The Plank

The New Republic’s bloggers debate the recent media scrutiny of former President Bill Clinton. David Greenberg disagrees with a New Yorker piece that suggests that recent criticism of Clinton is due to his struggle in accommodating himself to the YouTube era. Instead, it’s more due to a desire among Washington media elites to “exact some revenge,” Greenberg argues. While Greenberg writes that Barack Obama hasn’t helped Clinton by repeating a false claim about a net job loss during the Clinton years, Isaac Chotiner argues that Obama isn’t “wrong.” Turning to Obama’s actual quote, Chotiner sees that Obama is talking about 25 years of hardship in the Midwest that have persisted regardless of who’s in the White House.