Learning from Clinton

2012                                               Remembering Oklahoma City, and How Bill Clinton Saved His Presidency “ "Making Hay" Exactly 15 years ago yesterday, then-President Clinton was forced to declare at a press conference, "I'm relevant. The Constitution gives me relevance." Health-care reform was dead, and Hillary Clinton seemed discredited. Both houses of Congress had gone Republican, and the GOP was rolling out its legislative plans. The next morning, the Oklahoma City Federal Building exploded. Pundits would go on to write that it was the government shutdown later that year that allowed Clinton to trump the Republicans, but it was actually Oklahoma City that first allowed him to step forward as a national leader. As speechwriter Michael Waldman wrote in his book POTUS Speaks: "It was the nation's first exposure to Clinton as mourner in chief ... In fact, it was the first time Clinton had been a reassuring figure rather than an unsettling one." Even more than that, Oklahoma City created a huge political opportunity, which Clinton quickly seized. On April 27, a little more than a week after the bombing, Dick Morris, then a little-known but influential Clinton adviser, presented the President a fantastically naked political memo that, as you can find in his book Behind the Oval Office: Getting Reelected Against All Odds, said: "Permanent possible gain: sets up Extremist Issue vs. Republicans." Morris suggested using "extremism as issue against Republicans," not by "direct accusations," but via a "ricochet theory." [Full] With little or no understanding of America, or it's culture, Obama has since day one sought to tailor the successes of past presidents to suit the moment.  Be assured; this lesson has not gone unnoticed. ”