“Twenty years ago,” notes The Wall Street Journal editorial page today, “Bill Clinton would never have dreamed of rolling out this EPA regulation five months before an election.” Of course, the Journal despised Clinton so fervently its editorials denouncing him as a criminal ran to five bulging, spittle-flecked volumes.
But the passage of time has cast a rosier glow on the scheming Clintonian calculations that once so enraged the Journal. The 42nd president’s presumed cynicism appears today in order to rebuke the current president. The theme of today’s editorial is anger and dismay at Obama’s willingness to put what he regards as good public policy ahead of his own party’s interests. Obama is “creating stranded Democrats from energy-producing states,” frets the Journal. Now “the richer coasts dominated by gentry liberals now trump the union jobs of the Midwest” — because if there’s one thing the Journal holds sacrosanct, it is the protection of every union job, no matter the cost.
Likewise, the Journal is enraged that Obama would put at risk his own party’s chances of holding the Senate during the midterm elections:
There is one political catch, however, and that is the composition of the Senate, where North Dakota gets as many votes as California. That reality might haunt Democrats this year because they are trying to hold or gain Senate seats in Kentucky, West Virginia, Montana, Alaska and Louisiana, among other right-leaning states.
If only we had a president who crafted policies solely on the basis of partisan gain! Like good old what’s-his-name.
