Posted on 08/25/2002 1:57:43 PM PDT by weegee
GOP's escalating political game plan: Blame Bill Clinton
WASHINGTON -- Blame everything on Bill Clinton.
That's the long pass Republicans are throwing as the clock ticks toward the midterm congressional elections influenced by the sagging economy and corporate accounting scandals.
"There's no question our economy has been challenged by a recession that was beginning when we took office," President Bush told his Texas economic forum earlier this month. He repeated the message as he took to the road to campaign for Republicans.
The recession rhetoric headlines the White House's new public relations offensive on the economy. Many Republicans on November ballots also are seeking to implicate Clinton in the business scandals, suggesting lax oversight and a permissive attitude during his White House years. "Clearly, the actions by these corporate executives was a result of the go-go Clinton years," said GOP consultant Scott Reed.
Reed said the issue can be a winning one for Republicans. "The candidates have now been home for a couple weeks and are getting a real front-line experience on what the voters care about," Reed said.
Bush himself does not go quite so far in blaming Clinton and his aides for corporate fraud. But Bush has cited a national hangover from "the economic binge" of the late 1990s and has claimed that his chairman at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, "was put in place to clean up a mess."
"After some scandals had been in the making for a while, they bubbled to the surface," Bush said at Mount Rushmore.
Top Republicans are attacking Clinton's Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin. They assert that Rubin, as a Citicorp director, tried to trade on his Washington connections in seeking to avert Enron's bankruptcy filing. Citigroup is its biggest creditor.
Democrats scoff -- and note that the Clinton years saw the largest economic expansion of the post-World War II period.
"All I know is 18 months ago we had a surplus," says Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
While Bush's team blames former President Clinton for the economic mess, the Clintons are taking credit for Bush's successes.
"The military he inherited performed admirably in Afghanistan, and many of the techniques used in Kosovo worked well in Afghanistan," the senator said. Has Bush been a good commander in chief? "That's for others to judge," she said.
Blaming your predecessor is hardly novel. Presidents often claim credit for the good times -- and try to shift responsibility for the hard times.
Ronald Reagan blamed President Carter for the weak economy of 1980, when interest rates topped 15 percent and inflation approached 13 percent. Carter leveled similar criticism four years earlier, complaining of inheriting from President Ford a then-historic budget deficit and 7.8 percent unemployment.
Works for me.
Amazing non-mention of the constant Clinton mantra of the greed and misdeeds of the 12 years of Reagan-Bush. For this reporter to fail to mention this is clear proof of editorializing. I'm sure this reporter was reporting on this in the first years of the Clinton Administration, right? Either that or else he was soiling his diapers like he is now!
Whereupon he led us directly into the 'Decade of Fraud & Deceit'...
Carter DID have a bad economy. Reagan was not in office in 1980, he was sworn in January 1981.
At the end of Bush's term, we were in recovery from a recession (after Reagan's term). The 'Rats disputed the figures and claimed that Bush was cooking the books. They claimed "Worst economy in 50 years". Then in the spring of 1993 (when Clinton was in office) they did a turn around and said that the economy didn't look so bad after all. Hindsight shows that the recovery was well underway before Clinton came to office. Never had heard the policy that he claimed that improved the economy. What? Raising taxes?
Then in 2000, when Gov. Bush was running for President, he said that it looked like we were on the verge of a recession. The 'Rats cried out how Bush was ruining the economy with such talk. The damage was already done and it wasn't by Bush. The corporate scandals had run unchecked for too long (many companies were writing down losses).
The only administration to deny the state of the economy appears to be Clinton's. "Everything that should be up is down and everything that should be down is up!" - quoth the Junior politician Never Gore...
September 11, 2000
Web posted at: 10:30 AM EDT (1430 GMT)
By Tom Raum/Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- As George W. Bush gives his campaign a facelift to try to halt his slide in the polls, there's one thing he hasn't changed: any of the faces.
Well, at least she's honest enough to admit she doesn't know very much...
Sure, why not, he's guilty as sin!
Why not? He blamed everything on the Republicans.
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