(4 of 5)
Clinton edited the second draft overnight and began practicing the speech Wednesday afternoon. More changes were made as Clinton practiced for top aides and a video crew in the small theater in the East Wing. He would cut and add new material off the top of his head as he talked, while aides tried to write it all down nearby. After three dry runs, his wife, dressed in a blue sweatsuit, walked in to listen. When he reached the part about choosing a "talented navigator" with "a rigorous mind" and "a caring heart," both Clintons burst out laughing. "Oh please, stop, enough," said the First Lady, hiding her face in her hands.
Dreyer added the latest changes by 8:30, copying the speech onto three small diskettes and the hard drive of his laptop computer. Clinton made more changes during his limousine ride to Capitol Hill; Stephanopoulos typed those directly into the TelePrompTer. What no one realized was that a White House communications aide had already accidentally merged the new speech with an old file of the Feb. 17 speech to Congress. Then they simply scrolled to the top of the document and waited for Clinton to begin.
When Clinton took the podium minutes later, he was understandably alarmed to see a seven-month-old speech on the TelePrompTer's display screens. Clinton told the news to Gore, who didn't believe it at first. "You're not reading it," said Clinton. "Read it." Gore did, and then said, "I believe that's the February speech." Gore summoned Stephanopoulos, who scrambled to fix the mistake, eventually downloading the correct version from Dreyer's laptop. But for seven minutes, Clinton vamped with just notes. "I just kind of thought," Clinton told an aide later, " 'Well, God, you're testing me tonight.' "
Clinton's aides let it be known last week that the President worried aloud during speech preparation that he had to deliver the bad news along with the good. But he is already being criticized for sugarcoating his plan, and some advisers add that Clinton may have raised expectations too much. "It's heresy to say it around here," said a White House official, "but there's some worry that the speech was a little too good. The plan may not live up to the speech."
That is a danger, but the Clintons seem to sense it. After the speech, the Clintons and the Gores returned to the White House and made a triumphant visit to the troops in the health-care "war room" in the Old Executive Office Building. Greenberg and Grunwald pulled Clinton into an adjacent office to deliver the results of the networks' instant polls. But the new challenge was summed by Mrs. Clinton, who stood on a chair in the middle of the room and said, "After tonight, this is no longer the war room. It's the delivery room."
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 800 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Sept 23 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 3.5%.
CAPTION: Do you approve of the way President Clinton is handling his job as President?
Do you favor Clinton's health-care reform plan?
From what you know of those health-care reforms, will you and your family be better off?
Do you understand most of the major points in the health-care plan?
Is having to join a managed-care health plan an excessive infringement on your freedom to choose a doctor or an acceptable part of reform?