The Master Returns – Clinton at the DNC
Say what you will about Bill Clinton. Love him, or hate him – the man’s got game.
The former President took center stage at the DNC, and while most speakers might have been thinking, “How on earth can I get up there and follow Elizabeth Warren,” Elizabeth Warren ended up thinking, “Wow. I got to be Bill Clinton’s warm-up act.”
It was clear from the first moments, that Clinton hasn’t lost a step. It was like watching a whale set free in the ocean. He was in his element, and all pistons were firing. He stood on the podium, and owned the room.
I saw him speak live at Netroots Nation a few years ago, and remarked to someone about what an incredible presence he was. “The way he talked to everyone in the room in a personal way?” they asked. I had to explain to them that actually, I was the only person IN the room. That’s how it felt, anyway. The sense of personal connection, the shrinking of the surroundings, the fading away of external stimuli – until one person is addressing one other. It was almost surreal. The only other person with whom I’ve noticed that ability, believe it or not, is Sarah Palin. She’s no Bill, don’t get me wrong, but the ability to speak to people in that way is truly a gift, and one that doesn’t often appear in politics. Narcissists both? Perhaps. But one has little or no intellectual curiosity and chose to be a divisive talking head on Fox News, and the other has used power and prestige to start a foundation that helps people.
Clinton is one of the ver few who can get up in front of a crowd and talk about policy, instead of stringing sound bites like beads on a PR necklace. And he’s passionate about policy – he loves it, and he knows you will too. He actually treats people like they can understand, and like they want to understand, and for the most part, I think they do. And even those whose heads he’s talking over leave him with a sense of good will, because he treated them like they were smart enough to get it. He is a teacher at heart, and a good one – a teacher who doesn’t hit the class with cheer lines, or powerful poll-tested sound bites. He overtakes them, point by point, person to person, layer by layer, eye to eye, like a storm surge. Forty eight minutes later, the crowd was still rapt. A few on Twitter noted that he was going long. Yes, he was. Clinton went off script as a matter of routine, then back on, then off, in a seamless dance of critical information and spontaneity – brilliant diplomat, and down-home Arkansan.
He talked about the importance of bipartisanship, and if you doubt the man’s magic, know that he even got applause for both President Bushes from a room full of Democratic delegates.
He also addressed the Republicans’ attacks against Obama, one by one. This is what they say. This is the background. This is the policy. This is the reality. This is what they are trying to make you believe. It’s not true. Remember this. Over and over, like a prize fighter facing a long line of glass-jawed, wobbly-kneed challengers with knock-out punch after knock-out punch. “As another president once said, ‘There they go again,” Clinton quipped, quoting Ronald Reagan in a display of linguistic martial art that uses the opponents assault against him.
He talked about Paul Ryan, and the accusations that Obama’s Affordable Health Care act will gut Medicare. Ryan got taken to Clinton’s woodshed, and it’s a hell of a wood shed.
“First, Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing medicare of $716 billion. But it is not true…
“Here’s what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the President did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren’t making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It’s now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare, they strengthened Medicare.
“When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play,” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Key cuts that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of medicare savings that he had in his own budget. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.”
Brit Hume speculated that most people had tuned out because the speech went too long. “There’s only one person who can stop him,” came a comment from the Twitterverse (referring to Hillary), “and she’s in Asia.” And maybe some had tuned out. But for those many who stayed, that criticism was like saying that Clinton was giving too much cool water to that dehydrated guy crawling through the desert on his belly. Policy, numbers, someone who likes making people understand, a teacher, a Democrat with statistics, experience, and a mission. He was on no one’s timeline, and would leave when HE was ready. I’ll have a refill please.
As Clinton wrapped it up, in his own time, he headed off the stage met by a hug from President Obama – the man who ran against his wife in the primary just four years ago. Those in the room were rapt until the last word. I watched the faces, with eyes glued and ears open. I’d been there, and I knew how they felt. Clinton was certainly (at least in the room) preaching to the choir. But that choir left the room pumped up and ready to go evangelize and proselytize, and knock on doors – which, after all, is exactly what needed to happen.
Here is the full text of his speech as prepared, but to get the full content, you’ll want to watch the video above. It’s worth your time.
Remarks as prepared by President Bill Clinton
I want Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States and I proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.
In Tampa, we heard a lot of talk about how the President and the Democrats don’t believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we want everyone to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for the economy.
The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic Chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain’t so.
We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think “we’re all in this together” is a better philosophy than “you’re on your own.”
Who’s right? Well since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What’s the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million!
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.
Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats. After all, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High and built the interstate highway system. And as governor, I worked with President Reagan on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we’ve done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.
Through my foundation, in America and around the world, I work with Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are focused on solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other.
