush-Cheney did, just using the relativist excuse that they were doing it for a superior end.

So, this Gruber scandal disappoints. Let me focus on one example.

Remember, back in November, when everyone inside the Beltway was all a-twitter (in both senses of the phrase) about how Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was making practically every White House staffer read an Atlantic article by Ron Brownstein? That piece, touting what FDL’s own Jon Walker called “free market economagic,” relied heavily on the work of Jonathan Gruber—then billed as “a leading health economist at MIT,” now well-understood to be a super-remunerated contractor in the employ of several parts of the Obama Administration.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House maestro, makes a big show of telling everyone to read an article by Brownstein based on the work of Gruber, who is himself working to shape the White House health plan—in order to justify how spot-on the thinking is inside the White House. It’s a near perfect circle as is, but it gets even better (or worse).

Along with Rahm letting everybody know he was letting everybody know, OMB Director Peter Orszag got on the White House blog to push the Brownstein article and an op-ed that Orszag penned for the Washington Post that touted a letter he co-signed with Jonathan Gruber. Orszag and Gruber go back a ways–years earlier, Orszag worked with Gruber to co-write at least two papers for a Boston College think tank called the Center for Retirement Research.

Rahm didn’t leak that Gruber worked for the administration. Gruber didn’t tell Brownstein that he worked for the administration. Orszag doesn’t disclose his prior relationship with Gruber.

It’s hinky on its face, for sure, but what really gets me is the broad similarities this has to the way the Bush Administration worked the press during the last decade. Cheney would authorize a leak about a possible terror plot, a link to an alleged state-sponsor of terrorism, the use for some assortment of aluminum tubes, or the provenance of some copper casings, and then you would see these items reported in all the right, respectable places. Then, Dick Cheney, or Condi Rice, or any of host of other Bush White House proxies would go on the Sunday shows and warn us that the threats had to be real—after all, it was right there in the New York Times and/or Washington Post.

This time, it is not about terror, but it is about something that most likely will directly affect the lives of even more Americans—health care reform. And the Obama Administration has created the same sort of feedback loop to distort the debate.

Even the author of that must-read screed seems a little bent out of shape. Posting at the Atlantic about today’s revelations, Brownstein concludes:

Bottom line from my view: readers should have been aware of Mr. Gruber’s relationship with the administration so they could make their own judgments on whether that would qualify or color their assessment of his analysis. Personally, I don’t see evidence that he functioned as an advocate for the administration, rather than an analyst with his own distinctive views. Still readers should have been aware of the connection so they could have made that judgment for themselves, and I wish I had known about it during my conversations with him.

Yes, readers like me should have known because it sure as sugar does color my assessments. Not so much of the Brownstein article in-and-of itself—I already knew how ridiculous most of that was from spending this last year in the health care weeds—but, instead, of the Obama Administration as a whole. I didn’t want a bunch of guys on “my team” who could just do the same crap that Bush and Cheney did, but do it better—I just wanted better.

Color me disappointed.