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Townhall...
President
Obama: You’re no Bill Clinton
by Cal
Thomas
Aug 02,
2012
The Obama
re-election team must be in panic mode. The president is stuck in a
virtual tie
with Mitt Romney in some polls and behind him in others, so in
desperation it
has reached out to the Big Dog, Bill Clinton, for help.
Clinton
will speak next month at the Democratic National Convention in
Charlotte, N.C.,
in a Wednesday night position often reserved for the vice presidential
nominee.
Obama and Clinton have not had the most cordial relationship, but when
you’re
drowning, your feelings about the lifeguard matter less than his
ability to
keep you afloat. And Obama is a sinking man.
The
president’s problem is that he’s no Bill Clinton. While Clinton was
willing to
compromise with congressional Republicans, Obama and congressional
Democrats
are not. Clinton signed the welfare reform bill after vetoing two
earlier
versions crafted by a Republican Congress. Yet now the Obama
administration
wants to let states opt out of the bill’s work requirement, which
forced many
people to get jobs. Instead of requiring people to work, Health and
Human
Services wants to grant states waivers to the work provision so that
they can
“test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures
that are
designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.” What
alternative
strategy is there to an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay?
Surely we
cannot continue with a president whose policies addict more people to
government.
Most
importantly in these dire economic times is the contrast that when
Clinton’s
presidency ended he left a surplus behind. Obama has taken the debt
created
during the second Bush administration -- mostly because of the response
to a
terrorist attack and two wars -- and, according to the U.S. Treasury,
increased
each American’s debt share by $17,013 to $51,433. The Congressional
Budget
Office says at the end of this fiscal year, the administration will
have racked
up four consecutive years of trillion dollar-plus deficits, creating by
2020
the largest debt -- $16 trillion --in American history.
Bill
Clinton once questioned Obama’s qualifications to be president. In a
2007
interview with Charlie Rose, Clinton said, “When is the last time we
elected a
president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started
running?”
In 2008,
candidate Obama praised Ronald Reagan above Bill Clinton when he told
the Reno
Gazette-Journal’s editorial board that under Reagan the Republican
Party was
“the party of ideas” and that Reagan had “changed the trajectory of
America in
a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way Bill Clinton did not...
Read the
rest of the article at Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2012/08/02/president_obama_youre_no_bill_clinton
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