I'm not going to give Slick Willie too much credit, but Bill Clinton and Paul Ryan had a remarkable conversation:
“So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m glad we won this race in New York,” Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But he added, “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”
Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.
“My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out there. You gotta get this thing moving,” Ryan said.
Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should “give me a call.” Ryan said he would.
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Mr. Clinton, with some passion, returned to the topic at the end of an hour-long interview. “I think the Democrats are going to have to be willing to give up, maybe, some short-term political gain by whipping up fears on some of these things — if it’s a reasonable Social Security proposal, a reasonable Medicare proposal. We’ve got to deal with these things. You cannot have health care devour the economy.”
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The last thing Obama, Reid, and Schumer want before the election is one of their own elder statesmen — one who’s personally popular and famous for budget-balancing, no less — pressuring them to inch out on the Medicare limb that’s cracking under Ryan. So … why would he do it? Could be that he’s earnestly concerned about the Medicare time bomb and appreciates Ryan’s leadership on it...
Could the Democrats be persuaded to take the entitlement crises seriously?
Nah!
Their Hopium addiction is incurable.
May the best demagogues win!
