Revisionist historians usually wait a few years before recounting events to fit their bias. But Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift is already transcribing the autopsy report on Obama’s health-care reform with the analytical skills of a revisionist historian.
In her February 12, 2010, piece entitled “What Obama Did Wrong: On health-care reform, the president didn’t repeat Clinton’s mistakes. Obama made new ones,” Clift spins her interpretation of events as though they represent fact.
Here’s how she does it:
Obama had to tackle health-care reform in his first year because (1) he made it a key campaign promise and (2) his base of support would have felt betrayed had he not. Okay, so health-care linked to his oft-used campaign phrase attributed to MLK…“the fierce urgency of now.” Clift writes that it’s easy to criticize him today for taking on the issue,
…now that we’ve seen what a hash Congress made of the reform effort.She just couldn’t make her fingers type “now that we’ve see what a hash Democrats in Congress made of the reform effort.” So we have a clue to what follows right there in her first paragraph.
Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement propelled Obama to victory, she writes. It told “liberals and feminists and African-Americans” that is was “OK” to support Obama over Clinton. If I’m one of those people, I don’t like being told I needed to be told how to vote, but never mind that.
While dying with cancer, Teddy worked to choreograph a successful push toward health-care reform as,
…Kennedy let it be known he was orchestrating meetings with lobbyists and lawmakers so Democrats would be ready to go with legislation once the election formalities were over.So Teddy met with “lobbyists and lawmakers so Democrats would be ready.” Really? Lobbyists? Democrat lawmakers? Hold that thought.
The much-maligned stimulus bill didn’t save or create as many jobs as promised, but it pulled the economy back from the brink, allowing Obama to soldier on with health care, fulfilling the commitment of the campaign.Hold it! Wasn’t the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the thing that allegedly pulled the economy back from the brink? With all the spending bills in the news each week it might be hard for News-week to keep them all straight. We’ll push on.
Clift reminds us that Hillary-as-First-Lady crafted her health-care reform bill inside the White House and then thrust it upon Congress, where Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan symbolically dropped its (only) 1,342 ages on the floor. Hillary’s big mistake.
Obama, out to avoid the same mistake, turned the drafting of legislation over to Congress, Clift writes. Hold it! Didn’t he turn it over to the Democrat’s in Congress? To Harry and Nancy? Then, in what comes closest to criticism of Obama, Clift writes,
He didn’t provide leadership to his allies on Capitol Hill, and the result was an extended period of stumbling that allowed reform opponents to gain the upper hand.Allies? Does she mean Democrats? So was he supposed to tell them what to do, as Hillary-as-First-Lady did? What with all his legislative experience in the U.S. Senate and all.
Clift’s selective memory of events is amazing. Obama turned over responsibility to write legislation to two inherently and historically competitive bodies – the Senate and the House. And, the Democrats in those two groups pulled a Hillary-as-First-Lady of their own, crafting their respective bills without Republican input.
When American citizens did something many legislators didn’t do – actually read the bills – they were outraged, and showed it. The lead “reform opponents” Clift mentions were ordinary citizens, taxpayers, people who, after all, deserve the “upper hand.”
In what is the most biased statement of her revisionist history of the failed health-care reform effort, Clift writes,
Republicans Orrin Hatch and John McCain spoke movingly at the Kennedy funeral mass about their friendship with the liberal lion, but Kennedy nostalgia did not dislodge a single Republican vote.Oh, those cold-hearted Republicans.
Will somebody at Newsweek please tell Clift that Democrats held the majority in both houses of Congress while all this happened? It wasn’t those mean, heartless Republicans who killed it. While you’re at it, tell her that legislators can vote to name a Post Office, or maybe a small National Park, after good ol’ Teddy on the basis of nostalgia, but that’s not sufficient cause to vote for a trillion dollar plus health-care bill.
Disillusioned Democrats concluded Obama spent too much time chasing bipartisanship…”Say what? Enough already.
All we can conclude is that Eleanor Clift writes for a periodical with “News” in its title as a revisionist historian from the perspective of an Obama sycophant. Where’s the surprise there?
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