There were all those presidential trips to the clinics in Rochester, N.Y., the nursing homes in Georgia and the long-term care programs in Minnesota.
There was a speech to Congress viewed by many as President Clinton’s finest moment in the White House, the moment when he drew a line on universal health-insurance coverage and, for once, sounded like he meant it.
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From Hillary Rodham Clinton, the high priestess of health-care reform, there were the attacks on the rapacious health-insurance industry and the tear-in-the-throat speeches to various interest groups.
And there were her knock-’em-in-the-aisles appearances before a host of congressional committees, appearances in which the first lady smote the Republican dragons and comforted edgy Democrats with her expertise.
There were, the Clintons tell us, acres of letters to be read and hundreds of conversations with “real Americans” and the promise of a fight to the finish with the defenders of the indefensible status quo.
Now, everything’s negotiable.
Basically, the plan designed by Mrs. Clinton, her long-running “task force” and health-care guru Ira Magaziner is as dead as Madison Guaranty, that controversial savings and loan in Arkansas.
Diminishing public support, driven by wildly dishonest but brutally effective TV commercials sponsored by your friendly insurance companies, have choked the air out of the sweeping, complex plan.
Two polls out last week showed public support for the Clinton plan on the wane, with 51 percent of those asked by an ABC News/Washington Post survey saying that “the more they heard about the plan, the less they liked it.”
Right now, for all the administration’s bluster about fighting “an air war and a ground war” to protect the plan, health-care reform is in the manipulative hands of the congressional committees.
Having lost the public relations war, the administration and its defenders insist that the trip through the congressional maw is just business as usual, the way things work in Washington.
The fact is, Bill and Hillary Clinton are no longer major players in the health-care debate. The president cried “foul” last week, complaining, “I don’t have as much money to run television ads as the health-insurance industry does.”
What he does have is the highly touted bully pulpit of the White House, a vehicle Clinton has failed to use effectively in defending his ideas.
Meanwhile, lawmakers who pose as Clinton allies, such as Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), call for a bipartisan return to the drawing board nearly 18 months after the health-care debate began.
For all Clinton’s skills as a communicator, and for all the time and effort expended by Mrs. Clinton, it’s hard to fathom what their long-range intentions were for health care.
Were they ever entirely serious about “managed competition,” “regional health alliances” and employer mandates to pay for coverage?
Or was the presidential intent to establish the terms of the debate, then take credit for whatever emerged at the end of the legislative process? Was policy wonk Magaziner the key adviser on this strategy, or was political consultant James Carville waving the baton?
If Clinton was serious, how did he fall into the trap of courting groups such as the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers?
At one moment, Clinton would rail against the medical and insurance lobbies, telling crowds on his health-care promotion tours that the diminution of the administration’s plan would mean the triumph of the special interests.
In the next moment, Clinton the conciliator would emerge, wooing the business community and buying into the suggestion they might line up with Bill and Hillary and the “New Democrats.”
In the end, of course, the business community-rarely an agent of fundamental social change in America, in case you hadn’t noticed-walked away from Clinton’s blandishments.
Soon after the corporate courtship, the Congressional Budget Office offered a gloomy assessment of the Clinton program’s cost and its tax implications.
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The suspicion here is that Clinton always intended to take what the process gave him and claim victory. By 1996, we’ll know if that was enough.