This is a blast from the past, 2003 in this case. Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Clinton Treasury Department, thinks Hillary would be an “abysmal president”:
My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.
So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation’s health-care system…
Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.
Thanks to Greg Mankiw for the link, wherein Greg was commenting on Paul Volker’s endorsement of Obama:
I am not surprised. Most Democratic economists I know prefer Obama and appear to share Brad DeLong’s view of Hillary Clinton. Some are reluctant to say so publicly, hoping to land a job in a possible Clinton administration. But Volcker, at the age of 80, presumably has no political aspirations. So why not go public?
I guess my puzzle is why do they think that Obama has any useful qualifications for the highest executive position? Aside from charisma that is…
Very good points. This has always been my biggest criticism of the Clinton Administration. But I blame Bill not Hillary. (Bill) Clinton ran on the issue of health-care reform, and had a Democratic majority in Congress. Instead of having his HHS Sec’y take the lead on the issue, he had his unelected wife run with it. The problem, whatever might have been right or wrong with her approach, was that she had no real authority. That is, she had no portfolio as an HHS Sec’y would have. She had not nominated for that Cabinet post, and had not been confirmed by the Senate. It signalled, IMO, that he was not as serious as he should have been about the issue, and was not willing to expend political capital by taking the lead (and the political heat) on the issue or having his own cabinet Sec’y take the lead. And the initiative fell on its face.
Later, in all the flurry of the “Monica” scandal, discussion of this genuine policy failure of the Clinton Admin. was obscured and his feet were not really held to the fire for this failure.
My $0.02.
Thanks Will. I take your point about Bill Clinton’s priorities. We probably cannot know whether Hillary demanded the health portfolio or Bill “dumped it” on her.
Either way, Brad DeLong’s anecdotes of her behavior are consistent with someone who has no competence for dealing with complex administration.