Hillary's Experience

Newsweek (who can't even see the center from their typically leftwing perch) has an article on Hillary's influence when Bill was president. It ain't pretty.

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Her dissatisfaction with the White House Travel Office staff led to their abrupt dismissal in May 1993, causing a furor over allegations of cronyism and the absence of due process. Testifying under oath, Hillary said she had "no role in the decision" to fire the employees. Yet the Office of Independent Counsel later concluded that "overwhelming evidence" showed she had played a role and that her "statement to the contrary" was "factually false."

Hillary oversaw the hiring of White House staffers and pressed her husband to fill half the top positions with women. In particular, she insisted he choose a woman as attorney general, which led to the derailed nominations of corporate lawyer Zoe Baird and federal Judge Kimba Wood. The president finally settled on Janet Reno, who had been recommended by Hillary's brother Hugh Rodham. "I don't think Clinton believed he had a choice," recalled Dee Dee Myers, his press secretary. "He had painted himself into a corner, and he had to appoint a woman." Hillary was equally adamant that the president appoint her friend Madeleine Albright as secretary of State.

Hillary's most visible job was leading a major overhaul of the nation's health-care system in 1993 and 1994. She has spoken of the "scars" she bears from her failure to enact the reforms she wanted, but she hasn't conceded the plan's substantive or structural defects, or the way her temperament and leadership style affected the outcome.

Hillary was widely criticized for making the health task-force deliberations secret, insisting on pushing her proposal as an all-or-nothing package and targeting the health-care establishment as "the enemy" to be fought with a "war room." When Bill tried to make the plan more flexible, he had to defer to her, in part because of their implicit marital bargain, in which Bill ceded her power as a trade-off for his history of infidelity.

In July 1994, he [Bill] was urged to accept a compromise plan with less than the universal coverage that Hillary wanted. When he unexpectedly told a group of governors in Boston that he would be willing to take 95 percent, Hillary immediately called her husband. "What the f––– are you doing up there?" she screamed, according to a West Wing adviser who was in her office at the time. "I want to see you as soon as you get back." The next morning the president not only recanted his statement but apologized.
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So we can thank Hillary for Reno's handling of the fbi (Ruby Ridge, Waco, Elian Gonzalez) and Albright's handling of the State Department (North Korea, so many others).