Dana Milbank at the Washington Post writes a column about how a President Hillary Clinton would have done things differently than a President Barack Obama.
Clinton campaign advisers I spoke with say she almost certainly would have pulled the plug on comprehensive health-care reform rather than allow it to monopolize the agenda for 15 months. She would have settled for a few popular items such as children’s coverage and a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions. That would have left millions uninsured, but it also would have left Democrats in a stronger political position and given them more strength to focus on job creation and other matters, such as immigration and energy.
The Clinton campaign advisers acknowledge that she probably would have done the auto bailout and other things that got Obama labeled as a socialist. The difference is that she would have coupled that help for big business with more popular benefits for ordinary Americans.
Clinton, for example, first called for a 90-day foreclosure moratorium in December 2007, as part of a package to fight the early stages of the mortgage crisis with a five-year freeze on subprime rates and $30 billion to avoid foreclosures. But an Obama campaign adviser dismissed Clinton’s moratorium, saying it would “reward people for bad behavior.”
So, still no public option, then? I think it’s wrong to think of the Obama presidency only in terms of the number of seats lost in November (so she would have only lost 40 seats then?) but in what was accomplished in the time with big enough majorities to get things done. And even though it wasn’t good enough for some people, Obama did manage to get some major pieces of legislation through Congress. This will be how history remembers him – how well the legislation worked.
One thing I’m sure of – history will probably not look kindly on the treatment of America’s first African American president. There’s a weird double standard for him – he can’t us teleprompters, talk to schoolchildren or travel to India like other presidents have done with no controversy.