Bill Clinton: 'Awful legacy of the past 8 years' comment was really about Republican obstruction

By now you've probably heard that Bill Clinton made a very strange statement yesterday - one that had people wondering if he's not once again doing the "frenemy" act with Obama or even with Hillary. How else to explain why he would make reference to "awful legacy of the past eight years"? My first reaction when I heard it was, oh, that's juicy, but the realist in me figures he had to mean something else. Oh sure, there's the reality of Bill Clinton that no one can ever really trust him - including Hillary, as if that needed to be said - but while you can't totally dismiss some motive to sabotage her, you'd typically expect him to be more smooth in how he does it.

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So today comes the clarification, which claims a more plausible meaning for the statement, but in and of itself makes no sense. First here's the original quote:

“I literally from the time I met her 45 years ago ‘til we talked yesterday, she is the best change-maker I have ever known. She always finds a way to make something good happen, to make people feel empowered, to buy people into the process, to make democracy work the way the framers intended for it to work. Now, if you don’t believe we can all grow together again, if you don’t believe we're ever going to grow again, if you believe it’s more important to re-litigate the past, there may be many reasons that you don’t want to support her. But if you believe we can all rise together, if you believe we’ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the seven years before that when we were practicing trickle-down economics and no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her because she’s the only person who basically had good ideas will tell you how she’s going to pay for them, can be commander in chief and is a proven change maker with republicans and democrats and independents alike.”

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Now comes a spokesman from Hillary's campaign who insists the "awful legacy" to which Bill referred was that of Republican obstructionism against Obama:

"When Republicans controlled the White House, their trickle-down approach drove our economy to the brink of a collapse. After President Obama was elected, Republicans made it their number one goal to block him at every turn," spokesman Angel Urena said in a statement. "That unprecedented obstruction these last eight years is their legacy, and the American people should reject it by electing Hillary Clinton to build on President Obama's success so we can all grow and succeed together."

To this, of course, Democrats would say, "Well of course, that's obviously what he meant." But there are some serious problems with the clarification. First, Republicans have not been in a position to obstruct Obama for eight years. They've only been in that position for five plus a few months. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate – and the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 – when Obama first took office. Republicans could do nothing to stop any Obama imperative at that time. This is exactly why we have ObamaCare, and why the budget-busting $862 billion “one-time” stimulus was passed (only to be added to the budget baseline for every year since).

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Attempted clarification clarifies nothing, and makes no sense

Republicans took the House in the 2010 mid-terms, which meant they took over in January 2011. They didn’t take the Senate until the 2014 mid-terms. So we haven’t had eight years of Republican obstructionism. Second: Why reference seven years of “trickle down” and not eight? Bush was president for eight years, after all, and he passed his first major tax cut in 2001 – his very first year in office. Maybe Clinton just got mixed up, but why talk about eight years of awfulness in reference to Obama, but only seven in reference to Bush? Finally, there’s this: If Republican obstructionism is the problem, why does he think electing Hillary will end it? You can say, well, he wants a Democrat Congress too. OK. But we had that in 2009-2010, and according to Bill, that was part of the awful eight years. Now the fact that Bill’s explanation makes no sense doesn’t necessarily prove he was engaged in sabotage. It might just mean he said something really stupid and there’s really no clarification that can make it seem less stupid. But I would offer this: I don’t think either Clinton really believes the Obama presidency has been a good time, if only because another Democrat has been the star of the show and they’ve been relegated to the periphery. Remember, politics for them is all about them, and always has been. That maybe the real Freudian slip that was at work here, which would explain why the attempted clarification clarifies nothing, and makes no sense.

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