These are personal reflections, actually my visceral reactions to the political drama unfolding in this election. To me this election seems so 1992. I felt this when I saw the sheer burst of excitement that erupted within Republicans when Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate.
Elections to me are about what you feel rather than what you think. I remember how Democrats reacted to the selection of Al Gore by candidate Bill Clinton. I remember feeling that burst of positive energy myself. Clinton and Gore together, two smart Southern Governors, two New Democrats running to redirect the country back to a winning, optimistic vision. I remember the 1992 convention that was bathed in the aura of optimism and ended in Clinton’s promise “ I still believe in a place called Hope“.
In contrast, the Republican convention of 1992 offered no such hope, no such redirection of America’s energy. How could it? President Bush (41) was telling America the economy was good, the economy was improving. He appeared worn and faded in the face of Clinton-Gore optimism. No wonder the 1992 Republican convention focused its energies on attacking Candidate Clinton. That just reinforced the contrast between optimism and negativism.
Go back and read Candidate Clinton’s acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention. Read the key sentence in Clinton’s platform:
- “One sentence in the Platform we built says it all. The most important family policy, urban policy, labor policy, minority policy, and foreign policy America can have is an expanding entrepreneurial economy of high-wage, high-skilled jobs.” (emphasis ours).
Who is focusing on an “entrepreneurial economy” in 2012? The New Republicans or the 2008-focused Democrats?
Read what the 1992 Presidential Nominee Clinton said about Government:
- Tonight 10 million of our fellow Americans are out of work, tens of millions more work harder for lower pay. The incumbent President says that unemployment always goes up a little before a recovery begins, but unemployment only has to go up by one more person before a real recovery can begin. And Mr. President, you are that man.
- Our country is falling behind. The President is caught in the grip of a failed economic theory.
- So if you are sick and tired of a government that doesn’t work to create jobs, if you’re sick and tired of a tax system that’s stacked against you, if you’re sick and tired of exploding debt and reduced investments in our future, or if, like the great civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer, you’re just plain old sick and tired of being sick and tired , then join us, work with us, win with us, and we can make our country the country it was meant to be.
- He won’t streamline the federal government and change the way it works, cut 100,000 bureaucrats and put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of American cities, but I will.
- He’s never balanced a government budget, but I have 11 times.
- Our priorities must be clear; we will put our people first again. But priorities without a clear plan of action are just empty words. To turn our rhetoric into reality we’ve got to change the way government does business, fundamentally. Until we do, we’ll continue to pour billions of dollars down the drain.
The 1992 Clinton was describing the 1992 George Bush. How similar is the above to what we see today? Similar but far worse. From 10 million Americans out of work, we have regressed to 23 million Americans without work; from pouring billions of dollars down the drain, we have regressed to pouring trillions of dollars down the drain. This is the message that 2012 Nominee Romney delivered last week about the 2012 Barack Obama.
In 1992, Nominee Clinton called for a New Covenant:
- There is not a program in government for every problem, and if we want to use government to help people, we have got to make it work again.
- That’s why we need a new approach to government, a government that offers more empowerment and less entitlement. More choices for young people in the schools they attend- in the public schools they attend. And more choices for the elderly and for people with disabilities and the long-term care they receive. A government that is leaner, not meaner; a government that expands opportunity, not bureaucracy; a government that understands that jobs must come from growth in a vibrant and vital system of free enterprise.
- I call this approach the New Covenant.
Isn’t this what you hard from Romney-Ryan at the Republican Convention last week?
I heard a blond British reporter dismiss last week as the “mummies” convention on Sunday’s Chris Mathews Show. She is a favorite of Chris Mathews. I remember these two discussing the etiquette of curtseying to the British Queen on the Chris Mathews Show.
The 1992 Clinton didn’t say much about “mummies”. He did say a great deal about his mother in his 1992 acceptance speech:
- After that, my mother had to support us, so we lived with my grandparents while she went back to Louisiana to study nursing. I can still see her clearly tonight through the eyes of a three-year-old, kneeling at the railroad station and weeping as she put me back on the train to Arkansas with my grandmother.
- She endured that pain because she knew her sacrifice was the only way she could support me and give me a better life. My mother taught me. She taught me about family and hard work and sacrifice. She held steady through tragedy after tragedy, and she held our family – my brother and I – together through tough times.
- As a child, I watched her go off work each day at a time when it wasn’t always easy to be a working mother.
- As an adult, I watched her fight off breast cancer, and again she has taught me a lesson in courage. And always, always, always she taught me to fight.
- You want to know where I get my fighting spirit? It all started with my mother. Thank you, Mother. I love you.
Where did you hear this recently? At last week’s Republican Convention. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, they all shared with us the same profound admiration, the same deep love Bill Clinton expressed for
his mother in 1992. This is why last week’s Republican convention seemed to uphold the 1992 Clinton assertion:
- Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
The first time I felt the resemblance to the 1992 Clinton-Gore Democrats was when I saw the wave of joy sweep through Republican ranks at the selection of Paul Ryan. A that time, I was ridiculed by some friends who predicted that Democrats would rip Ryan apart.
Last week I heard CNN’s John King express the resemblance he saw between the Romney-Ryan pair and the Clinton-Gore pair of 1992. I heard Dick Morris compare the optimism he saw at the 2012 Romney-Ryan Republican convention with that of the 1992 Clinton-Gore Democratic convention.
John King and Dick Morris are smart intelligent analysts. I am a simple guy. I have learned to value how I feel rather than how I think. I felt the sheer burst of energy, the energizing injection of excitement that Republicans experienced at the Romney-Ryan convention. I felt that Mitt Romney was really proud, really happy about having Paul Ryan at his side in his campaign. I felt he was saying about Barack Obama what Bill Clinton said about the senior George Bush in 1992:
- He doesn’t have Al Gore, and I do.
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