When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody’s right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. All of us are destined to live our lives between those two extremes. Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn’t see it that way. They think government is the enemy, and compromise is weakness.
One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican Secretaries of Defense, the Army and Transportation. He appointed a Vice President who ran against him in 2008, and trusted him to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden did a great job with both. He appointed Cabinet members who supported Hillary in the primaries. Heck, he even appointed Hillary! I’m so proud of her and grateful to our entire national security team for all they’ve done to make us safer and stronger and to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I’m also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country in the military and to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for supporting military families when their loved ones are overseas and for helping our veterans, when they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with education, housing, and jobs.
President Obama’s record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.
He also tried to work with Congressional Republicans on Health Care, debt reduction, and jobs, but that didn’t work out so well. Probably because, as the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America back to work, but to put President Obama out of work.
Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we’re going to keep President Obama on the job!
In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President’s re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.
In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they couldn’t say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years. You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high income Americans even more than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase defense spending two trillion dollars more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they’ll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor kids. As another President once said – there they go again.
I like the argument for President Obama’s re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.
Are we where we want to be? No. Is the President satisfied? No. Are we better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall, losing 750,000 jobs a month. The answer is YES.
I understand the challenge we face. I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don’t feel it.
I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn’t feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history.
President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No President – not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you’ll renew the President’s contract you will feel it.
I believe that with all my heart.
President Obama’s approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.
So back to the story. In 2010, as the President’s recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around.
The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95% of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the President’s jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here’s another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, Congressional Republicans zero.
Over that same period, more than more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama – the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.
The auto industry restructuring worked. It saved more than a million jobs, not just at GM, Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country. That’s why even auto-makers that weren’t part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the suppliers too. Like I said, we’re all in this together.
Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured. Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here’s another jobs score: Obama two hundred and fifty thousand, Romney, zero.
The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is another good deal: it will cut your gas bill in half, make us more energy independent, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs.
President Obama’s “all of the above” energy plan is helping too – the boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near 20 year low and natural gas production to an all time high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.
We do need more new jobs, lots of them, but there are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the applicants don’t have the required skills. We have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are being created in a world fueled by new technology. That’s why investments in our people are more important than ever. The President has supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open jobs in their communities. And, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that we’ve fallen to 16th in the world in the percentage of our young adults with college degrees, his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, gives students the right to repay the loans as a fixed percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. That means no one will have to drop-out of college for fear they can’t repay their debt, and no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a small town doctor because it doesn’t pay enough to make the debt payments. This will change the future for young Americans.
I know we’re better off because President Obama made these decisions.
That brings me to health care.
The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it’s a government takeover of health care that they’ll repeal. Are they right? Let’s look at what’s happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80% to 85% of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits or promotion. Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the requirement. More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast cancer screenings and tests for heart problems. Soon the insurance companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions. And for the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4%, for the first time in 50 years.
So are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed it? You bet we are.
There were two other attacks on the President in Tampa that deserve an answer. Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing Medicare of 716 billion dollars. Here’s what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the President did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren’t making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It’s now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare, they strengthened it.
When Congressman Ryan looked into the TV camera and attacked President Obama’s “biggest coldest power play” in raiding Medicare, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. You see, that 716 billion dollars is exactly the same amount of Medicare savings Congressman Ryan had in his own budget.
At least on this one, Governor Romney’s been consistent. He wants to repeal the savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and reduce the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. So now if he’s elected and does what he promised Medicare will go broke by 2016. If that happens, you won’t have to wait until their voucher program to begins in 2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it.
But it gets worse. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but that’s not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Downs syndrome or Autism. I don’t know how those families are going to deal with it. We can’t let it happen
Now let’s look at the Republican charge that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work.
Here’s what happened. When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20%. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform’s work requirement is just not true. But they keep running ads on it. As their campaign pollster said “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” Now that is true. I couldn’t have said it better myself – I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.
Let’s talk about the debt. We have to deal with it or it will deal with us. President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction over a decade, with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every one dollar of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It’s the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.
I think the President’s plan is better than the Romney plan, because the Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don’t add up.
It’s supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with five trillion dollars in tax cuts over a ten-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. They say they’ll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When you ask “which loopholes and how much?,” they say “See me after the election on that.”
People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets. What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a 5 trillion dollar tax cut in a debt reduction plan – the – arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen: 1) they’ll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up two thousand dollars year while people making over 3 million dollars a year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut; or 2) they’ll have to cut so much spending that they’ll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they’ll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical research; or 3) they’ll do what they’ve been doing for thirty plus years now – cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can’t afford to double-down on trickle-down.
President Obama’s plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for our children, our families and our nation.
My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you’re on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities – a “we’re all in it together” society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every American to vote and you think its wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.
