PLANK JUNE 3, 2012
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Well, so much for Barack Obama's reelection campaign talking at all about Mitt Romney's career at Bain Capital. The private equity firm has proven a great vulnerability for Romney in the past and it exemplifies the economic vision Romney is running on, but Obama better lay off it for the rest of the campaign. Why, you ask? Well, because Bill Clinton said so, of course.
It was somewhat lost amid Friday's dismal job-report news, but the arbiters of conventional wisdom seem to have decided that Clinton's comments on CNN Thursday night gently critiquing the Obama campaign's attacks on Bain have rendered those attacks inoperative. Here's what Clinton said: “I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work; this is good work...There’s no question that, in terms of getting up, going to the office, and basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who’s been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.” This was offered in the context of arguing that the Obama campaign ought to instead focus on setting its superior vision for the country against Romney's inferior one, and of Clinton's overall prediction that Obama would prevail in November.
But it was the remarks on Bain that were catnip to reporters and pundits ever-alert to signs of Clinton undermining the man who kept his wife from becoming president. The Washington Post's Aaron Blake declared that as a result of Clinton's comments, the "shelf life of President Obama's Bain Capital strategy appears to be rapidly shrinking," under the headline: "Bill Clinton Sticks Another Fork in Obama's Bain Strategy." A day later, the Post's Dan Balz further underscored the emerging conclusion, writing, in somewhat more finely calibrated terms, that Clinton's commentary "was interpreted as a signal to the Obama team to ratchet back on attacks that Republicans have characterized as anti-business and anti-free-enterprise. Obama’s advisers have argued that the Bain attacks were not aimed at business broadly but only at Romney’s qualifications and values. Clinton seemed to knock down the wisdom of that approach."
All of which leads me to wonder, not for the first time: exactly who died and made Bill Clinton king? Or more specifically, who made him the font of all wisdom when it comes to Democratic strategy and policy-making? I realize that he rightly commands a certain level of authority in this regard as the only Democrat to win two presidential elections since FDR. But it's remarkable to what an extent his defense of Bain Capital is being taken as gospel, without any attempt to consider the background and motivations that Clinton brings to the subject. The press is happy to take into account one motivation, of course -- Clinton's well-established tendency to say things that, however subtly, tweak Obama (and relatedly, Mitt Romney's recent ploy of cozying up to Clinton, which surely has not gone unappreciated by the former president.)
Left largely unsaid, though, is that it is also hardly unsurprising for Clinton to be speaking up in defense of high finance. Remember: this is the man who as president presided over the alliance of Wall Street and the Democratic Party, embodied in his treasury secretary, Goldman Sachs veteran (and future Citigroup executive) Robert Rubin. It was Clinton who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law breaking up securities firms and commercial banks; it was Clinton whose advisers, notably Rubin and Larry Summers, blocked Brooksley Born's push for tighter regulation of derivatives; it was Clinton who lowered the capital gains tax in 1997, vastly boosting the bottom line of private equity managers like Mitt Romney who, via the carried interest loophole, had their compensation treated as capital gains rather than ordinary income.
Surely it is no accident that Clinton's other recent remark undermining Obama was also related to Obama's allegedly over-populist stance toward high finance and the very wealthy. In an interview last fall with Newsmax -- yes, Newsmax -- Clinton critiqued Obama's talk of raising taxes on millionaires who currently pay at very low rates ("The Buffett Rule") by saying that it was a bad idea to raise anyone's taxes "until we get this economy off the ground." He added for good measure: "We don't have a lot of resentment against people who are successful. We kind of like it, Americans. It's one of our best characteristics that, if we think someone earned their money fairly, we do not resent their success. Americans lost the fact that, whatever you think about this millionaire surcharge -- I don't really care because I would pay it but it won't affect me because I already paid income because I live in New York. I will pay more, but it won't solve the problem." Clinton tried to clarify these remarks later, but not before Crossroads GPS, the group founded by Karl Rove, built an Obama attack ad around the remarks.
What is utterly lost in the pundits' exaltation of Clinton's comments on Bain is that there is, in fact, a real debate going on within the Democratic Party, and that the reaction to the Obama campaign's attacks on Bain are bringing out the intra-party tensions. On the one side are Democrats like Obama who have seen many former Wall Street supporters turn away from them for daring to hold them responsible for the 2008 financial collapse, for proposing reforms like closing the carried-interest loophole, and for generally believing that the explosive growth of the financial sector the past three decades has not exactly been healthy for the country. These Democrats argue that, while attacks on Bain might not play so well in the Acela Corridor, they may well resonate in Ohio. On the other side of the debate are Democrats like Clinton and Cory Booker, the mayor of the 68th biggest city in the country, who have managed to remain in the good graces of Wall Street, not least because they are not in the position of having to fix what went terribly wrong in the fall of 2008, and who also, it must be noted, are indebted to the high-finance world -- Booker for its crucial support of his campaigns, and Clinton for its support of his post-White House philanthropic efforts.
