In his biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein writes about the 1994 Reform Riders campaign, a nationwide bus tour designed to build support for President Clinton’s health-care-reform agenda. The idea was to emulate the famous 1960s Freedom Rides, but the campaign was plagued with protesters. In Portland, Ore., the route was blocked by an “angry anti-Clinton mob” who had their own bus, which was covered in red tape and dragged by a tow truck with a sign reading THIS IS CLINTON CARE. A plane bearing protest signs flew overhead. Hillary Clinton met the Reform Rider activists in Seattle, where she delivered a speech on health care. The result was a mob scene. Here’s Bernstein:

By the time the caravan had reached Seattle the threat of violence was constant. All week, talk radio hosts, both in the Northwest and on national broadcasts, implored their listeners to confront the Reform Riders to “show Hillary” their feelings about her. This "call to arms," as she described it, attracted menacing hordes, many of whom identified themselves as militia members, tax resisters and anti-abortion militants. She estimated that at least half of the 4,500 people in the audience of her Seattle speech were protesters. She agreed for the first time to wear a bulletproof vest.Rarely had she felt endangered, but this was different. During her speech, the catcalls,screaming, and heckling drowned out much of her remarks. When she left the stage and got into a limousine, hundreds of protesters surrounded the car. They were rabid with hatred. Several arrests were made by the Secret Service, which impounded two guns and a knife.

Until now, President Obama has taken a relatively hands-clean approach to health-care policy, holding press conferences at times of his choosing and sending his frontman, Robert Gibbs, to respond to criticism about the president's proposal for reform. But today Obama heads into the trenches to do a town-hall meeting on his own, the first of four that the White House has planned this week. Later this afternoon, Obama will speak to residents of Portsmouth, N.H., inside a high-school gym, addressing some of the latest concerns surrounding his vision for expanding the American health-care system.