Democrats stuck with Bill Clinton through thick and thin amid all of the scandals during his administration, even after he became the second president in history to get impeached.
Now the only president from their party who was elected twice since FDR is finding his star tarnished a bit among some media liberals because he dared to compliment Mitt Romney’s “sterling” record at Bain Capital during an appearance on CNN last week.
The Obama campaign had been running ads accusing Romney and Bain Capital of engaging in ‘vampire’ tactics with a steel company they closed in the 1990s and for profiting from it.
The campaign has since backed down from that line of attack amid criticism from moderate Democrats.
“Obama does not need Clinton undercutting him. The two are not close, but they are not supposed to be enemies. They have golfed together, they attend fundraisers together, their staffs talk and, oh, yeah, Clinton’s wife is Obama’s secretary of state,” opines Politico columnist Roger Simon in a piece titled “Bill Clinton is out of control”. “The Obama campaign wants to use Bill the same way. Raise money, tone it down and chill out.”
The former president unlike Obama has always had a closer relationship with Wall Street and the business community unlike the current incumbent.
Clinton compromised with congressional Republicans to balance the budget and cut capital gains taxes, which contributed to the stock market and overall economic boom of the late 1990s.
The former president’s outspokenness about Bain Capital has Dick Morris, the man whose triangulation strategy helped Clinton bounce back from a lackluster first term to win re-election in 1996, speculating that Clinton doesn’t want Obama to win.
Morris said during an appearance on Fox News that he has been told by insiders that Clinton plans to half-heartedly campaign for Obama.
“He never liked Obama; they never got along,” Morris said. “He’s an in-law in a sense because he’s in the administration, and he has to do what he has to do … but when it comes to a little jab here and a little jab there you can count on Bill Clinton to do it.
The campaign strategist described Clinton’s comments on Bain Capital as amounting to “throwing Obama under the bus.”
