E.J. Dionne: What Bill Clinton Could Teach President Obama
When word went out that Bill Clinton had been rushed to the hospital, the prospect that he was in danger made me wish that President Obama had spent more time learning lessons that only Clinton can teach....
...Clinton, like Obama, started out as a unifier who disdained ideological quarrels and saw himself as a problem-solver. There is not a dime's worth of difference between Clinton's war on "the brain-dead politics of both parties" and Obama's insistence that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America."...
But Republicans (and in retrospect, you can say this was shrewd politics) understood in 1994, as they do in 2010, that allowing these talented icon smashers to govern differently and draw in members of their own party would be fatal to a GOP comeback.
So in Clinton's case, Republicans voted to a person against his economic recovery plan that -- combined with President George H.W. Bush's deficit-reduction moves -- put the nation on the road to budget surpluses. Remember those? And then they killed Clinton's health-care plan....
I am pleased that after the scary tidings, Bill Clinton is doing well. And it may turn out to be providential that he burst into the news at precisely this point. It's hard to escape the sense that a young and promising Democratic president is too closely replaying the opening act of another young and promising Democratic president -- and that Republicans need only recite the same lines they came up with 16 years ago.
Obama needs to rewrite the script. And as a script doctor, Bill Clinton has no equal.
Read entire article at WaPo
...Clinton, like Obama, started out as a unifier who disdained ideological quarrels and saw himself as a problem-solver. There is not a dime's worth of difference between Clinton's war on "the brain-dead politics of both parties" and Obama's insistence that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America."...
But Republicans (and in retrospect, you can say this was shrewd politics) understood in 1994, as they do in 2010, that allowing these talented icon smashers to govern differently and draw in members of their own party would be fatal to a GOP comeback.
So in Clinton's case, Republicans voted to a person against his economic recovery plan that -- combined with President George H.W. Bush's deficit-reduction moves -- put the nation on the road to budget surpluses. Remember those? And then they killed Clinton's health-care plan....
I am pleased that after the scary tidings, Bill Clinton is doing well. And it may turn out to be providential that he burst into the news at precisely this point. It's hard to escape the sense that a young and promising Democratic president is too closely replaying the opening act of another young and promising Democratic president -- and that Republicans need only recite the same lines they came up with 16 years ago.
Obama needs to rewrite the script. And as a script doctor, Bill Clinton has no equal.