Hot Tub Time Machine

Whom the Gods Destroy, they do so via the Wayback Machine. Hey, Bill Clinton in September of 2010, what advice would you give to voters today?

President Obama’s campaign speech on the economy today will be delivered in the same spot where Bill Clinton delivered a 2010 campaign speech Obama might just as soon forget.

In September 2010, Clinton told his Cuyahoga Community College audience in Cleveland that Democrats deserved two more years to fix the nation’s economy.

“The Democrats are saying something like this: ‘We found a big hole that we did not dig. We didn’t get it filled in 21 months, but at least we quit digging,’” Clinton said at the time. “‘Give us two more years. If it doesn’t work, vote us out.’”

Sounds good to me; I’m sure Mitt Romney and John Boehner, who appears in a new video pre-butting the president’s “jobs” “speech” today with a stack of bills, would agree:

With President Barack Obama set to take his message on the economy to John Boehner’s backyard, the Republican House Speaker landed a preemptive blow Thursday with a video blaming Senate Democrats for a congressional logjam that has stalled bills meant to create jobs.

In the video, the Ohio lawmaker points to documents covering his desk, identifying them as House-passed legislation now blocked by the Democratic-held Senate.

“This isn’t just our work — it’s your work in progress,” Boehner says.

“You see, we’re going to keep adding to this pile, and we’re going to keep calling on President Obama and Democrats in the Senate to give these jobs bills a vote,” he says.

As an Instareader quipped, “Ha! Clinton is so smart he was able to screw Obama two years before Obama even realized it.” In contrast, David Axelrod’s earlier visage screws both Obama and himself.

Say David Axelrod in 1994, how big of a hole is your client in today?

One of the interesting things about this is that as you cite these statistics that say the economy is improving, you almost do political damage to yourself. If you stand up and claim great progress you’re only frustrating this alienated middle class more,” Axelrod said.

The moderator, John Callaway, noted that Ronald Reagan had been able to talk up the economy in 1984, while George H. W. Bush had been unable to in 1992.

“Bush tastelessly did it often from the ninth hole and from the cigar boat and other places. And the impression you got was that he was out of touch,” Axelrod said.

“You still like to beat up on Bush?” Callaway asked.

“It’s the only thing we have left,” Axelrod responded.

You can watch the original version of the clip at Buzzfeed (complete with a rare typo on C-Span’s Chyron calling him “David Axelron,” but it’s more fun with it with Moe Lane’s remixed visuals to bring the speech full circle:

Oh, and speaking of the Wayback Machine, at least for the moment, Oceania is no longer at war with previous president’s bios:

In May, several folks took note that the White House’s web site had quietly added USA Today-style factoids promoting Obama’s accomplishments at the bottom of the biographies of other presidents, Democrat and Republican alike. The discovery caused a small flurry of negative publicity and a parody Tumblr by the GOP. (Which, disappointingly, they did not sustain. They finally did something actually funny and sharp with viral potential, but they couldn’t stick with it.)

But as quietly as the Obama boasts appeared, they have been removed. The bullet points are now gone from all the biographies on the White House’s website. But that’s okay; there appear to be plenty of other tone-deaf campaigns coming out of the Obama administration, like asking us to praise our king wish Daddy Obama a happy Father’s Day.

Yeah, as with all of the Ministry of Truth-style airbrushing, Soviet/Mao-style Dear Leader worship isn’t creepy at all.
Update: Reason’s Scott Shackford amends his post to note, “I need my eyes checked. The Obama infoboxes are still there, but they appear to have been redesigned to look less like part of the other presidents’ biographies. My apologies for the temporary blindness.”