President Clinton's TV Ad Needs a Reality Check

Bill Clinton’s TV ad supporting President Obama’s re-election is ironic on so many levels, but it grossly distorts reality too. Clinton says that republican policies under the Bush administration is how “we got here” and that the only way out is to continue with “President Obama’s plan.” So far I have not heard a plan for the future; his convention speech was a plea for Americans to “rally around his goals for the future,” which certainly is not a plan and sounds as though he wants us, collectively, to do his job for him.

As for how we got here, President Clinton says it’s Wall Street greed and republican policies, but there are other major reasons banks ran wild and the housing market boiled over, which the former president knows intimately. First, under his watch, Glass-Steagall was repealed; that was the banking law enacted during the Great Depression designed to explicitly prevent the banks from venturing into high risk businesses that could bring about their demise. Second, under his watch the Community Redevelopment Act, originally enacted under the Carter administration was aggressively advanced during his presidency, and encouraged banks to make home loans that did not meet traditional underwriting standards.

President Clinton says President Obama inherited an economic mess from President Bush, which is true, but history also shows that he himself passed a declining economy along to Bush in 2001. The stock market, a leading indicator of the economy, peaked in early 2000 and was on a clear downward trajectory by Bush’s inauguration, and completely capitulated after the events of 9-11, during President Bush’s first year in office.

Probably too much weight for our nation’s economic prosperity is attributed to the policies of presidential administrations. In recent history great economic success came from a republican and democrat president, Reagan and Clinton, who clearly set different economic agendas and visions for our nation, but each had one major trait in common, namely the ability to work with the opposing party in congress.

Going forward the most important lesson of the Clinton legacy for this president is the fact that Clinton’s success came mostly from his second term in office, when he reached across the aisle and decided to work with republicans. This president has thus far been unwilling or unable to do that and regardless of where the fault lies for that fact, it’s the president’s job to make that happen and get things done. If he is unable or unwilling to do that, the prognosis for a successful second term can not be encouraging.