And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.

A decade is of course a period of ten years, so that decades would refer to twenty or more years. Now, perhaps President Obama was allowing that problems had continued to build-up during his term, though it would seem more likely that he meant to refer to twenty or more years before he took office; but, in any case, he must have been referring to a period that began no later than 1992.

I'm not seen the main-stream of the media nor the right-wing alternative take note of the implication here. President Obama has once again given part of the blame for the present economic situation to the 1993–2001 Administration of President Clinton.

During the 2008 campaign, I noted

There had been a sort of forced nostalgia for Bill Clinton, but once Obama came over the horizon, Democrats became more willing to look critically at Clinton and at his Presidency;

The base of the Democratic Party were imagining Barack Obama as a leader who would show, after all, that Clinton had been mistaken to declare The era of big government is over, that instead a considerably more humane nation and world could be shaped by extending still further the sort of management by the state of economic resources which had characterized the New Deal and the Great Society. As a candidate, Mr Obama had even at one point gone so far as to assert that some of the foundations of economic problems in 2008 had been laid by the Clinton Administration (though Mr Obama quickly retreated from that claim in the face of outrage from the Clinton camp).

But as the economic crisis continued through the Administration of President Obama, there has been a return to that forced nostalgia, noting of course that President Clinton were a Democrat, and not paying a great deal of attention to what had determined his policies.

(Mr Clinton ran as a New Democrat — one with a more skeptical eye towards state intervention. But, once elected, he tacked to the left. One of the political results was that the Democratic Party lost control of Congress in the next mid-term elections. It was after these losses that President Clinton gave the speech in which he declared the death of big government. For the most part, he thereäfter chose his policies by discerning where things were going, and running out in front, pretending thus to lead. One notable exception to this approach was in his support for adjustive discrimination (affirmative action), which appears to be something to which he had a genuine commitment.)

For his part, Former President Clinton has been glad to be called for help. William Jefferson Clinton enjoys the game of politics. He enjoys playing the game. He enjoys demonstrating, to those who can see what he does for what it is, how good he is at it. He very much enjoys coming to the rescue of Barack Obama, as proof that Mr Clinton is better at this game than is Mr Obama. Mr Clinton has not forgot that the Obama campaign and its allies treated the Clintons as, well, Republicans during the 2008 race; that Mr Obama took the nomination from Hillary Clinton; nor that episode of laying some of the blame for the economic crisis on Mr Clinton's door-step.

Mr Obama recognizes this motivation, and would resent his dependence upon Mr Clinton's greater present popularity even were Mr Clinton not seeking to rub Mr Obama's nose in it. And, while part of his reference to challenges that have built up over decades was simply because challenges that have built up over the previous eight years doesn't sound nearly so persuasive, there was a deliberate slap at Mr Clinton there. Mr Obama had already got a speech out of Mr Clinton, who would be unlikely to try, somehow, to take it back. And it wasn't Mr Clinton's best effort anyway.

On the other hand, as the Woman of Interest noted when I was talking about this slap, Mr Clinton may be many things, but he is not too stupid to see that what Mr Obama did. So it's not likely that there will be much more help from Mr Clinton, without some sort of profound obeisance from Mr Obama. Barack Hussein Obama may come to regret his act of petulence.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clinton, Obama, William Jefferson Clinton

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