We aren't nominating a health care plan, we are nominating a candidate.

Spring 1991 - Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, in a private discussion about long-term Republican political strategy, predicts that the "next great offensive of the Left," as he puts it, will be "socializing health care." Gingrich declares the need for hardline Republicans to begin positioning themselves now to keep Democrats from winning in the future.

July 15, 1992 - Clinton accepts the Democratic presidential nomination. He vows to "take on the health care profiteers and make health care affordable for every family.

April 30, 1993 ... It is common knowledge among many of those present that the staff of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole has told Republicans they are not to meet with the First Lady.

May 3, 1993 - A chart that has been leaked to the New York Times detailing possible methods of implementing reform and highlighting their impact on national spending, appears in the paper. Not only has the chart been leaked, but its appearance has been altered to make it seem as if Clinton is calling for $150 billion in new taxes.

May 28, 1993 - Bill Gradison, the head of the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), writes a letter to the First Lady restating his support for universal coverage but complaining of three recent occasions in which Hillary has attacked the health insurance industry for "price-gouging, cost-shifting and unconscionable profiteering." Gradison is actually playing a double game. He wants to diminish public support for a Clinton plan that can adversely affect the industry but he also is eager to appear accommodating so that he will be able to make adjustments in the reform bill he believes will ultimately pass.

June 15, 1993 - House Democrat Jim Cooper -- who introduced a bill in 1992 based on the principle of managed competition -- meets with Hillary Clinton to explore their differences over health care. He has serious problems with employer mandates and universal coverage that are part of Clinton's plan and expresses his concern that the administration is being pushed to the left by liberals in the House. Cooper says he will not be able to support the Clinton plan unless changes are made.

August 6, 1993 - Clinton's budget is approved with Vice President Gore casting the tie-breaking fifty-first vote. Clinton's presidency is saved, but by the slimmest possible margin of victory. It is a clear and dramatic warning about the growing difficulty of passing anything in a bitterly divided Congress.

Late August 1993 - In a memo about Bill Clinton's upcoming health care speech, Ira Magaziner advocates a moderate, centrist approach stressing political flexibility, openness to new ideas, and a true bipartisan spirit. Magaziner also suggests emphasizing that this is not merely a "Clinton plan," but the work of many Republicans and Democrats over the years. Ironically, while Clinton planners privately stress a conciliatory, middle-ground approach for reform, the public and many on Capitol Hill are beginning to form an impression -- painted in part by opponents and in part by the Clinton team's own actions -- that the administration's plan is a liberal, secretly concocted, Big-Government scheme that will dictate how people get their health insurance and medical treatment.

September 2, 1993 - Clinton's political and policy advisers agree on an explicit congressional strategy. Rather than start from the center, writing a bill that will appeal to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans (while telling the liberals this is the best deal they can get), Clinton decides to follow a strategy of starting from the left and moving as far to the center as is needed to reach a majority. The advisers do not know that Newt Gingrich is determined there be no Republican support for any Clinton-designed reform and that the whole effort be derailed.