Mitt Romney spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting today in New York City, and in an election season soaked through with slung mud, one audience got to see a rare moment of political magnanimity.
The former president introduced the Republican candidate by mentioning his support for City Year, a Boston-based, education-focused nonprofit which was the model for AmeriCorps, brainchild of the Clinton administration. (The first of two federal programs based on a Romney-affiliated Massachusetts program, we might add.)
When Romney took the podium, he was quick to thank the former president and echo his kindness. Then he cracked a joke, "If there's one thing we've learned in this election season, by the way, it is that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a man a lot of good." After getting a lot of applause he added, "All I got to do now is wait a couple of days for that bounce to happen."
Romney is no doubt referring to President Obama's modest bounce in the polls coming out of the DNC, a bounce which some have attributed to Clinton's standout speech.
As Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport explained on Jansing and Co. a week after the conventions, "It's very hard to establish causality" when it comes to polling. But when Gallup asked Americans to rate the DNC speeches, 56 percent scored Clinton's speech as "Excellent/Good," to Obama’s 43 percent.
And let's not forget the Romney campaign's official response to Clinton's DNC speech:
"President Clinton drew a stark contrast between himself and President Obama tonight. Bill Clinton worked with Republicans, balanced the budget, and after four years he could say you were better off. Barack Obama hasn’t worked across the aisle – he’s barely worked with other Democrats – and has the worst economic record of any president in modern history. President Clinton’s speech brought the disappointment and failure of President Obama’s time in office clearly into focus."
The Romney campaign has repeatedly sought to highlight Clinton's successes as proof of Obama's failures, and to name this proof as reason enough for independents to jump ship and vote GOP.
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It's disturbing to hear praise heaped on Bill "Kill the New Deal" Clinton. The fact is, based on his social policies, both the very conservative Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were well to the left of Clinton. I honestly don't know if the praise would be as strong if people weren't so clueless about how such things as Clinton's workfare mandate actually worked to create a huge pool of super-cheap replacement labor here in the US. Another point that never seemed to have caught the interest of mainstream/progressive media was the horrendous impact of Clinton's workfare mandate on fully disabled parents (primarily single-parent families where the parent became disabled, on SSI/SSDI). Interestingly, Clinton's 1996 welfare "reform" specifies that ONLY the disabled who had dependent children were required to find jobs; those without children were not required to do so because they had been determined disabled... This then led to exploitative "sheltered workshops," paying the disabled a fraction of the minimum wage, etc. One of the first things President Obama did upon taking office was to repeal the work mandate on disabled parents. A point that merits public discussion is why post-Reagan progressives have remained oblivious to US poverty and ignored even the most appalling aspect of welfare "reform." (Note: As a direct result of Clinton's welfare reform, infant mortality rates among America's poor now exceed those of some Third World countries, while the life expectancy of America's poor has actually fallen below that of some Third World countries. These policies kill, but hey, Clinton's pretty cool...) I certainly don't think that President Obama needs Bubba's benevolent aid, and it's just creepy to hear people indicate that he does.
The funny thing embedded in Romney'a joking was the phrase "a few words" applied to Bill Clinton, who held forth seemingly forever on his night in front of the DNC National Convention and a rare opportunity to be seen again in prime time before a national TV audience. LOL!
But two statements made by Bill Clinton, who will speak his own mind, even if to the discomfort of the Obama campaign that has gone into conservative defense mode now thinking they have run up a suitable score in the first quarter, are worthy of repeating: "The president and the congress ought to extend all the tax cuts for another year", and "Obama should have met with world leaders at this critical time yesterday in NYC at the UN World Leader assembly". But it is clear we don't have a leader in the White House, now, just a politician hell bent for reelection. But exactly why, as he shows a real incapability to have learned from his many mistakes, and a willingness to take a different course than what is ideology has dictated to him, is the question that needs to be put to him, and ultimately his answer, or lack of one, judged by the electorate over the next 6 weeks.
Ha. The Stench made a funny.
Yes, they are if repeated accurately. Otherwise - not so much.
Thats the way I heard them, Adam. If you have a correction, let's have it!
Yes, I have the actual quotes. I know your have them too.
Well, let's have your version then. post them, and lets see if there is a dimes worth of difference between what I posted and what you have alluded to, Adam!