The GOP Tries (and Fails) to Turn Bill Clinton’s Legacy into a Liability
Bill Clinton has joined Hillary on the campaign trail — and Republicans are revamping a strategy they have tried and failed to accomplish for the past 20 years: turning his legacy into a liability.
If that sounds like a bad political joke, it should. Bill Clinton’s legacy on job creation should be assailed by none and admired by every presidential candidate who hopes to do the same. He created 23 million jobs, oversaw the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in American history, left office with a 66 percent approval rating — and remains one of the most popular American political figures still living.
What better campaign surrogate is there?
And which most recent former president can the Republicans offer? George W. Bush, who crashed the economy (erasing the surplus Clinton left him) and led us into disastrous conflicts in the Middle East.
Of course, this is nothing new. When the Right doesn’t have a record to run on, they run on the politics of personal destruction. And Bill Clinton is one target that has eluded them.
The Right has been trying to take down Bill Clinton for 20 years. I know; I was there. Writing at the American Spectatorin the 1990s, we threw everything we thought would stick at President Clinton. I interviewed Arkansas state troopers, not knowing that they had been paid by right-wing operatives to spin tabloid yarns about the former governor.
No matter how hard we in the conservative movement tried to take down the Clintons, nothing worked. Nothing worked because the voters saw what we didn’t see at the time: both Bill and Hillary were doing the people’s work — and doing it well.
Sometimes, Occam’s razor holds true — the simplest answer is the right one. Maybe, just maybe, the Clintons were doing the people’s work all along. And despite Republicans’ misdirection about the record, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have served their country admirably.
It’s a record every one of the Republican candidates wishes they could be running on.
