The man who served as chief of staff under former President George W. Bush and helped sell the Iraq War to the American people said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s entire team is guilty of misleading the public.
Andy Card said that the current administration allowed Obama “to mislead the American people for so long” when he promoted the Affordable Care Act. Obama has come under fire recently for his previous claim that those who like their insurance plans can keep them under the health care law, a promise that hasn’t quite panned out as he said it would.
“Well, first of all, I fault not only the President but I fault the people around the President for allowing him to mislead the American people for so long,” Card told the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “His categorical statements were made not as a candidate but as a President of the United States and words do matter at the White House. And it’s usually somebody in the White House that goes to the President and says, ‘Mr. President, you said that but it’s not entirely true. You’ve got to put a caveat around it.'”
“So I think there were a lot of people that knew what the President was saying, they knew it wasn’t accurate but nobody was correcting it,” he continued. “So I think there should be a little mea culpa at the White House, not just from the President but from all the people around the President because he has real problems.”
Card was White House chief of staff from 2001 until 2006. In 2002, he spearheaded the White House Iraq Group, a task force that sought to drum up public support for the war.
Card said Obama’s credibility has taken a hit both in the United States and around the world.
“The other thing is I think they’ve got to be candid with the American people,” Card said. “President Obama has lost the confidence of telling the truth to the American people. And he’s done the same thing around the world. So I do think words matter when they come out of the President’s mouth, and people at the White House understand that and they should be helping to make sure his words are taken for what they are, the truth.”
