"Stupid Is as Stupid Does"

Jonathan Gruber testifies before Congress, 2009.

The MIT economist Jonathan Gruber–lovable bumpkin that he is–apologized before Congress for being glib and arrogant, but “his response to substantive questions suggested that he is mainly sorry for getting caught on tape.” Read more from the WSJ here.

Maybe it’s easier to get tenure at MIT than we thought. At least that’s our reaction to the Forrest Gump routine put on Tuesday before Congress by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who sounded for all the world as if he knew nothing more about politics and health care than the lovable bumpkin who always showed up when history was being made.

That wasn’t the way Mr. Gruber sounded in his now famous videos—including in a University of Pennsylvania appearance last year—when he credited the enactment of ObamaCare to a “lack of transparency,” the gaming of Congressional rules intended to measure the law’s fiscal impact, the “stupidity of the American voter,” and a lack of Democratic candor about the redistribution of wealth embedded in the new insurance scheme.

But on Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee, Mr. Gruber distanced himself from his remarks while refusing to say if they were true. He apologized for the tone, arrogance, glibness and the inappropriate nature of his remarks. But his response to substantive questions suggested that he is mainly sorry for getting caught on tape.

He even insisted on Tuesday that ObamaCare had been debated and passed in a transparent manner. But this position is 180 degrees from the one he expressed on tape. So he simply dismissed his taped remarks as “conjectures” about a political process he now claims not to understand.

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, and practicing yoga.