Bill Clinton: Barack Obama’s Worst Friend
Former President Bill Clinton has often been accused by supporters of Barack Obama of not supporting the latter passionately enough. This even though he said time and again publicly that he hoped Obama would win.
However, Clinton has behaved more like a Democratic expert than a partisan which always infuriates quite some people.
Even Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” made fun of said Obama supporters by asking Clinton whether he ever thought about wearing a gigantic sign on his back that reads ‘I love Barack.’
Campaigning with Obama on Thursday, Clinton gave his critics more material to work with. This time, it seems clear to me that he did mean to make clear that Obama is no economic genius, despite what his campaign has tried to tell people, while at the same time explaining why Obama would be a better president than McCain nonetheless.
His story may not appeal to may passionate Obama supporters, but it does sound encouraging to more moderate voters and observers who realize that not one candidate “knows” what to do during a severe economic crisis, save for asking his top advisers about it.
“I haven’t cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election, but I know what else he said to his economic advisers (during the crisis),” Clinton told the crowd at a Wednesday night rally with Obama in Florida. “He said, ‘Tell me what the right thing to do is. What’s the right thing for America? Don’t tell me what’s popular. You tell me what’s right — I’ll figure out how to sell it.’”
The “to sell it” part is of course the part that will infuriate Obama supporters for it indicates that Obama did not even think about the subject, but only about a way to “sell it” to the people.
He added, however, and this is the most important part: “He called those people. You know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to understand. That’s what a president does in a crisis.”
Those who support Obama as if he was a secular Messiah may not like it, but those of us who are reasonable understand that every good president acts as Clinton described (save for the ‘to sell’ part, which could be worded a bit differently): ask experts what they think about an issue, let them educate you, and then draw your own conclusions and explain them to the people.
Watch it:
Obama really couldn’t have expected anything different. After all, the person Clinton loves the most is Clinton.
Well, of course Obama is thinking about the economic crisis. If he simply did what experts told him, he’d be trying a hundred different things at once. As you said, no presidential candidate has ever been an economics expert, and even the economics experts don’t know exactly what to do with the current crisis. No one does, really. Not Bill, not Hillary, not Obama. So while I agree with the ideal that “sell it” could be worded differently, I thought the point Clinton was making was that Obama is extremely intelligent and capable of understanding and utilizing the advice that he will get from advisers. And isn’t that why candidates have economic advisers? After all, Bill Clinton had been dealing with his state’s economy for years–but he still had plenty of economic advisers with him in the White House.