Once upon a time there was a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives. In fact, in 1993-94 Bill Clinton was President, the Senate had 57 Democrats and 43 Republicans, and the House had 257 Democrats, 176 Republicans, and one independent that caucused with the Dems.
Bill Clinton set out to enact health care reforms that would have provided near universal coverage. The Republicans decided that they would do everything in their power to prevent a bill from passing. They succeeded, and then they took both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterms.
Clinton turned to his old friend Dick Morris, who counseled co-opting the Republican agenda and then taking credit for it. This became known as triangulation, and the common wisdom became that Bill Clinton saved his Presidency by following this strategy.
We are witnessing at least one similar feature in these midterm elections. After ‘winning’ re-election in 2004, George W. Bush decided to make privatizing Social Security his top priority. Many Democrats thought we should offer compromise proposals. Nancy Pelosi disagreed. She made sure no counteroffers were forthcoming. The Dems killed Social Security reform, and that, along with a plethora of other issues, set the stage for murderous gains for the Democrats this November.
Regardless of whether or not the Democrats take both houses of Congress, things in Washington are a lot different than they were back in 1993 and 1994. I was reminded of this while perusing a book about Clinton’s failed health care reforms by Haynes Johnson and David Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (1996).
The book engages in a lot of Higher Broderism about the great shame of partisanship in the Capitol. But it is the best book on the politics of health care that I’ve ever read. Below the fold I bring you an excerpt that I expect will bring out a lot of visceral feelings for people. It harkens back to a time before Hillary Clinton was considered a demon by most of the right, before Newt had become speaker, before the Dems lost Congress. A time of Democratic power and hope. And then we hit the iceberg and sank in the frozen Atlantic.
Until Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Capitol Hill to begin those three days of televised hearings, only two other First Ladies had ever testified before Congress. Both times they dealt with far narrower issues. No First Lady had assumed the leading role Hillary Clinton played in developing and delivering major national legislation.
Those earlier precedents were much on the minds of the First Lady and her devoted staff as she prepared for her full emergence into the public spotlight. “This is as big as it comes,” one of her aides told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. “This is Eleanor Roosevelt time.”
Eleanor Rooselvelt was, of course, the first to appear before Congress. But myths notwithstanding, Eleanor Rooselvelt testified only twice: during the Depression, about the plight of migrant workers, and during World War II, about slum-housing conditions in the District of Columbia. The other First Lady was Rosalyn Carter, who testified about mental health efforts in the late 1970’s. Hillary Clinton’s appearances before five congressional committees- three in the House, two in the Senate- far eclipsed any public role her predecessors had played.
Mindful of that history, and eager to do all he could to make her Hill appearances both symbolic and successful, Ted Kennedy thought of having her appear in the grand Senate Caucus Room, where his brothers had announced their Presidential candidacies. He instructed his staff to do research into some other historic events there. They reported back that hearings on the sinking of the Titanic had been held in the Caucus Room. Uh-oh, Kennedy thought, that’s not one we want to advertise. This could be another Titanic– a huge ship with a big prow that can’t turn easily when it’s heading straight toward a massive immovable object.
For all her confident public demeanor, privately Hillary Clinton displayed her anxiety as she prepared to go to Capitol Hill. During a “prep” session with her staff at the White House the night before, she almost “jumped down the throat” of one staffer who tried to make a couple of suggestions to her. The next morning, as she was about to leave for the Hill, her staff saw her again, and she was, understandably, “very nervous.” But she displayed none of those emotions when she strode through the crush of reporters into the bright lights that sharply illuminated the hearing room for the TV cameras. She was cool and poised as she sat alone, without notes, expressing herself clearly and convincingly hour after hour, easily fielding all questions. The few critical remarks directed at her were deflected with an earnest reply or self-deprecating humor. Introducing herself as “a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a woman,” she also consciously appealed to all women, seeking to undercut the tensions that exist between America’s homemakers and its career women. It was a bravura performance.
