Here's an example of what I meant:

Hillary Clinton was grilled by Iowa voters this morning, and to its credit, The Washington Post has already posted an interesting report on what went down -- one that's chock full of interesting quotes and moments. Key quotes from Clinton after the jump.

On how she hopes to accomplish on health care what she couldn't get done in the early nineties:

At one point, she asked for a show of hands from the audience, asking them to declare whether they preferred an employer-based system of insurance, a system that mandates all individuals to purchase insurance, with help from the government if necessary, or one modeled on the Medicare system.

Overwhelmingly the audience favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans. But Clinton, summoning up memories of the famous "Harry and Louise" ads run by opponents of the Clinton health-care plan, warned that until there is greater political consensus, the same kind of attacks could sink any new efforts to provide universal coverage.

"I've been through this so I know how hard it's going to be," she said. "But I know how important it is, so this time we're going to build a consensus first so when Harry and Louise show up, people are going to say, ''Oh, turn that off, that is not true.' And that will give us the political basis to be able to make the changes that we need."

I don't think it's easy to make the case that she is being insincere here. She has come to the conclusion that a federal single-payer plan is a non-starter. Someone like me would argue that she's wrong--that the last 20-odd years of the combination of HMO/Insurance Company/Big Pharma under an employer-based system for most, federal coverage for the poor and elderly, and fee for service for the rest has failed so completely that there be would widespread support among all the affected participants--patients, doctors and employers--for single payer plans.

However, such a program would be fought tooth and nail by the middleman triumvirate. So she seeks "compromise" that retains the role of the triumvirate. But there is no compromise that will fix this. That's where the problem lies. Not only does the US spend more than twice as much per capita as any other OECD government, the US government spends more money per capita than other OECD governments. The French government's single payer plan that applies to everyone costs the taxpayer less than the US system, where the government pays less than half of health care costs.

How she has come to this conclusion, and whether it is a new-found conclusion or not, it really doesn't seem to be the case that she is misrepresenting her views, or what she would do in office.

Those of us who think this is a mistake might characterize her views as timid, or even gutless. Others may think that she has decided that the only way to be president is through the Washington money machine, which means not messing with the triumvirate. Still others may think that she is just being realistic--that the influence these groups have is so great as to be insurmountable.

I don't think phoniness is a fair characterization, and I think the people who characterize her in that way are not writing as clearly as they could.

You could contrast her position on women's reproductive rights. Her approach is to focus not on abortion, but on unwanted pregnancy. I think this is a good idea. It's a wedge issue--most people who find abortion icky don't find contraception icky. It's a popular position. It points out the hypocrisy of the "pro-life" people. It's not a compromise. It's a shifting of the narrative.

She could do the same thing on health care. She could say we'll have embarked on this experiment of replacing fee for service (which didn't work because it created incentives for expensive, unnecessary treatments) with HMOs for a generation, and the result has been the worst health care system in the OECD. She could speak out boldly--and it's easier to speak out boldly when you're advocating real change instead of nip here and a tuck there. Is that phoniness? No. Is it admirable? Not to my mind. Will following her course make the country better off? I don't think so.

But it's not phoniness. Phoniness would be advocating a single payer plan, in order to garner votes, and then sell out to the insurance companies.