Obama Claims Not to Have Campaigned on Public Option

Color me confused as to why Barack Obama would tell the Washington Post he didn’t campaign on a public option when he fairly clearly did:

In fact, though the public option wasn’t a regular part of his stump speech, Obama appointed the public option’s intellectual father, Jacob Hacker, to his health care advisory committee, and his campaign’s health care white paper prominently featured a government run plan, with no mandate requiring uninsured people to buy insurance. The bill he will likely sign next year will do the opposite.

Who is supposed to be made to feel better by this line anyway? Who’s it supposed to persuade?

I think Obama could fairly say something like “for some activists, the public option may have been the centerpiece of health reform but it’s never been that for me and it wasn’t the heart of what I proposed during the campaign.” But he definitely did campaign saying he’d create one. I’m also really not sure why Obama would try to make consistency with campaign rhetoric a hallmark of his drive. He definitely campaigned against Hillary Clinton’s proposed individual mandate to buy health insurance and also attacked elements of John McCain’s health plan in terms that could easily be seen as inconsistent with the insurance excise tax concept.