History Will Forget The Obamacare Website's Bungled Launch

[Commentary] How many voters remember the Medicare Part D rollout? It's the nature of the news industry to focus on what's gone wrong as opposed to, say, what's working or what's moving in the direction of progress. It was true in 2006. It's true today. It will likely be true in the future.

That's not, however, how history gets written -- or how people think over the long haul. Democrats know this and are counting on the media's narrative being tossed. "The Dec. 1 deadline was important, but there won't be chapters in the history books written about Dec. 1," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin. "I think it's important to look at this holistically." That's what you always say when you're losing on the particulars. Look at the big picture, the long arc of history! But this isn't just wishful thinking. Yes, HealthCare.gov may well have consequences for Democrats in 2014. But anything much beyond that is hyperbole. Americans and the media have already forgotten the supposedly "horrendous" rollout of Medicare Part D, and it happened just seven years ago, when most seasoned members of the Washington press corps were already in Washington. If the White House is alarmed by the outlandishness of the various "Obamacare is as bad as…." Comparisons -- Iraq, Katrina, the sinking of the Titanic, the Battle of Waterloo, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger -- it should be heartened by the fact that the media can't even remember the more recent and germane example. If the media can't remember 2006, will voters a decade from now, confronted with the possibility of some new government program, really stop and say, "Remember how that website didn't work right in 2013?"