Clinton painted a portrait of a suffering, broken America with a damaged reputation abroad. Particularly interesting was Clinton’s charge that under Bush, the nation had “refused to take the lead on global warming,” since Clinton himself had neglected to support the Kyoto Accord.
Clinton then charged Bush with ignoring China’s emergence as a formidable world power, and America’s potentially dangerous reliance on China and other foreign lenders for its economic well being. Of course, Clinton’s own hand in China’s resurgence has been conveniently forgotten, but during his administration, a so-called “Asian Connection” helped finance both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns and ultimately affected the nation’s China policies during his term in office. Documents declassified after Clinton left office show that he “personally approved the transfer to China of advanced space technology that can be used for nuclear combat.” (“In all likelihood we will be glowing in the dark before we discover the true extent of the Clinton decade of betrayal,” stated Rick Fisher, Asian Security Fellow at the Center for Security Policy.)
Eventually, Clinton got around to praising Obama, as well as Joe Biden, whose name came up with surprising frequency in the speech. He touted Obama as a peacemaker who wouldn’t go to war unless “absolutely necessary.” Clinton also praised John McCain as a great American patriot, but did it with – literally – his tongue in his cheek. After all this time, it’s a familiar Clinton gesture, one that invariably indicates he’s warming up for a sarcastic, negative, finger-pointing rant. Sure enough, he ticked off a litany of negative economic statistics intended to damn President Bush – who, Democrats have not yet understood, is not running again.
And then: he talked about himself some more.
