Redstate

Tell Us Another One

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Up until now, Hillary Clinton's discussions concerning the effort to reform health care in 1993-94 revolved in large part around the fact that she was taught a lesson on how Washington works through the health care debacle. She admits that she tried for too much in seeking to reform health care and that she was chastened and beaten by a system that she portrayed--and portrays--as being resistant to change.

Now, the narrative has altered. Via InstaPundit, we learn that it was actually all Bill Clinton's fault! Or to put it the way Paul Starr does:

Presidents often downplay their own direct involvement in decision making to put some distance between themselves and policies that may eventually prove to be unsuccessful. Part of the job of cabinet members and advisors is to take the blame when things go wrong. Clinton's appointment of his wife to chair the task force did not, however, create the necessary distance and deniability. Not only did the fiction of Hillary's personal responsibility for the health plan fail to protect the president at the time, it has also now come back to haunt her in her own quest for the presidency. According to recurrent accounts -- most recently in Carl Bernstein's shoddily researched biography A Woman in Charge -- it was supposedly Hillary's secretiveness and rigidity that led to fatal decisions about the White House health plan and political strategy. Careful reporting after the failure of the health plan showed these charges were false, but Bernstein and other writers continue to recycle them. Misunderstanding the politics behind the plan, they give a distorted account of why it was defeated. The health-reform debacle was critical in framing Hillary's public image, and despite her years of accomplishment in her own right, she still carries the burdens of that failure. It is time to get the facts right and clear the air for the discussion of health-care reform in what may be another Clinton administration.

Whereupon, Starr goes through a huge narratice designed to show that Hillary Clinton was the fall-lady for her husband. She supposedly took the blame so that he wouldn't be harmed politically.

To which, my reply is "Oh, come on." Look, if you listen to any Hillary Clinton speech nowadays as she is running for President and she references her experience in working for health care reform in 1993-94, she herself admits that she got her clock cleaned. She has admitted as much ever since the debacle was complete. It may be convenient that some people are working to change the narrative on Clinton's behalf, but the fact of the matter is that Hillary isn't even challenging the narrative. For the most part, she pretty much owns up to the fact that she screwed up in her management of health care reform. Sure she also blames Republicans but never once has she said "don't blame me, I was just the frontperson for my husband."

So can we stop this? If you want to root for Hillary Clinton, there is a better narrative. Say that she "learned from her mistakes." Say that her time in the Senate "taught her how to work harmoniously and effectively with Republicans and Democrats alike." Say that after 14 years in the national public eye, she is savvy and experienced now.

But don't say that she took a hit for her husband. She didn't. It is well-documented that she didn't and well-documented that long past the time that it would have made any difference for her husband's political fortunes, she owned up to screwing up the legislative process on behalf of health care. If anyone has an incentive to change and challenge the narrative regarding the management of health care reform, it is Hillary Clinton. And since she hasn't dared to be so revisionist, other people probably should not dare on her behalf.