CNN analyst Tony Blankley was press secretary to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, (R-Georgia). He is providing election-year analysis to CNN allpolitics.com.

Tony Blankley: Same old Hillary

By Tony Blankley/CNN

April 27, 2000
Web posted at: 5:27 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- At about 10:40 P.M. on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton had just finished one of her patented attacks on American pharmaceutical companies, calling for Canadian-style mandatory price controls on American drugs, when the hour-long CNN town hall meeting cut to commercials.

A plumy-voiced announcer proclaimed that the program was brought to us, in part, by "America's pharmaceutical companies." We then got a very nice commercial on the benignity of America's drug companies. Only in America would a company pay for a TV program that attacks it.

Hillary went on to attack insurance companies and health maintenance organizations for not being trustworthy.

These answers by the quasi-former first lady and current Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate followed her answers to a citizen's question on whether she had learned anything from her failed health care initiative of 1994. Mrs. H.R. Clinton told us that, "Yes, I've learned I'm for small steps."

By way of example, she said she was for the $11 billion children's health care initiative of a few years ago. She was also for expanding that program to the parents of those children. She said she would also guarantee full mental health coverage for the same number of people who have medical health coverage.

If federalizing health care for all of Americašs children and parents, (plus providing what most policy experts believe to be the prohibitively expensive mental health coverage for all), constitutes a small step, I begin to wonder what the definition of "is" is.

When asked why she would be an effective senator, she answered that her leadership style of bringing people together, not dividing people, would be effective in the Senate.

But for those of us who remember 1994, one of the main reasons she failed on health care was because she chose to demonize the insurance companies and HMOs, rather than work with them. It seems from Wednesday's attacks on these key parts of the health industry that she has not yet learned that important lesson.

Her answer to the separate questions of whether she was a carpetbagger; what was best for Elian Gonzalez; and why she is qualified to be senator was the same: She is for children and has worked hard and cared for and advocated on behalf of children for a long time.

Curiously, she also had similar answers for three other questions. Are Palestinians entitled to their land? Are they entitled to a Palestinian state? Would you support the New York Yankees over the Chicago Cubs in a World Series?

Hillary's answer to all three: It would "not be useful to discuss" those questions. Given that there are more Yankee fans than Cub fans and more Jewish people than Palestinian people in New York, I understand why it wouldn't be useful to Hillary. But her answers might be useful to the voters.

However, since the format of a town hall meeting does not encourage follow-up questions, she got away with those non-answers.

Stylistically, she is the same Hillary who some of us have grown to love, and others of us have not yet grown to love.

She is preternaturally poised and more confident than Jehovah. When listening to a voter say almost anything, she can sympathetically nod her head at a speed of, by my count, about 2.5 nods per second without getting dizzy.

She lets slip how many counties there are in New York (62). She makes en passant references to two of the local highways, "the 219 and I-86." She makes repeated use of the plural pronoun "we", as in, "Here in Western New York we have to do something about high taxes."

If you didn't know she lived in suburban Manhattan, you would assume she was a happy denizen of beautiful Buffalo, the gateway to Lake Erie -- and, of course, the sight of this town hall meeting.