Most members of Congress, in that male dominated bastion of political power, were almost obsequious- many women thought patronizing- in their praise. “I think in the very near future the President will be known as your husband. Who’s that fella? That’s Hillary’s husband,” gushed Dan Rostenkowski when she testified before his House Ways and Means Committee. Her testimony, Rosty added effusively, had fundamentally altered the terms of the debate. No longer was the question whether America would have health reform, he said, “but what type of reform we should have.” John Lewis, a Democratic member of Congress from Georgia who as a young black civil rights marcher had been clubbed nearly to death by segregationsits, added his praise: “I really believe when historians pick up their pens and write about this period, they will say that you were largely responsible for health care reform in America.” …
…The praise was bipartisan. In the Senate, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, a Republican moderate with a strong independent streak, publicly endorsed the Clinton approach after she testified, telling her, “I am pleased to be the first. I am absolutely confident I will not be the last.” His words were echoed by another Republican moderate, Jack Danforth of Missouri. “We will pass a law next year,” Danforth flatly predicted after the First Lady’s appearance.
In her appearances, Hillary Clinton did not miss any opportunity to win her audience’s favor. Whereas Bill Clinton was notoriously late, Hillary Clinton arrived before the appointed time. The members of Congress spoke of her competence and respect for their well-regulated procedures. She also showed she knew how to play to their highly developed egos with ingratiating flattery…
…The most celebrated moment of her triumphal round of Hill appearances came when the First Lady neatly, and surgically, put down one of her, and her husband’s, most caustic critics, the conservative Republican Dick Armey of Texas.
Armey was the chief lieutenant for Newt Gingrich’s combative House Republicans, noted for his “go for the jugular” style of political exchange. Not long before the First Lady came to the Hill, Armey had compared the Clinton’s ideas to those of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the so-called suicide doctor who helped terminally ill patients die. Armey denounced the Clinton plan as a “Kervokian prescription for the jobs of American men and women.” Months earlier, Armey had said publicly of Hillary Clinton, “Her thoughts sound a lot like Karl Marx. She hangs around with a lot of Marxists. All her friends are Marxists.”
Now, when Armey’s turn came to question the First Lady, he began with an attempt at graciousness. “Mrs. Clinton,” he said, “let me also express my appreciation to you for the work you’ve done and your willingness to come before this committee today, and tell you what a joy it is to see you here.”
“Thank you,” the First Lady said, smiling brightly.
“I listened to the chairman’s opening statement,” Armey continued, beginning to apply the stiletto, “and while I don’t share the chairman’s joy on our holding hearings on a government-run health care system, I do share his intention to make the debate, the legislative process, as exciting as possible.”
Nodding calmly, and continuing to smile, the First Lady answered, with wry double meaning, “I’m sure you will do that, Mr. Armey.” Laughter filled the hearing room.
“We’ll do the best we can,” said a flustered Armey.
The First Lady continued to smile disarmingly. Then she quietly replied, “You and Dr. Kervokian.” This time the laughter in the room was loud, sustained. and punctuated with strong applause.
Armey appeared stunned. He leaned forward, his face flushed, and said grimly, “I have been told about your charm and wit, and let me say”- he was interrupted by more laughter- “the reports of your charm are overstated and the reports on your wit are understated.”
The First Lady, unruffled, still smiling, but in a thinly veiled tone, replied, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
It must’ve been nice back then. I was too young to remember it, but politics before the cutthroat nature it is today? Sounds like some sort of bizzare utopia.
It was a time before progressivism was a dirty word thougt of as a failed program. It was a time of great hope. But it was also a time of great institutional rot in Congress. The Democrats had been in power too long. It wasn’t their policies that had failed, it was their arrogance and, yes, even corruption, that undermined us.
We need to constantly go back to those times, and to the great post-Watergate reform period of the 1970’s. We can’t repeat those mistakes.
When you say repeat mistakes, in what sense? Becoming too institutionalized?
Different for different eras.
All the reformers of the 1970’s were defeated, Pike, Church…
They went past where the public was and weren’t prepared for the coordinated counterassault from Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger, the Bush, Casey, Baker, Schultz takeover, and then finally the neo-conservative revolution.
In the 1990’s they refused to clean up their own house, they didn’t react quickly enough to deficit spending, they didn’t take on Reagan and Bush over Iran-Contra and let them win the 1988 election and then pardon everyone.
Lots and lots of mistakes not to repeat.
