Leave it to master communicator Bill Clinton to hatch a winning theme for President Obama’s reelection campaign: Cheer up, everybody, Obama’s economic policies are working their magic faster than anyone thought possible.
“Somebody will say to you, maybe, but I don’t feel better,” says Clinton. “And you say, look, the man’s not Houdini; all he can do is beat the clock. He’s beating the clock.”
At a Sunday night fundraiser for Obama at likely Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s McLean, Va. home, Clinton argued that economic come backs normally take much longer–up to 10 years–but that the Obama recovery is happening now, less than four years after the nation’s economy hit rock bottom.
“If you go back 500 years, whenever a country’s financial system collapses, it takes between 5 and 10 years to get back to full employment. If you go back for the last 200 years, when buildings had been widely owned by individuals and companies, if there’s a mortgage collapse it almost always takes 10 years. He’s beating the clock, not behind it. Don’t listen to those Republicans. We are beating the clock,” said Clinton.
In fact, Clinton said that if Obama wasn’t handed a bad economy and was able to institute his hope and change agenda, “we’d be roaring.”
And as for Obama’s likely presidential campaign opponent, Clinton warned that Mitt Romney’s policies would wreck what Obama has done, sending the economy into a tailspin. “I mean, this is crazy. He’s got an opponent who basically wants to do what they did before, on steroids, which will get you the same consequences you got before, on steroids,” said Clinton.
