Betsy McCaughey is practically an institution in the healthcare debate. She (almost) single-handedly killed Bill Clinton’s reform plans with her New Republic article in 1994, and has remained a player in the 2009 healthcare fight. The media obsession with her has resurged this week due to a moderated debate with Congressman Anthony Weiner and another article in The New Republic. Moderator Ben Smith doesn’t think that McCaughey will be much of a problem anymore:
In either case, she’s nowhere near the player she was in 1994 — in part perhaps because she’s seen as a partisan, not an honest broker, and that’s due in no small part to the relentless, effective assault from the left, a refighting of the last war that ensures they won’t lose that battle, at least.
Meanwhile, former TNR editor Andrew Sullivan is forced to defend his editorial decisions fifteen years after the fact:
I do not think it’s professional to air the specifics of internal battles after the fact, and I take full responsibility for being the editor of the magazine that published the piece. I accepted an award for it. I stood behind it.
Update: Over at The Atlantic’s Politics Channel, Sullivan colleague Matthew Cooper responds.
