Joe Klein isn’t as smart as he thinks he is

Drudge proves himself to be a good sport by linking to a Joe Klein post at Time Magazine’s website, in which Klein savages Drudge. Drudge is probably more than a good sport, though. He’s smart, too, because all that the post does is make Klein look like an idiot. Here is Klein’s post, in its entirety:

I know this is old news, but this guy is shameless. The headline, with a photo of a three-quarters crazed Hillary, is HEALTH INSURANCE PROOF REQUIRED FOR WORK but the linked story says this:

At this point, we don’t have anything punitive that we have proposed,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans.”She said she could envision a day when “you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,” but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.

How stupid does he think we are? Answer: Extremely dumbolic.

I’ll have more about Clinton’s health plan in this week’s print column.

Ah, Joe. I don’t know how to tell you this, but your post shows that Drudge’s headline was entirely accurate. Drudge says Hillary would have “health insurance proof required for work.” And Hillary says she can easily imagine the day, under her plan, when “you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview.” Now, I know I’m not as smart as a writer at an intellectual hot spot like Time Magazine, but even my limited mind has figured out that Drudge’s summary and Hillary’s quotation say the same thing.

I assume Joe is trying to make the point that Hillary’s requirement that adults enter her health plan as a precondition of employment is entirely innocuous because we already require kids to show proof of vaccination to go to school. That’s not a very good point, either. First off, a lot of people are very resentful of this requirement, feeling that vaccinations are more dangerous than the risk of disease. I happen to disagree with them, as I’m very pro-vaccination, but their attitude already goes to show that many people are less than thrilled by having the government push them around in a medical sense for them to gain entry somewhere.

But Joe also ignores the public safety issue involved here. The reason kids have to show proof of vaccination is to prevent the spread of deadly epidemic diseases of the type the used to ravage the school populations in America (polio being the most obvious example). Hillary, however, is saying that her dream is to see every private employer become a government agent by withholding employment opportunities from adults who haven’t meekly lined up for their doctor’s appointment under Nanny Hillary’s Care.

How stupid does Klein think we are?