Insider's critique of Hillary's health flop

Brad DeLong's web site ^ | 6/89/3 | Brad DeLong

[NativeNewYorker]

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such- and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation's health-care system...

Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch--the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.

[NativeNewYorker]

The writer was a senior Treasury official during the Clinton reign, and saw the health care debacle up close and personal.

[Bahbah]

"Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life."

I vigorously second that remark.

[KellyAdmirer]

She sounds like Hitler. Everyone with a different opinion is disloyal, everybody she can't control directly she thinks she can charm or browbeat into doing what she wants, constantly overestimating how much those who oppose her will let her get away with. Unlike Hitler, though, nobody is going to grant her real, unstoppable power like Hitler's enabling act - thank goodness. So she will remain forever a curiosity, adored only by the faithul minority who would benefit directly from her rise to power

[RISU]

My personal theory is that both Clintons might be certifiable "sociopaths". That carries with it the notion that they are completely without a social conscience, and care not a whit about anyone but themselves, their glory, and their "personal success".

I was sickened to the heart that there were enough American people, in sorry enough shape, to have permitted a two term sojourn for them in power. After 911 I hope those folks have learned a lesson about what it means to have "weakness at the top".

[NativeNewYorker]

Yep.

What's distressing here is not DeLong's assessment of her modus operendi -- we all know she wants to be dictator.

What distresses me is that it is her inability to get the job done that upsets him.

[lilylangtree]

Does anyone remember the huge list printed in the WSJ listing the people involved in Hitlery's health care plan? I kept asking what was each one's qualifications since no name did I know. Their qualifications weren't listed.

[NonValueAdded]

Ping - add this to your long list of facts about the beast.

[freekitty]

I agree that she should be kept far also. I was surprised to read the article posted by the gentleman who wrote recommendations for the staff that was to impeach Nixon. Hitlery and two others were the only three he did not recommend. How very interesting.

[NativeNewYorker]

But, if she got on the ticket, I'm certain they would still vote for her.

[doug from upland]

Okay.