How does she explain her comments about waiting till her 2nd term? We all know what a comment like that means.
What she means is that she's not just throwing empty campaign promises against the wall. She's serious.
Obviously, any serious health care reform proposal passed by Congress and signed into law will be phased in over a number of years.
I know that voters would like to believe that the President can just twitch her nose and make major changes instantly like Samantha of Bewitched. But, that's not the way our government works, especially on something that requires major budgetary changes. For example, the other candidates say that they will use expiration of the Bush tax cuts to pay for health care, but those tax cuts don't expire until 2011 or 2012. The candidates who are saying that full universal health care will be completely implemented within four years are simply lying (or as it is politely stated, "pandering".)
I think voters know that nothing will happen overnight. I also know that some of us are wise enough to know that starting something in your second term will result in very little getting done. When does a President get the most done? The first few years in office. That's when they are at their peak. What changes, if any, will she try to make in her first term? That's what I want to know.
Have you read any of the many insider books about the Bush/Cheney administration's selling of the Iraq war? If you have, you will know that the NIE was written as a sales brochure. It was cooked. The many strong opposing opinions from the intelligence community (on key issues like the aluminum tubes and the yellow cake) were either omitted entirely, or buried in obtuse qualifying footnotes. Read Suskind's "The One Percent Solution" for a full explanation of the aluminum tube caper. The administration knowingly left out the real story from the NIE and all CIA documents.
Even though the books were cooked, as you say, there was still plenty of evidence that BushCo wasn't being straight up. Heck, even people as different as Gore and Webb thought Iraq was a mistake beforehand. I just don't think a lot of Senators gave a lot of thought to what going to war with Iraq(and the possible aftermath) meant. In voting for war, did they think Bush would handle the post-Saddam period well? Did these people not know The Decider's history? And the history of Iraq?
I am willing to make you a bet that if Edwards was elected half of what he is saying now , he won't get done in his first year maybe even at all.
You have to look at the political reality of things. Edwards is advocating an uncompromising position and if he is going to govern like his rhetoric now , he wont pass his so called " uhc " probably throughout his term.
