Records show drop in Clinton's policy role

March 20, 2008

Hillary Clinton's daily schedules show that her formal policy role in the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, shrank once Congress shelved the healthcare plan she helped craft in the administration's first two years.

The 11,046 pages of daily schedules the Clinton Presidential Library released yesterday show that during 1993 and much of 1994, Clinton met almost every weekday with healthcare advisers or key lawmakers. Her schedules document a grueling itinerary of trips to hospitals and healthcare conferences around the country where she met with elected officials and spoke with patients and doctors. But after Congress killed her plan to guarantee every American access to health insurance in 1994, the schedules show, her days became filled with the more traditional, ceremonial events attended by presidents' wives instead of policy meetings.

Clinton also was home in the White House on a half-dozen days when her husband had sexual encounters there with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to her schedules.

The schedules are "only a guide for her service as first lady and is far from an exhaustive compendium of her work," Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said. "Phone calls, impromptu meetings, conversations with staff or officials, strategy sessions, and other events are not a part of the schedules, and much of the work in the White House is done in these ways."

BLOOMBERG AND AP

Barack Obama, following his much-discussed treatise on race, said yesterday that the controversy over his former pastor that led to the speech has reminded him of the audacity of his White House bid.

"In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me being elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates," he said in an interview on CNN.

But most of the early reviews have been glowing for Tuesday's lengthy speech on America's racial history and challenges, with many commentators saying Obama had tackled the issue of race with an honesty rare for a politician.

But other pundits said Obama's speech still had not resolved his relationship with Wright and predicted it could still hurt Obama, especially among white working-class voters. A new national poll out last night implies the issue might have already done so.

Clinton led Obama 49 percent to 42 percent among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in Gallup's polling , her first lead in six weeks in the poll.

FOON RHEE