Fisk’s dismissal of honor came to mind while watching Barack Obama in Boston smugly explain how his vow — “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it!” — was now inoperative.

All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler.

In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled.

That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were “substandard” plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of “bad-apple insurers.”