The NY times article referenced immediately below, also goes on to state:
That 15-year-old lesson underscores how much the Clinton debacle has defined Mr. Obama’s drive for his domestic priority from the beginning, providing a tip sheet for what not to do.
And what lessons were those, exactly. And is this why, at a time when more people, according to initial polling, were in favor of health care reform, and there was a much better and more pressing case for it, the Obama administration is losing steam and popularity as it propels forward with it?
On this very topic, the article goes on to note:
Before Mr. Obama was elected, advisers began debriefing Clinton veterans to draft “lessons learned” memorandums. According to interviews with more than a dozen participants in the debates then and now, those lessons have helped the president’s proposals progress further through Congress’s committees than the plan advocated by Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton did.
Isn’t this a bit of a presumption? That is, that it is the application of these “lessons learned” that “have helped the president’s proposals progress further through Congress’s committees than the plan advocated” by the Clinton Administration?
Couldn’t it likely be that what has in fact helped the proposals’ progress further are the facts that:
- Health Care is now consuming an enormous amount of both our GDP, and our Government expenditures
- Health care inflation has been running rampant for years while overall inflation has been tame
- Democrats took back fairly substantial control of Congress in part, conventional wisdom at least goes, based upon the goal of health care reform
- Perhaps most importantly of all, there is far more congressional support, and popular support, for the general notion of some sort of health care or health care insurance reform, than there was back in the early 90’s.
With all the lessons learned, Democrats still have not seemingly learned one simple, overriding thing:
How to effectively show, and sell a plan, and how to keep their political opponents from mischaracterizing both them, and the plan itself without it hurting the Democrats more than their opponents.