I think the netroots, acting as a sort of watchdog on the Democratic Party, will be a great help in ensuring things don’t go south again…hopefully.
The catch word was gridlock. The 1980’s were a very negative time when people began to doubt the American dream. The American public was told throughout the 1980’s by both Reagan and Bush I that the problem with America was gridlock. That damn Democratic congress wouldn’t give the Republican presidents carte blanche. When Clinton was elected it looked like nobody would be able to blame gridlock anymore.
When Bill Clinton was inaugurated in January of 1993 the Democrats gave him a key to Congress. They had a ceremony and gave him an actual giant key that symbolized how they were now going to work together to accomplish things. No more gridlock. But by 1994 it was clear that the whole gridlock problem hadn’t been solved. The Democratic Congress was perceived as fighting the Democratic president tooth and nail.
The Republicans took control and Clinton eventually saved his presidency by what we would call triangulation. But the average American would say that he had solved the gridlock problem and figured out how to accomplish things.
I’m convinced that’s part of the reason that the older public stayed with Bush as long as they did. The Republican congress rolled over and gave him everything he wanted so he was seen accomplishing things. Because god forbid that we ever have gridlock again.
Now the older public is coming around to thinking that a little gridlock (what we would call oversight) looks like it might be a good thing. And the younger people don’t remember the whole “gridlock is bad” propaganda campaign.
Sen Moynihan got a huge pile of cash from the Health Care industry to kill the Clinton Health care plan.
Moynihan chaired the Sen. Committee the Clinton Health Care plan went through. He single-handedly crushed it.
That’s what happens when you give DEM chairmanships to ex-Nixon staffers.
Kind of ironic, then, that Hillary took Moynihan’s seat in the Senate in 2000.
Moynihan just didn’t think it was a good idea or that they could control costs, and he thought welfare reform was a better way to go.
Moynihan wasn’t bought off. He wasn’t convinced. But, you’re right, his lack of enthusiasm was critical and it cost us dearly.
I just happened to be taking a Journalism class that summer, and was following the Clinton Health Care plan through Congress as a class project. I read every column inch written in about 4 different papers about the Clinton Health Care Plan that summer.
Moynihan got big money donations from all kinds of for-profit Health Care concerns, and THEN Moynihan started voicing his concerns.
Moynihan was bought.
Sydney Blumenthal has been on C-Span (Thank God for C-Span) recently talking about his new book, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime . You just got to hope Americans are both smart enough and awake enough to see this agenda and to reject it now. He implies this election may well be the last chance to set a proper course again. IMO, however, he does not deal with guaranteeing a fair election PROCESS enough, and that may well be the key to a/the Bush successful constitutional assault, and have no doubt, it is an assault on this document.
Amen. You’ve touched on my concern.
I’m cautious that we’re too optimistic on the outcome November 7th. Too focused on the polls and not the election processs – the security of the vote and the count. the perils inherent in electronic voting.
Polls showing Dems in the lead means nothing. We’ve been there before. Disappointment in the air.
The Clinton strategy for healthcare was to get all of the stakeholders – providers, insurance companies, healthcare advocates – together and create a consensus plan that they would then shove through Congress. The public support was there; in fact, it had been a signature issue of the 1992 campaign. So they indeed got an agreed-upon plan.
But as the legislation wound its way through Congress, various of the special interests involved in the grand consensus began jockeying for position. And then some broke and decided to scuttle the plan, no doubt with the encouragement of the House Republicans like Armey and Gingrich. And then came the “Harry and Louise” ads and the sudden reluctance of the American Medical Association, and as Democrats in Congress tried to put the coalition back together, public opinion soured and the deal fell apart.
The mistake that the Clintons made was trying to let everybody with a stake actually write the legislation. The devil was indeed in the details, and the public could not understand the convoluted details. And what the public did understand was Harry and Louise’s phony fear. Bamboozled is the appropriate word.
It was the Titanic, in concept and execution – biggest, grandest – but it did not hit an iceberg, it fell apart at the seams as the voyage was underway. The Republican opposition under other circumstances would not have sunk it. The internal political weakness of the consensus sunk it.
Lesson for the future. Create the plan that the people want instead of the plan that the special interests want.