After three fruitless years of trying to convince the American people that happiness rested behind the wheel of an Edsel, Ford spat out the homely vehicle like a scalding onion ring.
When Bill Cosby couldn’t suppress worldwide rioting against New Coke, we got Coke Classic.
The take-home lesson: Barring government subsidies (see “ethanol”), failure in the free market buys even the most dutifully hawked products a one-way ticket to the back of a Trivial Pursuit card.
That useful principle is exactly reversed in government. Lo this past century, America has rejected socialized medicine time and again. And time and again, Washington has responded, “See, you must really want socialized medicine. Otherwise you wouldn’t keep rejecting it.”
Or, to quote President Obama’s silliest talking point, “We are on the doorstep of accomplishing something that Washington has been talking about since Teddy Roosevelt was president, and that is reforming health care and health insurance here in America.”