I love our country – and I know we’re coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we’ve always come out stronger than we went in. And we will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor – to form a more perfect union.
If that’s what you believe, if that’s what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama.
God Bless You – God Bless America.
I neither love nor hate Mr Clinton but I appreciate him beyond measure because “Clinton is one of the ver few who can get up in front of a crowd and talk about policy, instead of stringing sound bites like beads on a PR necklace.”
I disagree with him on many policies he favors but appreciate that he is explicit , well spoken, and grounds it all in a coherent philosophy.
I watched the whole speech .
Well done.
Very well done.
Patsy Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act was renamed by President George W. Bush on 29 October 2002 to become the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Pres. Clinton came to Hawaii after her death in 2002 to honor her. When he came to our island, I pulled my son out of school to stand in line with hopes we’d make it inside the hall for the tribute. Kind people in front of us pulled my son from the back of the room to the front, where he waited quietly, reading a book I’d given him, knowing there was a long, boring wait before Clinton appeared.
I made it inside too, but further back.
The quiet boy with the book was noticed by local politicians. When Clinton arrived, my son was taken inside the corded off area to sit on the floor under the podium – just a few feet away from Clinton. He was blown away. A heckler started screaming at Clinton, who calmly responded by inviting free speech and telling people not to boo. That made a huge, life changing impression on a boy who was often bullied for his serious ways.
When the memorial ended, son shook hands with him. Whatever you may think about Clinton, he is charismatic. Even in the dark, it’s like a spotlight is on him and he is speaking with you.
As we drove away, I saw people lining the street to the airport to thank him for recognizing the rights of native Hawaiians. And for one young boy, life changed. He wasn’t scared of taunts any more. He had a new vision of what was possible.
This made me laugh, too.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/09/god-in-the-platform.html
He hasn’t lost his touch. Great speech.
He’s simply the best public speaker in America today. If you want to compare his prepared speech with his actual word, Ruby Cramer at BuzzFeed has a nice markup:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/inside-bill-clintons-epic-democratic-convention-s
The ad-lib comments are simply brilliant.
/WC
Thanks for posting that, Wickersham’s Conscience. Great.
Once again, a terrific review of an excellent tutorial from the former President. So lyrical: “like a prize fighter facing a long line of glass-jawed, wobbly-kneed challengers” or “…talk about policy, instead of stringing sound bites like beads on a PR necklace.” Then, your great lead: “…It was like watching a whale set free in the ocean.”
It is absolutely true that the simplistic lies of the GOP need clear rebuttal. Clinton did deliver. n
Clinton reminds us of the past along with all those errors of deregulation banks, sanctioning Iraq when there were no WMDs or nuclear weapon grade plants. Mr WTO with his NAFTA and free trade deals that ship our plants and jobs to the third world. He has to much baggage and Obama promised to be smarter but once elected appointed the same Clinton people that ruined the economy.
Elizabeth Warren should have been the key speaker. She tells us” the game is rigged”. She might be able to attract the independents. Bill can not do that. He can not undo his triangulation and of turning the Democratic party into just another corporate party. This bothered Ted Kennedy as it does most real liberals and progressives.
We want real health care reform. Universal single payer health care and that stupid war to end. We want to address solution to Global Warming that James Hansen tells us is game over for the planet in 2020, if we don’t immediately change course.
I agree that Bill Clinton had his issues during his Presidency, including, I’d add, his hesitancy in Bosnia. I also agree that Elizabeth Warren is one of the most intelligent and refreshingly candid politicians out there. However, Clinton’s address was vitally important for several reasons. First, as the last Democratic President, he has an elder statesman role. Having him speak provides a glaring contrast to the Republicans’ silly efforts to ignore George Bush’s disastrous failures. Second, Clinton can and will bring in voters. His favorability ratings according to recent polls is nudging 70%, considerably higher than President Obama’s or Elizabeth Warren’s (or even his own ratings during his presidency.) Third, as Mudflats said, you don’t have to like Clinton to admit that he is an outstanding public speaker whose communications skills were sorely needed as Democrats seemed to fumble almost apologetically with the Republicans’ repeated questions about whether we are better off than than we were four years ago.
Who tuned out because the speech went long? Not me, I turned off the stove and went to sit on the couch in front of the TV. Not only did he have the audience, he had the facts, the fact checkers already have said “Bill had it right”. One announcer (don’t know which one) after he and President Obama left the stage, said that Clinton made the point in ways that the Obama campaign has not been able to.
He’s a master and glad he’s on President Obama’s side. We need him (both of them).
All of us together.
Hey- I saw a photo of the AK Democrat’s vest on Rachel Maddow’s blog!
While I know the GOP will keep lying, Clinton’s speech was a wonderful clarification. I’m sure we’ll see clips through election day.