“If Bill Clinton couldn’t get it done, and Barack Obama can’t do it, no Democrat will ever try again,’’ said economist Len Nichols, health policy director at the New America Foundation. A Clinton health budget aide, Nichols has been an unofficial adviser to lawmakers and administration officials wrestling with details of the current legislation.
“History is written by the victors, not the vanquished,’’ said Chris Jennings, congressional liaison for Hillary Rodham Clinton, during the 1990s debate. “Failure would serve as the ultimate judgment as to whether this effort was worth doing.’’
Jennings, now a lobbyist, replaced Ira Magaziner, principal architect of the Clinton plan, as White House health policy adviser.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state, added that “it’s really hard’’ watching the travails of Obama’s plan. Clinton has been giving advice, as requested, to lawmakers in Congress and administration officials and said she’s still hopeful.
“I’m not sure that this last chapter has been written,’’ she told CNN’s “State of the Union’’ on Sunday.
For most of last year, the health care debate was among Democrats. Republicans were left heckling from the sidelines. That changed when Republican Scott Brown pulled off a Senate upset in Massachusetts, winning the seat held by the late senator Edward M. Kennedy and depriving Democrats of the filibuster-proof 60 votes they had been counting on in the final push.
“Many of us thought we were really at the 1-inch line, then literally it was like being hit by a freight train with about 10 seconds’ warning,’’ said Ken Thorpe, a senior Health and Human Services official during the Clinton-era debate. Now a health policy professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Thorpe has proposed a scaled-back alternative in case Obama’s plan remains stuck.
The mere mention of settling for less is causing consternation among former Clinton aides. Obama’s plan - denounced as a government power grab by critics - is already less ambitious than Clinton’s.
