The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Never use the term in any other context, please.

Well, Bill certainly got sick of her during many periods in their marriage. We can tell you all about it.

Love,
Monica, Paula, and Gennifer

Dear roo_P,

Geez, roo_P. I was being literary. He is the commander in chief and he was deferential to his wife regarding the crucial legislation. Had he put his foot down, been "commanding," he might have saved useful, albiet, less than perfect health care reform. That's the nub of the entire health care debacle.

Back to the subject:

The proposal by Cooper would have given us nowhere near universal healthcare. His plan was based on market forces as the way to control healthcare costs. Not to mention his proposal did away with employer payments. Maybe it might have been a foot in the door, but then it might have resulted in a failed program that would have also set back the push for true universal coverage.

Notice that Cooper is a big Obama supporter. He goes well with Austan Goolsbee, one of Obama's economic advisors who is a great fan of free trade. Cooper probably gets on well with another Obama economic advisor, Jeffery Liebman. Remember him? He's the guy who wrote the paper on privatizing Social Security back when he worked in the Clinton administration. He still talks about being open to partial privatization. Let's not leave out David Cutler who thinks of high medical costs as a good thing for the economy.

JCC, here's another response. Everyone who dealt with her back then, including her own staff, felt that she was rigid and arrogant, acting out a "my way or the highway (and worse)" hostility to any opposition. This is the too far left failing that helps stalemate progress, in my view. Instead of talking steps toward universal health care, as her husband attempted to do with Cooper, she produces a complete stalemate--no progress whatsoever.

A clue to her fatal problem is that after she was defeated, she didn't keep trying. She invested herself only in trivial issues, was virtually a soccer mom kind of first lady. That means to me that she had no other tools in her chest, no way to move forward other than in the failed manner she is now demonstrating in her campaign.

Clinton is obviously a hack, and now, after signing on to McCain's vapid gas tax vacation and working in cahoots with a Swift Boat group to spend a million on negative Indiana ads, she's a card-carrying member of the Bush/McCain/Clinton Axis. Obama, on the other hand, is the only candidate who wants to do the most good for the greatest number of Americans. It's Obama. It's time for Clinton to drop out.

Dear JCC:

My understanding, now that I've read what many critics of Hillary thing of as the definitive piece on her health care politicking in the early '90s (I can get the link to that 1990s New Yorker article if you wish) is that Cooper's plan would have increased the number of insured people by 15 million, bringing the total of insured people to 91 percent of the population. There's also quite a few references to how afraid of her were her staff; they're loyal and zealous, but they were quite explicit in saying that they couldn't tell her their true feelings. That's an important aspect of the problem I'm trying to get at in my post.

Has she changed? What happened after her terrible defeat on health care is that she completely retreated into an agreeable persona and continued that apparently manipulative strategy into her years in the senate. She became excruciatingly agreeable. She stopped fighting, but in going so far to that extreme, she was no longer capable of taking on the big issues. She played small ball.

My analysis is that she can't tackle the big issues, because, when she wants to accomplish something big, she morphs back into the vicious persona that undoes her efforts. I'm a therapist too and agree she's not even close to being a borderline. An unfortunate artifact of our diagnostic categories is that it makes everyone who doesn't fit a standard diagnosis seem just fine thank you. But we know that Hillary's not okay in the crucible of the presidency, as is evidence by her shameless behavior during the campaign. Someone above has already laid out that claim, and I'm hopeful you'll give us something to respond to, because you seem very reasonable and that's the kind of person Obama needs to reach.

Regarding his econ. advisors, I've already written that I see nothing in Obama's history that would cohere with the kind of caricatures of his advisors you've put forth. I did look at some of Lieberman's stuff, and sense, but do not at all know, that his position of privatization is not at all like Bush's advisors' position. He seemed at first glance to truly be caring about the plight of the the people rather than not. I'd like to see an independent analysis of his scheme. I suspect the same kind of analysis may be true of the other two guys you mentioned.

