Obama’s Lonely Campaign

Bill Clinton Defends Manager Romney and Strikes Democratic Strategy

In his time as a manager at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney did a “sterling” job of the highest quality and “I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work; this is good work.” To Barack Obama’s great shame, the person who spoke these sentences is not a roaring radio show conservative, a banker or a Republican politician, but – drum roll, please – none other than Bill Clinton. On CNN, the former president defended Romney’s career in the private sector, the same career that Obama strategists in Chicago had put in the meat grinder a few months ago, reducing it to a smelly political pulp. The sitting president’s argument is that Wall Street greed is original sin, so Romney is a candidate who has been branded for life. That’s how Romney has been represented in a number of ads and events that now stretches toward infinity.

The argument of his Democratic predecessor — a guy who has, historically, been attentive to the demands of finance – rings differently: Romney’s business is good stuff, “fair game,” and if we take the Democratic path of demonizing Bain and the like, we’ll end up hurting ourselves very badly. The mayor of Newark, Cory Booker and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts – both Democrats with ultra-Obama pedigrees – have delivered judgments in line with Clinton and remain opposed to the principles behind the Obama campaign. In a few seconds, Clinton liquefied not only a fraudulent representation of society (the good citizens against the Wall Street bad guys), but the glue of the entire electoral strategy.