President Clinton wisely ignored his assigned foreign policy topic given to him by the Obama campaign. He also ignored, again wisely, his 10 minute speech allotment. What resulted was the best partisan speech of the Convention and the first speech that actually made a case for the candidate.
Obama may be a great orator, but Clinton is still the best politician the Democrats have on their bench.
Unfortunately, Clinton, in order to recommend Obama had to exaggerate: Not only Obama's qualifications, but his own accomplishments.
He also had to misrepresent Bush's legacy.
Our nation is in trouble on two fronts: The American dream is under siege at home, and America's leadership in the world has been weakened.
Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting, with incomes declining; job losses, poverty and inequality rising; mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing; health care coverage disappearing; and a big spike in the cost of food, utilities, and gasoline...
American workers have given us consistently rising productivity. They've worked harder and produced more. What did they get in return? Declining wages, less than one-quarter as many new jobs as in the previous eight years, smaller health care and pension benefits, rising poverty and the biggest increase in income inequality since the 1920s.
But according to the most recent Census Report
America's poverty rate remained flat, but the median household income reached $50,233 in 2007, a modest increase of 1.3 percent from 2006 after adjusting for inflation, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. The number of people without health insurance dropped from 47 million to 45.7 million.
The figures showed incomes rose for whites and blacks across the country, but stayed flat for Hispanics and Asians.
This contradicts Clinton's entire domestic argument. And there's this:
The US economy grew faster than expected in the second quarter of 2008 due to rising exports, falling imports, more consumer spending and less inventory reduction than initially reported, the Commerce Department said today
The economy grew at a 3.3% annualized rate in the second quarter, a sharp upward revision from the 1.9% growth reported in Commerce's first estimate a month ago and higher than the 0.9% gain in the first quarter. The 3.3% GDP increase is the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2007, when GDP grew at a 4.8% annualized rate.
Jobs today are declining. But they were declining when Clinton left office as well. They declined further after the attack on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. But in between, the economy grew tremendously. By January of 2008, there had been 52 straight months of job growth.
Clinton left office with the GDP growing at an anemic 0.7% rate
And gas prices have been higher, but one can place the blame squarely on those, mostly Democrats, who refused time and again to allow drilling for domestic oil. And it was Clinton who vetoed a bill to drill in ANWAR back in 1996.
Bill Clinton continued
Our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation; a perilous dependence on imported oil; a refusal to lead on global warming; a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders; a severely burdened military; a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements; and a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.
Too much unilateralism? Who was it that went to war in Kosovo without a UN mandate? Did Clinton forget the most significant Foreign Policy decision he made (that is after turning tail and running away in Mogadishu)?
Obama, wants to unilaterally engage Iran even though Europe wants no such initiative.
That's unilateralism.
Bill Clinton said
People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.
That's not true: Some people in the world are impressed by the power of our example.
And some are only impressed by an example of our power.
The next leader of the Free World needs to have the wisdom to distinguish between the two group and to provide the right example to the right group.
Who that is is for you to decide.
All I'll say on that is that had Obama been President over the last 4 years, we would have had another Mogadishu moment in Iraq.
Or more precisely, a Saigon moment.
