Former president Bill Clinton delivered a spirited defense of President Obama’s handling of the nation’s struggling economy here Wednesday night. E.J. Dionne Jr. described how in his speech, Clinton outlined a tutorial on the need for governement.
Bill Clinton is typically described as the empathetic, feel-your-pain guy. But his greatest political skill may be as a formulator of arguments — the explainer in chief.
At the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he did not disappoint, boiling down Mitt Romney’s case to one sentence: “In Tampa,” Clinton said, “the Republican argument against the president’s reelection was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. . . . ‘We left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.’ ” He cast the philosophical differences between the parties just as crisply. Republicans, he said, believe in a “winner-take-all, you’re-on-your-own society,” while Democrats seek “a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility — a we’re-all-in-this-together society.”
That Clinton, the cheerful political educator, played such a central role at this conclave reflected the extent to which it should be seen as a three-day tutorial designed not only to defend President Obama’s economic stewardship but also to advance a view of government for which, over the past 40 years, Democrats have often apologized.
Jennifer Rubin viewed Clinton’s speech from another angle. Instead of building Obama up, Rubin wondered if Clinton was “a reminder of Obama’s weaknesses.”
Bill Clinton, don’t get me wrong, was the best speaker Wednesday night. But that is largely because the rest of the evening was atrocious. Clinton was hoarse, and he seemed to holler for no reason at all. He decried those meanie Republicans of today (the favorite ploy of partisan Democrats is to praise every Republican no longer in office), and he repeated the tropes that Republicans want you to be on your own, want a “winner-take-all” society and want to help only the rich. Yawn.
At times his defense of President Obama strained credulity: Obama, he said, is bipartisan because he hired Republicans in government jobs and he is willing to work “cooperatively.” The Obama record is so obviously at odds with that sentiment (unilateral action on immigration and on welfare and the refusal to make a deal entitlements or address the fiscal cliff) that Clinton’s argument seemed unserious.
And because Clinton’s speech was so full with policy substance, it kept journalists busy fact checking. Dylan Matthews fact checked Clinton on the economy.
As Ezra noted, Bill Clinton’s speech Wednesday night was full of policy substance. But does that substance check out? Sarah already covered the Medicare portions, but I took a look at the rest (with a special Sarah Kliff guest appearance on health spending).
“TRUE WITH A BUT — Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private- sector jobs. So what’s the job score? Republicans: twenty-four million. Democrats: forty-two.”
If you look at total private-sector employment, this checks out. But nonfarm payrolls are the preferred measure, due to variability in agricultural employment. There, the Democratic record is actually more impressive, with 43.8 million nonfarm payrolls added. But Republicans added 35.3 million, more than their farm-inclusive number. More generally, these numbers would benefit from being compared to population growth. As it turns out, very rarely do any presidents manage growth that outpaces the growth in the size of the civilian population older than 16.
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