Forty percent of Americans have never lived when there wasn’t a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Anyone got a problem with that?
With Hillary Rodham Clinton hoping to tack another four or eight “Clinton” years on to the Bush-Clinton-Bush presidential pattern that already has held sway for two decades, talk of Bush-Clinton fatigue is increasingly cropping up in the national political debate.
They raise millions of dollars, conduct provocative ad campaigns, work with a vast network of like-minded allies and have the power to frame the presidential election going forward as much as the candidates themselves.
That used to define only the liberal MoveOn.org, an organization of 3.3 million members that has raised $25 million in the past 18 months and is helping spearhead an anti-war coalition.
Barack Obama has two best-selling books, a nice salary as a senator and a wife with a handsome income. Earlier this year he reported assets of up to $1.14 million in addition to his Chicago home.
That’s small change to some of his presidential rivals, but more than enough to create entanglements and controversies for Obama, a Democrat who has been positioning himself as a friend of the little guy on financial matters.
Recently, he scolded Wall Street executives for focusing too much on their own success and not enough on what’s good for the whole nation. And he called for tax cuts for the working poor.