Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics

The defeat by the Republicans of President Clinton's sweeping health care initiative was a critical turning point in modern American politics. A disaster for the Democrats, it led to the Republican conquest of Congress in 1994. Theda Skocpol rejects the prevailing view, which lays most of the blame at the feet of Hillary Rodham Clinton, offering the real culprit as something called "Reagan's revenge." She believes that the tax cuts of the Reagan years gutted a host of once-effective federal programs, generating widespread public mistrust of government. An incisive look at Clinton's defeat on health care, Boomerang also provides a fresh, and at times frightening, perspective on the legacy of the Reagan years.