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Sound-off
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Posted November 17, 2011
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THANKS FOR THE CIGARS BARRY --BUT--
Seeking to avoid the indignity of being a one-term president, Barack Obama has quietly, with hat and cigars in hand, reached out to a Democrat who knows how to win elections – popular former President Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton's new book doesn't mince words about the dismal state of the Obama economy. The former president flatly declares, "We're in a mess now."
Are we ever! But the fact that this withering indictment comes from a former Democratic president, who is widely credited for the strong job-creating economy that emerged in his second term, makes it an embarrassing lecture for Obama from a political master who thinks Obama is in over his head.
This is the news equivalent of "man bites dog," or in this case, "Democrat bites Democrat."
Clinton not only criticizes Obama's economy but also his relentless attacks on Wall Street executives (though Obama is happy to take their money for his campaign).
That cutting criticism, among others in the book, led to "some eye-rolling among senior Obama advisers," said the Washington Post, and probably a few expletives to boot.
Top Obama campaign aides, including David Axelrod, flew from campaign offices in Chicago and Washington to meet with Clinton at the William J. Clinton Foundation offices in Harlem last week. The two-hour meeting, called by the Obama team, also included Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, pollster Joel Benenson, and Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democrat National Committee.
"We were the ones who reached out for the conversation," one of the participants from the Obama campaign told The National Memo’s Joe Conason, who first broke the story. "We did so to lay out the landscape for the [former] president as we see it, but our particular interest was to receive his insights.”
The meeting is a far cry from 2008 when then Sen. Hillary Clinton, aided by her husband, battled Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign was hard-fought to say the least and marked by tough attack ads and harsh comments.
“Clinton has the potential to cause real problems if he believes he's on the outside looking in. He expects and wants to be involved, with appropriate deference, even though his relations with Obama have been shaky at best.”
The unemployment rate is currently hovering around 9 percent and the budget imbalance is not just astronomical but has forced crisis after crisis as the White House and Congress have fought over Obama’s spending spree which has added $5 trillion to the National Debt in less than three years.
Even the title of Clinton's book is a slap at the Obama's economic incompetence.
If "we need smart government for a strong economy," as Clinton correctly states, it necessarily follows that we now have Obama leading an incompetent government and a dangerously weak economy.
"It is heartening that people all over the world want to pursue their version of the American Dream but troubling that others are doing a better job than we are of providing it to their people," Clinton says.
He also takes Obama to task for not dealing with the debt ceiling issue in his first two years when he had huge Democratic majorities in Congress, and for failing to come up with a coherent campaign message to blunt the GOP's political attacks in the 2010 midterm elections.
Clinton offers his own prescriptions for economic growth, including passage of President George W. Bush's free trade agreements that Obama belatedly signed last month after nearly three years of inaction.
But Clinton had already been offering more far-reaching advice on the economy that Obama has been ignoring to his own political peril: This is no time to be raising taxes.
"I personally don't believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending, either one, until we get this economy off the ground," Clinton said earlier this fall.
Could Clinton be laying the groundwork for someone to challenge Obama in the 2012 election? Time will tell.
Bill Clinton's new book doesn't mince words about the dismal state of the Obama economy. The former president flatly declares, "We're in a mess now."
Are we ever! But the fact that this withering indictment comes from a former Democratic president, who is widely credited for the strong job-creating economy that emerged in his second term, makes it an embarrassing lecture for Obama from a political master who thinks Obama is in over his head.
This is the news equivalent of "man bites dog," or in this case, "Democrat bites Democrat."
Clinton not only criticizes Obama's economy but also his relentless attacks on Wall Street executives (though Obama is happy to take their money for his campaign).
That cutting criticism, among others in the book, led to "some eye-rolling among senior Obama advisers," said the Washington Post, and probably a few expletives to boot.
Top Obama campaign aides, including David Axelrod, flew from campaign offices in Chicago and Washington to meet with Clinton at the William J. Clinton Foundation offices in Harlem last week. The two-hour meeting, called by the Obama team, also included Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, pollster Joel Benenson, and Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democrat National Committee.
"We were the ones who reached out for the conversation," one of the participants from the Obama campaign told The National Memo’s Joe Conason, who first broke the story. "We did so to lay out the landscape for the [former] president as we see it, but our particular interest was to receive his insights.”
The meeting is a far cry from 2008 when then Sen. Hillary Clinton, aided by her husband, battled Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign was hard-fought to say the least and marked by tough attack ads and harsh comments.
“Clinton has the potential to cause real problems if he believes he's on the outside looking in. He expects and wants to be involved, with appropriate deference, even though his relations with Obama have been shaky at best.”
The unemployment rate is currently hovering around 9 percent and the budget imbalance is not just astronomical but has forced crisis after crisis as the White House and Congress have fought over Obama’s spending spree which has added $5 trillion to the National Debt in less than three years.
Even the title of Clinton's book is a slap at the Obama's economic incompetence.
If "we need smart government for a strong economy," as Clinton correctly states, it necessarily follows that we now have Obama leading an incompetent government and a dangerously weak economy.
"It is heartening that people all over the world want to pursue their version of the American Dream but troubling that others are doing a better job than we are of providing it to their people," Clinton says.
He also takes Obama to task for not dealing with the debt ceiling issue in his first two years when he had huge Democratic majorities in Congress, and for failing to come up with a coherent campaign message to blunt the GOP's political attacks in the 2010 midterm elections.
Clinton offers his own prescriptions for economic growth, including passage of President George W. Bush's free trade agreements that Obama belatedly signed last month after nearly three years of inaction.
But Clinton had already been offering more far-reaching advice on the economy that Obama has been ignoring to his own political peril: This is no time to be raising taxes.
"I personally don't believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending, either one, until we get this economy off the ground," Clinton said earlier this fall.
Could Clinton be laying the groundwork for someone to challenge Obama in the 2012 election? Time will tell.
- TAGS:
- comment,
- taxes,
- obama,
- election_2012,
- clinton,
- sound_off
- GROUPS:
- Election 2012,
- OutFront,
- Sound off
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