From today’s Boston Globe comes more information about the great exaggerator: Hillary Zelig Clinton and her non-pivotal role in the creation of the SCHIP program for children’s health insurance. "Clinton Role in Health Program Disputed" (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/14/clinton_role_in_health_program_disputed/)
This new nickname is a little bit of an exaggeration, but the name Zelig is fitting for a pattern of serial exaggeration: identifying momentous events in the past and then vastly exaggerating one’s own role.
We’re already familiar with the greatest hits: Hillary Rodham and Northern Ireland and Bosnia in which some kind of proximity is supposed to confer actual foreign policy leadership. It also works best for the chronologically challenged: thus Hillary Clinton’s trip to Bosnia would have been extremely dangerous if she had traveled there before the end of the war rather than after the end of hostilities when it became safe enough to send dignitaries, including Sinbad and Hillary Clinton: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...
Then there’s FMLA. Senator Clinton’s campaign web site claims: "As First Lady, she helped pass the Family and Medical Leave Act" (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/women/)
This claim is frankly ridiculous. The FMLA act was passed by congress 16 days into the Clinton presidency. (Hillary Clinton must have done a lot of work in those 2 weeks and 2 days) and the measure, first introduced by Chris Dodd in 1986, had been passed and vetoed twice by George Herbert Walker Bush. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/9/111930/6389/50/472849)
From today’s Boston Globe we learn more details about Hillary Zelig Clinton’s serial exaggeration, this time about her supposedly key role in the creation of SCHP. From exaggeration central (aka Hillary Clinton’s campaign web site) we learn: "As First Lady, Hillary helped pass the State Children's Health Insurance Program." (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=2924)
However, the key players in the actual creation of SCHIP remember things differently.
"And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996."
Senator Orrin Hatch also denies any key Hillary Clinton role in SCHIP: "The White House wasn't for it. We really roughed them up" in trying to get it approved over the Clinton administration's objections, Hatch said in an interview. "She may have done some advocacy [privately] over at the White House, but I'm not aware of it." "I do like her," Hatch said of Hillary Clinton. "We all care about children. But does she deserve credit for SCHIP? No - Teddy does, but she doesn't."
(http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/14/clinton_role_in_health_program_disputed/)
Kennedy himself merely shrugged his shoulders and declined to give a direct response when questioned for the article, but other aides and lawmakers see exaggeration.
"But privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming over what they see as Clinton's exaggeration of her role in developing SCHIP, including her campaign ads claiming she "helped create" the program"
Now for the sake of argument let’s suppose that these complaints come from Senator Clinton’s poltical opponents. Even if that were the case, the article still makes clear that Clinton vastly exaggerates any role that she played.
SCHIP was patterend after a Massachsuetts program, and Dr. Barry Zuckerman and John McDonough, then a state legislator, met with Kennedy, to dicuss implementing the Massachusetts program nationally.
Here’s the money quote: "McDonough, a Democrat who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, also said it was Kennedy who developed the SCHIP idea after that meeting. "I don't recall any signs of Mrs. Clinton's engagement," McDonough said. "I'm sure she was behind the scenes, engaged in lobbying, but it is demonstrably not the case" that she was driving the effort, he said" After this meeting Kennedy then appraoched Senator Hatch on creating a bill. (Note the complete lack of any Clinton involvmeent up to this point. However, President Clinton at first opposed the measure and actually lobbied lawmakers to oppose it.
Clinton later changed his mind and Gene Sperling says Hillary Clinton also was in favor of the measure, but this was in no way shape or form an intiative that Hillary Clinton crafted, organized or led: "It was a bipartisan bill. I don't remember the role of the White House," said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has not endorsed a candidate in the presidential race and who was the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health matters. "It did not originate at the White House."
So that’s the latest chapter in the career of Hillary Zelig Clinton. A new motto for her campaign: If you don’t clearly rember the details than I did it.
All politicians may exaggerate, but the pattern of exaggeration in the case of Senator Clinton is remarkable, persisitent, and severe.