Former President Bill Clinton Gives A Superb Speech Supporting President Obama

bill clinton
Author

Associated Press

Release Date

Thursday, September 6, 2012

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In an impassioned speech that rocked the Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton proclaimed Wednesday night, "I know we're coming back" from the worst economic mess in generations and appealed to hard-pressed Americans to stick with Barack Obama for a second term in the White House.

Obama strode onstage as Clinton wound up his speech, and the former president bowed. Obama pulled him into an embrace as thousands of delegates jammed into the convention hall roared their approval.

Conceding that many struggling in a slow-recovery economy don't yet feel improvement, Clinton said circumstances are indeed getting better, "and if you'll renew the president's contract, you will feel it."

To cheers, he said of Obama, "I want to nominate a man who is cool on the outside but who burns for America on the inside."

The race for the White House is a close one between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, and the president's campaign hoped Clinton's speech would prove especially persuasive in an era of sluggish economic growth and 8.3% unemployment.

The speech was deemed so important that convention planners delayed Obama's formal nomination to a second term until Clinton had finished speaking. The familiar roll call of the states began well after television prime time in the eastern part of the country, with Obama's nomination announced just past midnight.

The speech was vintage Clinton, overlong for sure, insults delivered with a folksy grin, references to his own time in office and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, all designed to improve Obama's shaky re-election prospects.

The convention hall rocked with delegates' applause and cheers as the former president strode onstage to sounds of "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," his 1992 campaign theme song.

He sought to rebut every major criticism Republicans leveled against the president at their own convention last week in Tampa, and said that in fact, since 1961, far more jobs have been created under Democratic presidents than when Republicans sat in the White House, by a margin of 42 million to 24 million.

Clinton accused Republicans of proposing "the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place" and led to a near financial meltdown. Those, he said, include efforts to provide "tax cuts for higher-income Americans, more money for defense than the Pentagon wants and ... deep cuts on programs that help the middle class and poor children."

"As another president once said, 'There they go again,' " he said, quoting Ronald Reagan, who often uttered the remark as a rebuke to Democrats.

There was another reference to Reagan, whom Democrats routinely accused of advocating "trickle down economics" that favored the rich.

"We simply cannot afford to turn the reins of government over to someone who will double down on trickle-down," Clinton said.

Clinton shared prime time with Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for a Republican-held Senate seat in Romney's state of Massachusetts. For many years, "our middle class has been chipped, squeezed and hammered," she said.

Sandra Fluke, a law student whom congressional Republicans would not let testify at a hearing on contraceptives, said if Republicans win in the fall, women will wake up to "an America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it, in which politicians redefine rape."

Photo Credit To NPR

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