 Bill Clinton: Acts in John McCain's advertisement
Bill Clinton has caught media’s attention. He is playing a starring role in a commercial of John McCain with the ad's kicker, "You're right Mr. President."
A new minute-long commercial of John McCain features the former president asserting that congressional Democrats could have done more to regulate the nation's major mortgage financiers.
In a clip taken from a Sept. 25 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Bill Clinton said, "I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
The ad is one of a flurry of commercials with economic themes that emerged on Tuesday as Congress continued to struggle with a rescue plan for tanking financial markets. Barack Obama has released a new 2-minute commercial by denouncing the tax policies of the last 8 years. The Republican National Committee went on the air with 5 million dollars worth of airtime in various places like Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
John McCain’s ad casts the Arizona senator as an advocate of tighter regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That assertion is true. McCain was a co-sponsor of legislation in 2006 that would have placed more restrictions on the mortgage finance companies.
Although not shown in the advertisement, Bill Clinton goes on in the interview to blame a decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement a rule that has restricted short selling.
"The biggest mistake, by the way, that contributed to the current circumstance that almost nobody talks about is the repeal, after decades, of something called the uptick rule, which allows the hedge funds, heavily leveraged and others, to just drive down the market without any kind of automatic stoppers," added Bill Clinton.
While too complicated to pitch in an advertisement, that view also seems to support McCain. The Republican candidate has called on SEC chairman Christopher Cox to resign.
Interestingly the interview of Bill Clinton holds several nuggets that McCain can take pleasure in.
Last week Bill Clinton commented that John McCain’s suggestion that the first presidential debate should be delayed until the rescue package was negotiated. Bill Clinton commented, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted — I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."
The McCain ad and its finger-pointing at Democrats came out on the same day John McCain was in Des Moines, Iowa, thereby calling for bipartisanship on the financial crisis. "I will continue to do whatever I can to aid in a constructive answer to the challenge before us," added McCain.
The campaign starring Bill Clinton announced the advertisement about the same time.  |
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