Judicial Watch Finally Pries Open the Clinton Vault

The Judicial Watch website is down at the moment (possibly due to a massive traffic flood) back up, but Captain Ed summarizes what the group found in the first collection of documents they managed to wrangle from the Clinton Library on the topic of Hillarycare circa 1993.  Specifically, some of the documents detail strategy deliberations that address how to deal with the First Lady's detractors.  And the tactics discussed (including the suggestion by a certain Democratic Senatorial elder that the Clintons "expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of lobbyists") are of a flavor that can best be described as Clintonian.

What's more, the memos seem to lay bare the fact that even the coziest Clintonistas weren't precisely bowled over by her radical plans to socialize American medicine.  More bluntly, it sounds like even Clinton campers realized the authoritarian utopia Hillary was cooking was enough to make George Orwell himself blush.

A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by someone with the initials “P.S.,” makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct: “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy…Is the public really ready for this?... none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…”

With the primary in high gear, this ought to shift the political discourse in interesting directions.  If the early glimpses are an indication of what's yet to come, we may have to start referring to a young Senator from Illinois as Mr. Inevitable.

Update:  I think I've cracked the cipher of the intials "P.S."

Paul Starr (born May 12, 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.
...
In 1993, Starr was the senior advisor for President Bill Clinton's proposed health care reform plan.

As fate would have it, Starr recently wrote an article for The American Prospect (the liberal magazine he co-founded), entitled "Hillarycare Mythology: Did Hillary Threaten Democratic Senators?"  In the piece, he aims to disabuse us of the notion that the First Lady was so ominously proficient in the dark art of politics.

Writers love stories like this one because they seem to confirm a larger narrative about a public figure's inner qualities. Some stories are so good you wouldn't want to spoil them by finding out they never happened.

Well, we may be about to find out.

Update:  Judicial Watch is back up.  This is the page detailing the first round of documents and this is the memo "A Critique of Our Plan" (pdf) that I'm speculating was written by Paul Starr.

Here are a few more of his thoughts about Hillarycare.

We will inevitably be accused of creating a monstrously complicated proposal, and it will take an enormous effort to communicate the essentials in a simple way.

But the issue is not just communication.  There is more regulation in this plan that [sic] I expected to see, and I worry about the wisdom of much of it.  The spirit and some of the substance contradict the idea of flexibility for states and room for variety, innovation, and competition.
...
[T]he most heavy-handed part of the program is the budget, and we may not have any credible way of making it more palatable.

And a few more highlights from that Senate elder's smear cookbook (pdf).

Impeach the credibility of opponents:

• Avoid partisan targeting.  Demonstrate that opponents are advocates of delay or inaction, regardless of party affiliation.  Moderate Republicans must be broken from conservative ranks.
• Expose opponents as "professional lobbyists" with values and interests divorced from average Americans (document salaries, perks, ideological extremism, and provide all to the media.
• Use classic opposition research to expose their selfish and short-sighted motivations, and obstructionist tactics (collect mailings, track ad campaigns, investigate expenditures, and provide to the media).

His punctuation here is comically revealing.

Apply pressure on undecided Congressional votes with intensive message delivery through their home state or home district media outlets.
...
Result:  Three-four days of saturation local coverage in all targeted states and/or districts, tied to national events with network coverage - all featuring "real" people with "real" stories.

At one point, the author (Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, incidentally) lays out the pros and cons of waging an avowedly partisan grassroots campaign vs. a non-partisan campaign, in order to rally public support for Hillarycare.  If the modern day Clinton machine is aptly characterized as one of meticulous scripting, triangulation, and... lets face it, ham-fisted sock puppetry, Senator Rockefeller may deserve some credit for showing them the ropes.

Non-partisan:  The National Health Policy Council is the most obvious existing organization to be expanded for this purpose.

Advantages:

• ... A high-profile announcement of the decision to take this "aggressively non-partisan approach" would be extremely helpful in building public confidence and support...
• General public would recognize this as a clear attempt to break through partisan politics and gridlock.

NOTE: Just so you understand, I have been involved with NHPC, as honorary chair, for nearly two years.  I can attest to their effectiveness and their breadth both geographically and politically.  I have considered other existing organizations, but I believe NHPC would serve you needs best, in part because I know that the people involved are prepared to do anything you would ask of them.

All the goodwill of a "non-partisan" organization with all the control and ideological reliability of group of paid staffers?  Brilliant.  I wonder if Hillary ever tried to replicate that formula.

Update:  I reached out to Professor Starr at Princeton, who acknowledges it was his memo and offers a couple of additional points.

Dear Mr. Pidot,

Two points: 1) This memo, which I wrote, was a critique of a preliminary draft, not the final draft, of the 1993 Clinton health plan, and 2) none of the provisions to which I objected are in Senator Clinton's current proposal, which shows that she has fully absorbed the concerns I was raising.

If you use any of this short email, I presume that as an honorable journalist, you will quote it in full. 

Sincerely,
Paul Starr