So far as Clinton's role in S-CHIP goes, there's no doubt that, from the White House, she was supportive of the key legislators and a proponent of the bill. But her continual attempts to take credit for the program expose the fundamental incoherence of her experience argument. When she says "I helped to start [S-CHIP],"you have to wonder how that could possibly be true. She wasn't a legislator, and so she didn't write the bill, pass it out of committee, or cast a decisive vote. She wasn't the president, and so didn't sign the bill into law, or direct government agencies to study the program's feasibility and lay the groundwork for the legislation. At best, she could have asked her husband to do these things, or used her access to advocate that they be done. But she couldn't have "started" the program. She just didn't have that sort of power.
