Greg Sargent scored an impressive coup landing Bill Clinton's first post-non-SOTU interview. Today, Sargent released the health care portion of their talk, and it's good stuff. The key takeaway for the news is that Clinton says Obama has "a better than 50-50 chance he’ll succeed." His point that the Congress is more knowledgeable is actually at odds with what a lot of other observers think, But I think it's true that they're certainly more engaged. Unlike in 1994, the key work has gone on inside the Capitol rather than inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and so if Congress isn't necessarily more knowledgeable about the issue of health care, they're certainly more invested and educated in their approach to the issue. That's in part a simple function of process: Bill Clinton built his administration's health reform plan. Obama is letting Congress build his. For more on that, see this post on Obama's wise deference to the congressional consensus.
