Bill Clinton ruined this essay.

The former president took the stage Wednesday, September 5th, 2012, and made virtually every point for me, rebuking every Republican political charge against President Barak Obama in a rousing, nearly hour-long sermon that electrified not only the audience but America. The president’s numbers took a slight bump and then crept steadily upward in the days following, as the Clinton speech finally answered some of the GOP’s most salient and effective charges against the president and did so in a crisp, economical and folksy language the average Joe could understand. Clinton was clearly speaking directly to White America, but Black America, considerably less energized than in 2008, was obviously listening in. While the president is certainly not all the way home yet in this historic presidential contest, the energy is finally moving in the right direction as much of America’s fears and concerns regarding this president were finally addressed in a reasonable way by the previous Democratic president. Obama gave Clinton a bear hug after the speech, something the often aloof Chicagoan isn’t known for. IO took that hug to mean what was obvious to anyone watching: Bill Clinton had just saved the election for Barack Obama. Since then, the Obama campaign has been running The Bill Clinton play, re-forming, refining, and reiterating the former president’s rebuttal points, which were not only accurate but entertaining. Prior to this game-changing moment, the Obama campaign seemed lethargic, unenthused, plodding and lost in the weeds. President Clinton has rewritten the script for the campaign and, unfortunately, pulled the rug from beneath this essay, which might have been much more interesting had not the former president beat me to the punch.

At the risk of simply reiterating Clinton’s speech, I’ve chosen to press on with at least ten things the president, for reasons known only to the campaign, is not saying.

1.  Are we better off than we were four years ago?
Unquestionably. Four years ago the economy was in free-fall, losing not a few thousand or even ten thousand jobs every month, but losing three-quarters of a million jobs every single month. Current jobs reports are dull and sluggish not because of anything Obama did or didn’t do but because of Republican obstructionism blocked every imitative the president put forth. Big business, which is doing very well, is sitting on trillions (yes, with a "T") waiting for the election to provide some clue as to which way things are heading, something they wouldn’t necessarily be doing is there wasn’t so much childish nonsense going on in Washington, most of which is initiated and maintained by Republicans.

First of all, nobody could live up to the 2008 hype. Nobody. The sheer electricity of a historic precedent, a barrier broken by a woman or a black man becoming the first major political party nominee of either for president of the United States, fueled a global wave of euphoric suspense, the entire planet watching this election and betting on the underdog. We all love underdogs, and Barack Obama of Illinois was perhaps the longest shot of all. While Hillary Clinton reassured us with her years of experience, steadfastness and determination, Barack Obama promised us salvation. His campaign positioned him as, literally, The Messiah, the radical antithesis of the sitting president, George W. Bush, who was regarded, worldwide, as incompetent and an embarrassment to the stature of the United States of America. Clinton positioned herself as Bush’s successor. Obama positioned himself as the Second Coming: goodness, righteousness, but, most of all, reason, intelligence, and an unshakable cool that made his friends and foes alike curious about what he’d actually do if elected. What few of us were prepared for were the side-effects of his coolness: a kind of aloof disconnect which inhibited many personal relationships with the people in Washington who matter. Another thing we (at least I) did not factor in strongly enough: racism.

The Naive President: After dragging their feet and haggling for months and forcing the president
to water down The 2009 Stimulus Bill with tax cuts and other useless claptrap, every Republican
voted against it. Then took the money anyway, took credit for it, and won reelection in 2010.
Click to play video.

2.  Fixing America’s economic problem in a single term was not possible.
America’s economic crisis was far worse than we told you. It would have been impossible to publicly state the full depth of the crisis without triggering a global economic collapse.

Don’t mention Bush: trust the voters to draw that inference on their own. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office nearly two full terms before American even began to recover from the damage Herbert Hoover did to the U.S. economy, which included the same protectionist policies and “America First” rhetoric we hear from the conservative right today. Hoover’s policies triggered The Great Depression, the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the 20th century. Until now. Admitting, even secretly, that America was on the brink of a second Great Depression would have triggered a global panic which would have made that statement a reality.

The irrational and unreasonable hatred conservatives have for the president, which made Congress, aggressively taken over by irrational and unreasonable people hell-bent on nothing else but defeating the president politically, an impossible jigsaw. While I’m certain the newly sworn-in president anticipated some Republican resistance, I doubt even he anticipated hatred. Hatred so irrational and so personal that these political conservatives have literally infected the entire nation by not setting the example for what we could or should be but by, instead, validating and giving voice to superstition and fear. Racism and bigotry are alive and well in this country, with our elected officials leading the way. It is terribly alarming to see racism so intense that these transparently racist and provably evil men and women will go to puzzling and irrational extremes—hurting their own constituents—in an effort to harm the president. This irrationality goes well beyond politics, well beyond ideology. Every rational, thinking person knows exactly what this is, but precious few are willing to say out loud because they know they’ll be attacked merely for stating the obvious: Barak Obama Is A Black Man And They Hate Him.

3.  Obamacare steals $700 billion from Medicare.
The Affordable Care Act removes $700 billion of waste and over-payments and financial mismanagement from Medicare. Waste and mismanagement the Romney campaign vows to put back.

I haven’t been effective enough in helping the American public understand why health care reform is so important. A huge part of America’s economic challenge is out-of-control health care costs which devastate millions of American lives every single year. This wasn’t some pet project or side issue. Health care reform is vital to America’s economic recovery and stability. And, despite what Republicans are telling you, the Affordable Care Act represents a major boon to the economy as it will bring insurance companies tens of millions of new customers, which will, in turn, drive medical insurance rates down to an affordable point for all Americans while infusing the economy with hundreds of billions of dollars. The main reason Republicans so openly oppose health care reform—which is based on a plan created by their own presidential candidate—is political. Republicans would rather win political power than to actually help anybody or fix the economy.

In Washington, it’s been far worse than gridlock. Congressional gridlock would be a welcome relief from what’s actually been going on, a kind of ten-year old’s playground sandbox fight. The level of utter childishness going on in Washington since President Obama’s swearing—childishness which began with what I am convinced was Chief Justice John Roberts’ deliberate flubbing of the Presidential Oath of Office—another in a long line of historic firsts of disrespect shown this president by public figures—has been nothing short of breathtaking. The only thing that tops this sad stain on our nation’s history is the disaffection of idiots: the president losing the enthusiasm and support of young voters and independents disappointed that the Magic promised us in ’08 did not become reality. It astounds me that rational, thinking people can actually blame a president confronted by the unified, shoulder-to-shoulder hatred of a political party who filibustered every bill in Congress and blocked everything the president ever tried to do. And we’re upset with him, we feel ripped off because he’s not The Messiah after all. It’s as if we all slept through high school Social Studies class and don’t know how a bill becomes a law. It’s so insane that we have to be told: The President Is Not A King. He can’t do anything he pleases just because he’s the president. Blaming Obama—who earnestly attempted to do everything he promised he would during the ’08 campaign—for those things not having become a reality, is the currency of fools. The best we can hope for, from any political figure, is an honest try. Barack Obama gave that and more.  CONTINUED