Hillary's health hexpertise
Noam Scheiber remarks of Hillary's health policy renaissance, "the extent to which Hillary Clinton has turned a perceived liability... into an asset is pretty remarkable."
She's managed to turn this around, of course, by convincing Americans that not a day has gone by since Hillarycare went down in flames that she hasn't spent cogitating, strategizing, wonking, or otherwise engaged on the issue, and that this will, in effect, help her push her reforms--presumably more elegant than her competitors'--more effectively through the Congress. To hammer the point home, she "welcomed" Edwards and Obama to the game earlier this week.
A more accurate rendering, though, is that all three candidates' plans were drawn up by experts with similar amounts of policy experience, that all of the candidates decided how "bold" their proposals should be based in no small part on the political impact such "boldness" would have, and that the important distinction between Clinton, Edwards, and Obama is not which one knows marginally more than the others about the economics of risk pooling, but how likely they are to succeed at advancing their reforms.
And, to nobody's surprise Hillary Clinton has arrived prepared. Having spent months and months repeating to voters and the press--based on what, I'm not exactly sure--that she's the most experienced and competent candidate, it just goes without saying that she's the one most likely to actually achieve her health care goals. And while Noam's right to be impressed, what he's impressed with is Hillary's shrewd campaigning. Her competence and effectiveness, though, remain, at least to me, a wide open question.
Comments
I'm not sure what lessons are to be gleaned from the Hillary campaign. She has a preternatural ability to control the issue by never engaging with people's arguments against her, never defending or denying, just repeating.
It's like picking an argument with a sphinx - you just won't get a satisfactory response.
I obviously don't like the fact that my virtue of sheer repetition one can call night day and day night - a health care debacle becomes an invaluable asset? Her hawkish rhetoric on the war is ignored and she is viewed as the most liberal on the war?
should we just stop polling? I'm starting to think that polls are the problem - they inhibit the revealing of new facts by reinforcing the perception of outdated, uninformed facts.
"I'm not sure what lessons are to be gleaned from the Hillary campaign."
One lesson--this is neither new nor original--is that present day candidates need, more than anything else, expertise in public relations. Nearly any other deficiency can be ameliorated by telling a good story or putting up a good front. Fred Thompson's candidacy will be an excellent test case of this.
I'm troubled by how (willingly?) uncritical many political reporters are. If a candidate is unresponsive and "stays on message" through sheer repetition, why doesn't the unresponsiveness become a large part of the story?
I wonder what role journalism education plays in this. Most universities that offer a journalism degree do so under the aegis of a Mass Communications program in which public relations skills are taught side by side with reporting. Does early, albeit indirect, exposure to the tools of the PR trade inure reporters to bullshit to some degree? Or has the ideal of objectivity become so twisted that only stenography is considered to be safely objective (and calling bullshit on what's being said, even when backed by the facts, is considered partisanship)? Brian, as a professional journalist, you thoughts on this would be appreciated.
As for the health insurance debate, it's all smoke and mirrors as far as I'm concerned. The last time social reform on this scale took place was during the Johnson administration. LBJ was successful in large part due to his prodigious legislative skills. None of the current crop of candidates comes anywhere near having Johnson's experience and ability to bend Congress to his or her will. Add the enormous amount of lobbying cash the insurance industry will dump into the media and campaign chests of compliant legislators and the likelihood of any substantive change approaches zero.
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