A LEADING ROLE FOR HILLARY

6 June 08

Is it to be the Vice-Presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton, or just one supportive role among many other people’s, going from place to place to talk Obama’s candidacy up? There is a special role that she should find congenial and satisfying, offering as much or more historical honor as the Vice-Presidency. Let Obama choose her now to take the lead in Congress on universal health insurance. Let her in any case have her name on the bill; but let the bill put forward her own plan for health insurance, preferred by experts like Paul Krugman, and close enough to Obama’s for him to go along easily. She would not only have a distinctive role, dear to her heart, in Congress. She would have a distinctive role in the presidential campaign concentrating in her advocacy on one of the strongest points on the Democratic side; and making clear that only a Democratic victory would drive the point home.