Barack Obama has to respond to Hillary Clinton’s continued assertion that her “experience” makes her a more suitable candidate for President.
One way to do this is to examine her prior experience with one of the most prominent issues in this campaign, which is health care reform. As I remember it, Big Bloated Bill — newly elected and having a supportive Democratic Congress to work with — appointed Hillary Clinton as the head of the President’s Task Force on National Health Reform, with the task in 1993 of putting together a proposal to reform the health care system. My recollection is also that she completely botched the job — first by holding secret, possibly illegal meetings (which set the entire process off on the wrong foot), by failing to bring Congressional leaders into the process, and ultimately by presenting (but failing to adequately explain) a proposal that was extremely complex. As Derek Bok explained in “The Great Health Care Debate of 1993-94”:
Another criticism involves the President’s use of a task force, headed by his wife, that operated in secret. This process tended to shut out voices that might have helped create a more viable plan–voices of knowledgeable persons in the Administration who feared to criticize the work of the First Lady, voices of critics of a managed competition approach who were excluded from the Task Force, voices of interest groups and politicians (who were consulted, but not much) who might have exposed the political vulnerabilities of the eventual plan. Secret deliberations and exclusion of contrary voices are probably not a viable way of crafting a major reform in an environment in which the President has limited influence over Congress, powerful opponents, and a public distrustful of government and its capabilities. [Hmmm, sound familiar?]
Finally, once the plan was introduced the President did too little to explain it to the people. Indeed, at the urging of advisors, the Administration denied that the plan would cost any more than what could be raised by “sin” taxes and avoided discussing how such important items as the proposed health care alliances would actually operate. In an atmosphere of crisis or during a time of maximum trust, a leader may gather support for an important proposal without explaining important details. But this was not President Clinton’s situation. By saying so little about costs or the alliances, he allowed his adversaries an open field to convince an already skeptical public that his plan would cost the taxpayers money and create another large, unwieldy federal bureaucracy.
Is this the kind of “experience” Hillary Clinton is asking us to believe entitles her to the Presidency? Hillary Clinton’s “experience” effectively set back the cause of health care reform, at least on the national level, by 15 years, and contributed to the election of the Republican Congress in 1994. I’ve seen nothing during this campaign to suggest that she’s learned anything from this.
Experience you can count on? Give me a break.
Categories: Uncategorized