David Sirota - Every now and then, an insider inadvertently exposes the hideous rationalizations that run the American political grotesquerie. The best known of these statements are memorialized on TV as “gaffes.” But the ones that never become famous tend to reveal the ugliest assumptions of all.

A case in point is the comment the pharmaceutical industry recently let fly in The Washington Post. The newspaper this week examined how the Obama administration crushed legislation that would have allowed Americans to purchase lower-priced FDA-approved medicines from abroad—legislation that President
Barack Obama promised to support as a presidential candidate; legislation that would have reduced drug profiteering and saved the government and consumers $100 billion.

“It’s about being a candidate as opposed to being president,” said the drug industry’s top lobbyist in defense of Obama’s flip-flop. Read more.