As someone who's been writing in support of the public option for the better part of a year, I was initially weirded out by the president's declaration that he didn't campaign on the public option.
I thought, 'the heck ja' mean? It's all right there on YouTube and in the campaign materials. A public option to compete with insurance companies and yappity yap.
Now that I've simmered down, it's clear that "campaigned on" implies a broadstroke ideas and major initiatives. For example, the president absolutely campaigned on change, healthcare, education, energy, restoring America's image around the world, and so forth. But he didn't "campaign on" the public option in the strictest sense of political rhetoric.
Ben Smith, the gang at First Read, and Sam Stein, all of whom followed the campaign closely, concluded that he was basically right. Stein read through more than 200 campaign dispatches and found scant mention of the provision.
I just think the president said this at the wrong time. In fact, he shouldn't have said it at all. So it was a gaffe, but in political terms, he wasn't entirely wrong.
Whatever. Time to move on. The magnitude of the outrage is growing well beyond the magnitude of the trespass.