Dear Disidero:
We have to go back because there are many reasonable people, some of whom have responded to this article, who think that Hillary didn't demonstrate any negative qualities that would disqualify her for the office of president. Many peoplel think that her healthcare plan was defeated only because of right wing, deceptive attacks. Those people need to consider that her temperament is not suitable for the role she wants to fill.

Why go back 15 years? Because it helps to show a pattern, a life long pattern of, only at crucial times, lapsing into what some of us call "humiliated fury" that defeats her and our aims.

Your premise--that she has changed--is also widely believed, because she has been amazingly agreeable ever since then, especially during her senate career. But even in 1994, when she lost the health care "fight," she suddenly reverted into a deferential type, the type she has railed against. In reading about her history, it seems to me that her reversal was sheer manipulation, not an authentic change. A partial proof of that theory is the ruthlessness she's displaying in this campaign. She might as well call him a black radical who is also a heartless snob that can't possibly have passionately in mind the plight of working people.

She ought to be only arguing which proposals will be best, who is best able to unite us well enough to pass the legislation needed, and who displays the best judgment. Her proposals are decent enough and sometimes superb. But her achillies heel is that she doesn't have the temperament to unite us, and her judgement, which I think is affected by her manipulative approach to politics, is poor to fair. She just can't win if she argues these substantive issues, so as is typical throughout her career when she's backed into a corner, she turns hostile and degrading.

Dear Disidero:
"Would a little slower, less aggressive approach have worked? Would another person have better led it? Maybe, maybe not."

Everyone involved in the health care effort at the time knew that a compromise bill would have passed and that, because of it, 15 million more people would have been insured, bringing the total of insured to 91 percent. It's difficult to be certain, but there is considerable evidence of this widely shared conclusion. Please also see
"Hillary the Pol" by Connie Bruck, New Yorker, May 30, 1994, in which there's much more detail showing how her rigidity and the depth of it, as implied by her furiouisness, was the problem.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/05/30/1994_05_30_058_TNY_CARDS_000366533?printable=true

Was she, is she now ruthless? I take it that "banging heads" doesn't seem ruthless to you, because of the ends you achieved. So maybe we just have differing definitions of "ruthless." But to those of us who didn't get coverage because of her self-righeous arrogance, her fury in defense of her perogatives does seem entirely ruthless, just as her vote to give Bush the freedom to go to war seems beyond ruthless; she made a political decision to preserve her power rather than a decision that carefully protected our soldiers and the citizens of Iraq, just as she now threatens to "obliterate" Iran. To her, collateral damage is just a two word phrase. This assessment is tricky, because she does genuinely care much of the time, but not when her place in history is threatened. When that happens, she becomes a treacherous person.

Dear Desidero,
No, the sullivan article is in the Atlantic Monthly and is contemporary. The New Yorker piece is much longer, more full of quotes, and based on many interviews. Everyone close to her knows that she is extremely difficult to converse with when there's any degree of disagreement. Bill said,to the authoress, “You know, once in a while she’ll come in and say, ‘I want to talk about such-and-such.’ And, you know”—he gestured toward the massive oak desk in the Oval Office—“I might as well try to lift that desk up and throw it through the window as to change her mind.” Here's the citation again.
'HILLARY THE POL' by Connie Bruck in the New Yorker, May 30, 1994

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/05/30/1994_05_30_058_TNY_CARDS_000366533?printable=true

It's difficult to believe that you would nuke an entire nation, especially one which, not to long ago, was moderate and has many progressives in it. Moreover, there's no danger of Iran nuking Israel, so why make this kind of threat, why back people into a corner? Answer? She's like that; she resorts to threats posturing when doing so is self-defeating. Nobody on the international stage thought this comment was anything but grievous, damaging to her and America. Maybe it's a matter of taste. You say that banging heads is sometimes necessary, and I know that sometimes works. But when it doesn't work, it means you have to try something else to advance your cause. She couldn't do that, and when she's in a pickle now, she's helpess to do anything but threaten and accuse.