Sorry for such an unoriginal post title, but I guess the nose grows.

By signing the health care bill today, President Barack Obama did what he specifically and repeatedly said during his campaign that he would not do.

He imposed an individual mandate.

This was quite a topic during the hard-fought primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; it was such a key difference that many commentators discussed it.

Including yours truly; I'm ashamed to admit that I actually thought Obama was the more reasonable of the two. Little did I know that the man's words meant nothing. Bear in mind, though, that it was considered important enough at the time that Hillary went absolutely ballistic about it.

I was not alone in believing the man's repeated statements he was opposed to the individual mandate. US News described the individual mandate as "the major difference" between Obamacare and Hillarycare:

The plans have their own individual flourishes. Clinton would guarantee that premiums don't exceed a percentage of family income, while Obama would reimburse employers for major medical costs if they agree to plow the savings into reducing employee premiums. But the major difference between the two plans involves requiring people to have health insurance, the "individual mandate," as it's called.

"There are big differences between me and Sen. Obama on healthcare," Clinton said. "I have a healthcare plan that covers every single American. He does not. I have a healthcare plan that will leave no American out. He, by his own admission, leaves at least 15 million people out."

[...]

Obama argued against a requirement in Clinton's proposal that people buy coverage, saying his plan has no such mandate.

"There's been a lot of talk about the different plans the candidates have proposed to create a universal healthcare system in this country," Obama said in Des Moines. "But the reason Americans don't have health insurance isn't because they don't want it, it's because they can't afford it, which is why my plan doesn't have a mandate and goes further in cutting costs than any other proposal offered in this race."

His campaign did spur a major confrontation over that 5 percent difference, though, in a direct mail piece that said Clinton's plan "forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it." Her campaign and the candidate herself reacted furiously, prompting the famous, "Meet me in Ohio," declaration.

...the Clinton plan requires that everyone have insurance; the Obama plan doesn't.

And while I hate to repeat myself, I think it's only fair to point out that in a post last year revisiting the individual mandate issue, I remembered the president's campaign promises:

And in light of his campaign promises, naturally the president will do everything he can to stop it immediately, and if it passes, he'll promptly veto it.

Of course, now that the president has violated his campaign promise, those hounds in the mainstream media press corps will be all over him.

Right?