(cheering and applauding)
We can no longer afford to put
healthcare reform on hold.
We can't afford to do it.
It's time.
>> There is nothing more fraught
than healthcare, because it is
so personal and it is so
intimate.
And every political party that
decides to take on healthcare in
some massive, poorly understood
way, reaps both the backlash
and, and political retaliation.
>> Americans are seriously
worried that this is going to
destroy the healthcare their
parents get.
>> This has been on the left's
to-do list since neither FDR or
LBJ got it done.
They have just been waiting,
waiting, waiting.
"When we have the presidency and
both houses of Congress, we are
going to push this through."
>> It's about too much power
going to federal government.
>> The whole point of this is to
get everybody enrolled in the
government healthcare plan.
>> NARRATOR: From across the
divide, Sarah Palin reappeared,
wielding a new political weapon.
>> She was a maven on Facebook.
The original politician who saw
that you could skirt the media,
and you could get the message
out unfiltered, uncut to the
public, was Sarah Palin.
She did that with Facebook.
(keys clicking)
>> As more Americans delve into
the disturbing details of the
nationalized healthcare plan,
our collective jaw is dropping,
and we're saying not just no,
but hell no!
>> NARRATOR: She exploited fear
with a new phrase that went
viral-- death panels.
>> The America I know and love
is not one in which my parents
or my baby with Down syndrome
will have to stand in front of
Obama's "death panel."
>> NARRATOR: It wasn't true.
>> She is the first of a
generation of politicians who
live in a post-truth
environment.
>> NARRATOR: Steve Schmidt had
also been a top campaign aide
for John McCain's presidential
run.
He had pushed McCain to select
Sarah Palin.
>> She was, and there's no
polite way to say it, but a
serial liar.
She would say things that are
simply not true.
Or things that were picked up
from the internet.
And this obliteration of fact
from fiction, of truth from lie,
has become now endemic in
American politics.
But it started then.
