‘It’s the Economy’ for Another Clinton Campaign (WSJ op-ed)

WSJ ^ | Nov. 19, 2007 | Jackie Calmes

[jdm]

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton cited warning signs for the economy as she reiterated her campaign theme that she alone has the experience to tackle the problems, while unnamed others (think chief rival Barack Obama) would need “on-the-job training.”

The New York senator’s veiled jab at Illinois Sen. Obama Monday in Iowa came on the same day that a poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers showed he had edged ahead of her in their continuing tight contest. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was still in third place in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Clinton’s explicit target in her speech in Knoxville, Iowa, was President Bush as she took account of budget deficits, growing income inequality, rising numbers of Americans without health insurance and ballooning U.S. indebtedness to foreign governments, notably China.

“There seems to be a pattern here. It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush,” she said to claps from a mostly Democratic audience. Clinton’s husband in 1992 beat the first President Bush in a campaign with the slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” and spent much of his administration helping to steer budgets from record deficits to surplus.

Clinton’s actual target, though, was Obama, who is not quite midway through his first six-year Senate term. For months, she has extolled her own experience on national security issues compared to his relative lack of seasoning. Turning now to economic affairs, she said, “There is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for — our next president.” She added: “We need a president who understands the magnitude and complexity of the challenges we face and has the strength and experience to address them from Day One.”

[jdm]

"It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush," Hillary said.

Reading that made me feel creepy all over.

[keepitreal]

I laugh. What experience with economic matters does Mrs. Clinton had? I doubt she has even had to make a budget to buy groceries the groceries for all those days she works in the kitchen.

[princess leah]

SHE goes into attack mode over experience on economy. WHAT experience...start naming it...come on - I’ll bet she’s never even put together a spreadsheet with economic figures totalled up much less balanced a checkbook!

[DuncanWaring]

Clinton’s husband ... spent much of his administration helping to steer budgets from record deficits to surplus.

UTTER BUNK.

There was never a "budget surplus" during any year of the Clinton administration (or for several decades prior to that, for that matter).

The National Debt went up every single year of his administration.

[lasereye]

I must be Nostradamus (post 55):

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1922327/posts?page=55#55

[Jim Verdolini]

I posted months ago that the economy would be the issue. Hillary will have trouble dragging the nutty anti-American left intent on forcing a war loss, to the table on other issues.

[LibLieSlayer]

Her only experience is in embezzlement, murder and lying!

LLS

[Doe Eyes]

Oh yeah?

Time to trot out the

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

If it’s now all about the economy — that must mean that even Democrat insiders realize that the war in Iraq is going terribly, horribly wrong (i.e. that the terrorists are losing).

[quant5]

This shouldn’t be surprising at all. Wait another year as the middle class keep feeling the pinch. Not many people in the 1990’s stopped to consider the windfall of great economics the Republics had created from winning the Gulf War (we got super cheap Arab oil) to undervalued housing market of the late eighties which was bound to rise and of course, the Internet which Clinton had nothing to do with. VP Gore was helpful in passing some laws to allow it to go from a military application to a commercial one and of course claims all the credit.

I’m afraid she will win but her odds are more then good because Bill Clinton was right in saying ‘it’s the economy stupid’. That is how he got away with being one of the dirtiest traitors the USA has ever seen. Who cares about those small numbers American civilian and military casualties at the hands of Islam when we’re all raking it in?!?! No wonder Bin Laden felt he could pull of 911 without national retribution. He probably thought we would just lob a couple of cruise missles into a tent like Clinton did.

[Maceman]

.” In fact, as CNN’s Brooke Jackson has reported: “Three days before Christmas 1992, the National Bureau of Economic Research finally issued its official proclamation that the recession had ended 21 months earlier. What became the longest boom in U.S. history actually began nearly two years before Clinton took office.” (See http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/31/jackson.recession.primer.otsc/).

This last sentence is particularly telling, since public perception is that Clinton inherited a bad economy and saved it by raising taxes during his first term – something that I don’t believe is ever possible.

By the same token, Clinton is generally perceived as having a stellar economic record during his own presidency, in spite of the fact that the economy was already starting to decline during the last year of his term after the stock market crashed in March 2000. According to a report by MSNBC: “The longest economic expansion in U.S. history faltered so much in the summer of 2000 that business output actually contracted for one quarter, the government said Wednesday in releasing a comprehensive revision of the gross domestic product. Based on new data, the Commerce Department said that the GDP — the country’s total output of goods and services — shrank by 0.5 percent at an annual rate in the July-September quarter of 2000.”