I went to a talk by David Broder on the health care battle at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Thursday, April 15.  It was a small group with plenty of time for questions.  It turned out that among the other people there were Scott Rasmussen, the pollster, generally assumed to lean Right, Ernest Istook, the former Republican Congressman and present Heritage Foundation and Harvard Kennedy School fellow, and Roger Porter, Kennedy School prof and former Reagan and GHW Bush official (I’m always amazed at how liberal Harvard is).

Broder had a few introductory remarks about the differences between the Clinton attempt at reforming health care and the Obama success.  He credited Rahm Emmanuel with understanding Congress much better than Ira Magaziner did and pointed out that Obama made his push in his first year, with all his political capital intact, while Clinton began his health care initiative in his second year.

Then he took questions.