The ghosts of Clintoncare
Very interesting column by Ezra Klein:
Barack Obama’s strategy to pass health-care reform seems based on a simple principle: Whatever Bill Clinton did, do the opposite.
Where Clinton and his team crafted their health-care reform plan in the executive branch, Obama has left the details of his effort almost entirely to Congress. Where Clinton pursued an ambitious reconstruction of the entire sector, Obama has sought to preserve existing insurance arrangements and win the support of industry players. Where Clinton spent a year developing his bill before even getting to Congress, Obama lashed his efforts to a tight (and apparently unrealizable) timetable. Even the atmospherics offer contrasts: Clinton’s big push for reform came in a soaring 1993 speech before a joint session of Congress, in which he offered painstaking details of his plans; Obama made his argument to the nation at a news conference last week, addressing concerns more than specifying proposals.
Obama’s reluctance to follow Clinton’s example is understandable: Few legislative failures have been as catastrophic as Clinton’s on health-care reform. Yet the ghosts of the early 1990s still hover over today’s debates.
Much as opponents derided the Clinton effort as Clintoncare or Hillarycare, some now speak of Obamacare, and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) recently chortled in a conference call that a defeat on health care would be Obama’s "Waterloo." The president, for his part, told PBS’s Jim Lehrer last week that some Republicans are engaging in a 1994 redux. "They explicitly went after the Clintons, said: ‘We’re not going to get this done.’ . . . It was a pure political play, a show of strength by the Republicans that helped them regain the House," Obama said. "I think there are folks who think that we should try to dust off that old playbook."
Yet there are aspects of Clinton’s approach that could, and should, inform Obama’s effort — and not just as examples of what not to do. Clinton’s attempt …
