Daily Archives: 2012/09/06

Listening to President Clinton speak, is an exercise in analytics. He is masterful and boring all in the same framework. He is a consummate politician and has made an art form out of playing the crowd. The problem always arises however, when we must break down and analyze closely, what he is saying.

Putting aside his often palpable disdain for the POTUS for a minute, one needs to understand that for Bill Clinton the man, there is always an underlying strategy. He himself loves to boast of his accomplishments, most of which came as he tactically switched sides in “94” and left his own party stunned and wondering about his motivations. Simply put, Clinton understands politics like Barack Obama can only dream of. And this is exactly why many Americans still believe he was a great President.

I personally believe “Bubba” was a decent President if only because he could read “We the People” like very few Presidents could, and “We the People” were somewhat better off because of it. However when we look at some of his actual as well as philosophical policy nomenclature, we find things like the adaptation of the 1977 “Community Reinvestment Act”, the deregulation of 1932 Glass–Steagall, all of which some would argue paved the way for the unethical and misguided lending practices, which are in fact a major root cause of all our current economic bleeding. And we also see the “paper tiger”, high leverage businesses of the late 90’s, in it for lopsided short term gain, and with no real foundational liquidity to carry them through to the other side of any recession.

You won’t hear much about these and other “inconvenient Clinton truths” from the Dems. Instead (he and they) are far more comfortable with the mythical status, built around the philandering former Commander in Chief. A myth so convoluted, and yet fostered as if Biblical, that it far overshadows the current POTUS, eclipsing him as any sort of “Standard Bearer”. Clinton himself is the real Standard Bearer, and he is content to hold that title, at least until (2016). Hillary???

Ultimately, I will not watch the President tonight, as I only see a man bent on changing what I understand should never be changed. I only see a man with limited if not clouded life experience, whose persona has been hyped beyond even his own ability to sustain it. Frankly, too much is at stake. So I will read the excerpts tomorrow looking for what I know I will find, and write about that. In the mean time, I will listen to Clinton’s speech again and ponder Charles Krauthammer’s analysis in which he refers to the lengthy diatribe as, “Sprawling, undisciplined and self-indulgent…