Bernstein Book Challenges Bill Clinton's Health Care Claim

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Bernstein Book Challenges Bill Clinton's Health Care Claim
Sam Stein

November 9, 2007 03:33 PM


With his wife going through the toughest week of her presidential campaign, former President Bill Clinton is trying to take some political bullets on her behalf. The most recent charge: that the Hillary-led task force's failure to deliver on universal health care in 1993 was ultimately his fault, not hers.

"She has taken the rap for some of the problems we had with health care the last time that were far more my fault than hers," the former president said on the stump. "Let's just face it. We couldn't raise money...We told her she had to get to universal coverage and there would be no new money. She had to figure out how to do it. She also was very vulnerable to a Senate filibuster last time. Because they were on the 'just say no to Bill Clinton.'"

The comments seemed designed to deflect charges that, if elected president, Hillary would be too polarizing to make legislative headway. But are they accurate?

Well, Bubba is surely right in describing the congressional Republicans of his day as utterly recalcitrant to compromise. In the summer of 1994, the conservative stalwart Bill Kristol wrote a memo to GOP members, advising them to reject "sight unseen" the White House's proposal. Moreover, Bill Clinton admitted error in not scaling back the health care proposal when it became clear it would need 60 votes for passage.

But at least one Clinton biographer says the culpability for universal health cares failure rests as much, if not more so, with Hillary. In his book "A Woman In Charge," Carl Bernstein devotes much ink to the idea that the former first lady's secrecy and arrogance were toxic factors in Congressional negotiations. Below are a few choice Bernstein excerpts:

"Hillary wasn't open to any substantive compromise with her vision of health care reform. She ignored the possibility that instituting a system of gradually phased-in improvements to the existing health care system, leading eventually to her larger goals, might be helpful both to the Clintons' political allies up for reelection in 1994, and to her husband's own political future. As {George} Stephanopoulos said, 'Compromise didn't come naturally to Hillary.'"

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/09/bernstein-book-challenges_n_71965.html