Fans of federal health care takeovers are trying to distance themselves from Dr. Jonathan Gruber.  Even President Obama is now calling Gruber "some adviser."  Well, he sure is some adviser!  He is the one who now tells the world how smart it was to deliberately craft the language for the health care act in a "tortured" way so as to make it something less than "transparent."  In truth, it's opaque.  (And isn't this the administration that was supposed to be against torture?)

Major media outlets have been really quiet about Jon Gruber's boasting that he and his cohorts put one over on the "stupid" American voters.  (Not to mention the stupid American Congress!)  But the press is not as quiet as Hillary and Bill Clinton have been.

Hillary Clinton caused a stir earlier this year with the stumbling rollout of her book, Hard Choices (currently selling briskly at #5 in Amazon's listing of Gender Studies and Politics).  She pleaded she and Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House in 2001.  Undeterred by the chorus of raspberries that greeted that tone-deaf remark, Madam Secretary proceeded to "dis" President Obama by saying "'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle for a great nation."

Since the president's foreign policy is premised on "Don't Do Stupid Stuff," some politicos and journalists naturally thought this was Hillary's attempt to put "distance" between herself and the man who bested her for the 2008 nomination of the Democratic Party.

Not at all, she hastened to assure the president and the world.  She didn't mean to criticize, however obliquely, the wise leadership of her chief.  Question: Is there any other world leader prominently associated with the phrase "Don't do stupid stuff"?  Did anyone think she was talking about Angela Merkel?  David Cameron?  Stephen Harper?

But with the explosion of interest in conservative circles over Mr. Obama's now dissed and distanced Jon Gruber, perhaps we should ask whom Hillary would turn to were she to be setting health care policy.  For all those liberals sporting flashy bumper stickers ("I'm ready for Hillary") on their BMWs, we might wish to remind them of Hillary's health care guru – Ira Magaziner.

Mr. Magaziner was the brains behind the Clintons' failed attempt to take over one sixth of the U.S. economy in 1994.  As has been noted, HillaryCare did not pass with a Democratic majority in 1994 because those elected members of Congress actually read the bill Mr. Magaziner helped to write.  The reason why a Democratic Congress passed ObamaCare in 2010 is because Democrats didn't read it!  "We have to pass the bill," Speaker Pelosi assured them, "so that you can find out what is in it."  Right.  Take this medicine now – only then look at the WARNING label. 

Mr. Magaziner has maintained a rather low public profile since.  But The New York Times found him ensconced at the Clinton Foundation.  There, it is reported, he is continuing his disorganized ways.

But others criticized Mr. Magaziner, who is widely seen within the foundation as impulsive and lacking organizational skills. On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground… 

I wonder what the environmental impact of Mr. Magaziner's magical mystery tour might have been.  Despite being urged to fire Magaziner, the former president refused:

[Bill Clinton] confiding in aides that despite Mr. Magaziner's managerial weaknesses, he was a visionary with good intentions. The former president, according to one person who knows them both, "thinks Ira is brilliant — and brilliant people get away with a lot in Clinton world."

Actually, brilliant people – like Ira Magaziner, like Jon Gruber, like Bill and Hillary, like Barack Obama himself – get away with a lot in Liberal Land.