But in the pundits' telling, this debate does not exist. If Bill Clinton says Bain is untouchable, then it must not be touched. Now, it's true, as I've written before, that the Bain attacks alone are not going to do the trick -- for one thing, they are probably going to need to be joined more with critiques of the tax inequities that make private equity work so particularly lucrative, which polls suggest voters find especially troubling, and which lend themselves to actual reforms that Obama can propose. But the notion that Chicago should lay off Bain Capital, and the human collateral damage it wreaked to its founder's enormous benefit, just because one Wall Street-friendly ex-president says so? That dog won't hunt.
follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis
15 comments
I definitely recognize that Bill Clinton has been subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) undermining Obama's messages over the past three years. But I should point out that Clinton's remarks are much less detrimental than Booker's were. It's almost as if anyone saying Mitt Romney is not the demon spawn of Lord Voldemort and Gordon Gekko can basically just whisper into the ear of "centrist" pundits and get them to write up a new breaking news story that another Democrat has vociferously denounced Obama, the Obama campaign, and Chicago political tactics all in one fell swoop. It's all out of proportion and, honestly, should be subject to the Fallows False Equivalence Watch. If you misrepresent non-newsworthy events--events which few casual news consumers will have the opportunity to go back to the source materials and judge for themselves--you should be stripped of the title of journalist. People have to watch for this as the campaign unfolds, lest clandestine apparatchiks begin to create controversies out of whole cloth (see Gore campaign, press treatment of; coverage of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smears; the "Dean Scream"). These are things that, curiously enough, the journalism profession only latterly realizes and begins to apologize for, well after the misrepresentations and distortions wreak their own insidious havoc.
- chaitless
June 3, 2012 at 6:48pm
I'm with chaitless. And thanks for doing your part, Alec, to keep the Lame Stream Media on notice. They've become more and more worthless over the years, promoting sales and sensationalization over all else.
I'm not privvy to the specifics of the Obama commercials, so I don't know what to think of Clinton's critique. He certainly has a point that Mitt's work ethic is above reproach; the man has proven himself to be a hard, intelligent, industrious worker. But somehow I doubt that's the point of Obama's commercials; I can't imagine how you fault someone for that. I have to admit there might just be a story there about Bill trying to take jabs at the guy that prevented his wife from becoming president; he doesn't normally make gaffes like this. It's as if he wants to keep hamstringing Obama just enough to keep Obama from running away with the election, but not so much that he could be considered attempting to sabotage Obama's campaign to any real extent.
- GSpinks
June 3, 2012 at 7:26pm
I don't care how finely calibrated his comments were ... only the people here will realize that he really wasn't criticizing Obama that much. I am with Spinks, Clinton doesn't make gaffes, at least not the verbal kind. On the other hand, I had been feeling that the Bain attacks were too soon ... so maybe Obama backs off a bit now, to resurrect them in September.
- NR409654
June 3, 2012 at 8:32pm
TNR should have a Charlatan Watch, similar to the old White House Watch, although it would require at least one reporter devoted solely to Clinton.
- rayward
June 3, 2012 at 10:35pm
Bill Clinton is a southern Democrat. On economics he is nothing but a wingnut Republican; he's even to the Right of Reagan. Did you ever see the video of him signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall? He looks as happy as a cat with cream on its whiskers. He also helped the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pay for some of the moving expenses of American companies fleeing to the Third World. And then, of course, there's that NAFTA thing. When the last American job is ready to be shipped overseas, Clinton will be at dockside, cheering. He's still convinced that globalization is the only thing that will save us. He thinks he's brilliant on every topic he chooses to discuss. Well, he ain't brilliant when it comes to economics--especially economics that benefit Americans. On that subject he's not the King, he's the court jester.
- magboy47.
June 4, 2012 at 1:52am
Here's my take, cross-posted from Scheiber's post on the jobs numbers: Clinton is a self-interested prick. He said what he said because he runs a racket, called The Clinton Foundation, that survives on handouts from Wall Street, and he's worried, rightly I suspect, that if he's seen as being too close to Obama the money will dry up and he would have to stop flying around the world in private jets to be adored by African heads of state and undergraduate coeds. Also, like the Wall Street creature he has become, Clinton is hedging against a Romney victory. What an asshole...
