For several days, the Today show has been hyping a special edition show that would feature Hillary Clinton for what NBC has promoted as “Pancakes & Politics: A Town Hall With Hillary Clinton.” If the October 5 program is anything like ABC’s campaign 2008 town halls, it will be heavily stilted towards Democratic talking points.
On March 26, 2007, Good Morning America devoted 26 minutes to Hillary Clinton in what amounted to an infomercial. Co-host Robin Roberts allowed Clinton to talk uninterrupted for 18 of those 26 minutes. Roberts gushed to Clinton that “many people" felt the then-First Lady’s 1993 universal health care plan was “ahead of its time.”
That town hall included a plant, an audience member who, in 1993, just happened to have been on the Clintons’s universal health care task force:
ROBIN ROBERTS: What you said then in, in ‘93, many people felt it was just, in some ways, ahead of its, ahead of its time. Somebody that was there, and wants to ask you what is different now, between what happened then, and he is Dr. Steve Eckstat. He is, he works at the free clinic of Iowa. Doctor?"
HILLARY CLINTON: Hello, doctor.
DR. STEVE ECKSTAT: Morning. In 1993, I was a member of the Clinton Health Care Task Force when we were attempting to provide universal health care coverage of all Americans. We were unsuccessful, unsuccessful then and now the number of uninsured, 80 percent of whom are working families and individuals, has risen from 23 million in 1993 to over 46 million. If elected president, Senator Clinton, would you be willing to try again to provide universal health care coverage for all Americans and make that at priority for your administration?
At one point, Eckstat could be seen reading his rather lengthy "question." Ultimately, ABC would offer 64 minutes of town hall segments to Democrats in the 2008 cycle (Clinton and John Edwards) and nothing for Republicans.
NBC’s town hall will air at 7am on the October 5 Today show.
