Says the comes down to convincing voters that no president could have done a better job than Obama — and dealing with high expectations set in 2008.
Image by Andrew Innerarity / Reuters
ORLANDO, Florida — Former President Bill Clinton continued on his crusade for President Barack Obama's reelection today in Orlando, criticizing the Republican party as uncompromising.
Noting that his Clinton Global Initiative brings leaders from all over the world and from all parties together to solve problems, Clinton said it's a different story with "the faction of the Republican party that now controls their nominating process and their political operations."
"Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower… Richard Nixon’s too liberal for these people. It’s amazing," he told a crowd of 2,000 in a packed hotel ballroom.
Clinton repeated his concern that the "whole election" comes down to dealing with the expectations of 2008 that Obama would turn the economy around, noting that Obama didn't cause the problem and hasn't shirked the responsibility either.
"I honestly believe, it doesn't matter who caused it or whether the contributing factors all happened under President Bush or something I did or something Ronald Reagan did 30 years ago," Clinton said. "Regardless, President Obama didn't cause it."
"But if [Obama] just kept telling us that and not done anything, we'd still have to replace him, because we hired him to take the job and you dont get to pick only the good and not the bad. So he took it on. Now what I want to say again and again and again, it is my opinion — as someone who beginning when I was a governor in 1979, has spent a lifetime tring to create jobs and help people start businesses and expand manufacturing and create opportunity for people and train and educate them to seize those opportunities. It is my opinion — no president, not Barack Obama, not Bill Clinton, not anybody who served before us, nobody whoever had this job could have repaired that much damage to this economy in just four years. that is not a thing. I believe that."
