President Carter - "Losing My Religion for Equality"

[merrily]

29. I don't think much of that article. Aside from that:

Imagine that you were President of the United States and wanted to give the nation a health care plan, but Kennedy led your own party in stopping you in order to improve his own chances for unseating you in the next primary.

Next, he does challenge you. In the process, he greatly weakens your chances for re-election. Even though you are an incumbent, Reagan wins by a great deal. As a result, the Democrat ic Leadership Council forms and basically takes over your Party and changes it greatly. And Clinton, the first DLC Presidential nominee tears you and your Presidency apart to improve his chances of getting elected.

Then, the nation goes another 30 years without a national health plan. insurance companies get meaner and meaner and greedier and greedier. Premiums are sky high. So are health care costs. Health care now becomes the number 1 reason for individual bankruptcies, even for couples who both have health insurance. Meanwhile, people are dying for lack of health care and/or health care insurance.

And when the nation finally gets health care, it's a Republican plan.

Now, you're doing a book tour and an interviewer asks how come you never implemented a health care plan or some such. What would you say? What's Carter supposed to say? "Gee, I forgot. It was probably the Republicans?"

All this stuff is a matter of record anyway. So Carter answers truthfully (I assume). So what? The more we know about how things really operate, the better off we are.