- AaronW
June 4, 2012 at 2:08am
Great post, MacGillis. If Bill Clinton were really playing on the Obama team, let alone the Democratic Party team, he would not have criticized the anti-Bain prop. The Democrats need to step up the populist tone of the campaign, to unite the voters hurt by the economic stagnation, or they will be undone by all the Republican wedge issues used to divide the Democratic electorate.
- amidut
June 4, 2012 at 9:11am
Bill Clinton does not depend on petrodollars like Jimmy Carter does. Hence Jimmy Carter practicing demonization of Israel.
- JAIMECHUCH
June 4, 2012 at 9:18am
On another subject. Hospitals reduce medical bills if you pay in cash. http://www.truecostofhealthcare.org/about_us
- JAIMECHUCH
June 4, 2012 at 9:22am
The hight of ignorance and hipocracy. The two Forbes richest persons Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim main business is to purchase cheap companies in distress, straightem them out making enormous profit. Mitt Romney and Bain are peanuts compared. And to Timothy Geitner and Bernanke don't bother them any. CNBC and the business communications machine loud Buffet and Slim as big heroes. As Dany de Vito says to Gregory Peck in that movie from not too long ago : "we make money from OPM, Others People Money" And big banks and investment companies make big money through speculation. And that is also OK for Timothy Geitner and Bernanke. And don't bother none to BHO. In the meantime 25 million are unemployed and 10 million homes are under foreclosure. And those are also big numbers, I am sorry to say. And a la Evita Peron : don't cry for me USA. People are not only infinite liars, they are infinite hypocrites.
- JAIMECHUCH
June 4, 2012 at 9:45am
I am disgusted with the double standard at work. The Obama campaign releases a mild ad that features a group of working class Americans describing their personal, lived experience at the hands of Bain capital and the press is up in arms over Obama's critique of capitalism. On the other side, virtually every Republican candidate for offices from dog catcher to the presidency falsely charges Obama with "engineering a government takeover of health care", running up the deficit with a torrent of new spending and sinking economic growth with an avalanche of new regulation and their only justification for making these claims is that they are broadly believed by a bunch of Fox News viewers. This recurring Republican dishonesty usually passes without comment by the press.
- aduncanson
June 4, 2012 at 10:00am
When has Clinton not been a self-serving prick? His life is bracketed by equivocation. And while he can be a powerful political ally in the fund-raising spectrum and ass-kissing required of by the old school D-machine, he does not hold the same political clout with young 20-something coeds as much as he does with the younger half of the boomer generation. While Clinton's critique is not out of the ordinary nor that far off the mark, as it relates to whether or not Romney was a hard working man (now that he's a self-unemployed professional campaigner) or that Americans, as a whole don't fault a person's success, they do fault what they perceive as an unfair system that overly favors the powerfully connected wealthy people. I think Clinton forgets that later part sometimes. Obama understands it. Obama understands that the quintessential American Dream is under threat of becoming purely existential. As this time, our country faces a critical time as to whether or not we move forward and the government continues to help to create a fair & equitable framework that everyone can prosper under and in their own way or go the way we've been heading towards the last 30 years (with a heaping dose of Clinton's help). That of a plutocracy. Maybe the pundits and journ-o-lists could do a bit more deeper reading and researching to understand the breach between Clinton and Obama before putting out the crap that they do about.
- singlspeed
June 4, 2012 at 11:48am
I'll go with self-interested prick; my estimation of Clinton has nosedived.
- Sophia
June 4, 2012 at 1:50pm
But, the press is arguably WORSE. Just this morning, watching CNN, which I shouldn't do because it raises my blood pressure, they presented the outside spending and general lying in Wisconsin as pretty much 50/50 and that simply isn't the case.
- Sophia
June 4, 2012 at 1:52pm
This is a pet peeve, but could we stop referring to Bill Clinton as the "only Democrat since FDR to win two terms"? This is technically true but more than a little misleading, as both Truman and LBJ won re-election to terms for which FDR and JFK were originally elected. Neither of them chose to run for re-election to what would have effectively been second-and-a-half terms. The context of referring to Clinton this way is that, unlike pretty much all 20th century Democratic Presidents except the titanic figure of FDR, Clinton knew how to win re-election, so we need to give him all available deference. This is bunk, as Clinton was only doing what Truman and LBJ were able to do before him. Clinton was only better than Jimmy Carter in this regard, so perhaps we ought to give Clinton sufficient deference from an electoral standpoint by comparison to one of the 20th century's least successful Presidents. And, lest we all forget, Clinton couldn't win more than a plurality of the popular vote in either of his elections -- so his sterling electoral record was even weaker than that of his Vice President when he ran for election in 2000.
- wildboy
June 4, 2012 at 4:22pm