know someone up in Harlem who wouldn’t mind being asked.
Posted on 07/24/2002 9:32:42 AM PDT by jimbo123
Suddenly, Democrats can’t get enough of ex-president
WASHINGTON, July 24 — If politics was the stock market, this would be the Democrats’ hot investment pick: shares in Bill Clinton. With the Dow plummeting, the federal deficit rising and the Middle East exploding (again), the 42nd president — for all of his faults — suddenly seems worth embracing again, at least to Democrats eager to attack George W. Bush.
NOT LONG AGO, Democrats were reluctant to utter the “C” word, at least publicly. After his Rocky-like, WWF-style arrival at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in the summer of 2000, he was rarely mentioned as the party’s convention nominated Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. Since then, and for a host of reasons — his own and the party’s — Clinton has stayed out of the limelight for the most part, settling into his new office in Harlem, raking in millions on the lecture circuit, starting work on his book. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, pushed him further into the background. President Bush, wisely, didn’t want Clinton to help him deal with the national trauma; Clinton, wisely, didn’t try to push himself onto the stage.
THE EMINEM OF POLITICS
But now, precisely four years after his disastrous deposition in the Paula Jones case, he’s baaaaack: the Eminem of politics. His personal economic sage, Robert E. Rubin, is a sought after figure amid the market chaos. Clinton talks regularly with Democratic leaders in Congress, and even more often (and with growing frequency) with everyone who is seeking the 2004 Democratic nomination. Next week, virtually all the wannabes will be in New York City for a gathering of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which Clinton used to chair. The social highlight: Clinton’s appearance at a “welcoming reception” in Rockefeller Center. It’s a “non-press” event, but the hottest political ticket in town.
Economic numbers have a lot to do with Clinton’s resurgence. Politics is a game of comparison; no one is evaluated, at least for long, in isolation. His personal and moral failings were all too obvious. And even now, according to the Newsweek poll, more people blame corporate scandals on the ethical laxity of the Clinton years than on a lack of vigilance by Bush’s administration. Still, Clinton’s economic record is starting to look stellar compared with that of the man who succeeded him. As the scorekeepers of such things figure it, Clinton is one of only three presidents (and the only two-termer) to have presided over a recession-free economy. The “Long Boom” — the groundwork for which, ironically, was laid by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush — lasted throughout Clinton’s eight years.
LUCK OF THE DRAW
Bush, by contrast, was unlucky enough to have begun his term with a recession, and now is facing the task of leading a war on terrorism with a colossal but unknown, cost. The market has fallen more precipitously in the first 18 months of his term than in any other new presidency. No wonder that Gore, always sensitive to the barometric pressures of politics, now pounds the podium and declares his pride in the “damn good job” he and Clinton did the in ’90s. In the 2000 campaign, then Vice President Gore rarely uttered his boss’ name, and by the end they were barely on speaking terms. Now they are chums again, with Gore calling Clinton on a regular basis. “They just exchanged calls today, in fact,” a Gore aide said when I asked about their relationship the other day. “They talk quite a bit.”
The comparisons are going to become more vivid, in Clinton’s favor. The recent deficit numbers make especially dismal reading. What was supposed to be a $250 billion surplus this year has turned into a $150 billion deficit. Next year is likely to produce at least $150 billion more red ink, followed by perhaps $50 billion the year after that. Most of the $5 trillion in “surplus” that was supposed to materialize over the next decade has vanished, on paper, and probably for good.
STILL A HERO OF DEMOCRATS
Clinton is back for other reasons, among them the ever-earlier start of presidential campaigning, and the ever-growing role of fund-raising. Despite, or even because of, his impeachment, Clinton remains a hero among most of the Democratic rank-and-file. More important for the immediate purposes of the 2004 candidates, Clinton is revered, and is listened to, by the fat cat contributors whose support is essential now. Candidates are making their pitch to Clinton in private, in hopes that he will bless its plausibility, at least, to the money guys. Sens. John Edwards and John Kerry, who are running flat out, talk to the Sage of Harlem frequently, but so does everyone else. Even Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, who is running a deliberately outsiderish campaign (attempting to make a virtue of necessity) recently described to me his visit to Clinton in awe-struck tones.
The Middle East is another politically beneficial comparison for Clinton, for sadly obvious reasons. The two sides were doing more talking than killing in the late ’90s; now the situation is reversed.
One other reason: As they say in the newspaper business, he’s good copy — often too good for his own good. Like Marshall Mathers, we can’t stand him when he’s around, but without him to entertain us, politics can feel, as Eminem says, “so empty without me.”
TAX CUT DILEMMA
Democrats may be welcoming Clinton back, gingerly, but they aren’t yet ready to deal with the full implications of bragging about his economic record. For that would mean repudiating Bush’s 10-year, $1.5 trillion tax cut — which Bush, in turn, meant as a direct challenge to Clinton’s tax-raising record. Few Democrats are willing to call for a flat out reversal of the tax cut — or, indeed, much by way of a cutback. Tom Daschle won’t allow a vote on it this year. Dick Gephardt wants a “summit” with everything on the table (translation: you go first); Sen. Joe Lieberman would “postpone” future reduction in the top rates (and the estate tax), but only if economic conditions warrant it next year; Kerry would look to next year, too; Edwards, a bit more boldly, opposes lowering the top rates; only Dean (and Ted Kennedy) are calling for a sweeping reversal of the whole measure. In an interview last week, Rubin told me he is for the “summit” idea. He didn’t suggest who might chair such a meeting, but I know someone up in Harlem who wouldn’t mind being asked.
Howard Fineman is Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and an NBC News analyst.
This Clinton "The Resurrected Messiah" routine is, although happening a bit earlier than I thought, so damn predicatible.......just in time for the mid-term elections.
Watch for the President Bush comeback a month before the elections (to make the Congressional races close) then the economic "recovery" in september of 03......
SOOOOO predictable.
Once we unravel the current press kudzu around the actions of McAuliffe, Rubin and other Clintonistas, the Dems will be back to running away from Clinton like scalded squirrels...
Clinton could also beat Tiger Woods handily if Howard Fineman and the rest of the Democrat media was running the cameras and officiating. ;-)
You must have seen the same press conference I saw. The guy pushed himself in front of the cameras, and then kept coming back for more.
However, can you just link to that graphic instead of posting it? Thanks, AM
Could have fooled me. In the year and a half since he skulked off to his Harlem office it seems I still see his bulbous schnozz poking into every public venue available.
You would think that a guy with such strong financial skills in dealing with an $8 trillion economy would be in more demand as a financial consultant after he left office, instead of being reduced to a traveling freakshow artist who has spent the last 18 months offering variations of the same tiresome speech.
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