Is Bill Clinton the only Dem who can make it simple?

Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget - Yahoo! News

On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.

"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.

"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."

Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."

There it is -- a simple, easy to understand explanation of what even red-state America will agree is a Bad Thing the Bush Administration is doing and will neither admit nor fix.

Mrs. Bluememe was mightily impressed with the intellectual horsepower John Roberts displayed last week. Roberts is indeed as intelligent as he is evasive. But the erudite 3-card monty that worked before the Judiciary Committee would never fly with the general public from a politician. Not that evasiveness is a fatal flaw; it is more like a prerequisite. But Roberts sounded like he was the smartest guy in the room, and more Bubbas remember beating that kid up in school than being him. Which only brought into stark relief the feats regularly accomplished by Slick Willie.

Dumb can only sound dumb; no matter how well his speeches are written, Dubya's native dullness overwhelms them. Smart would seem to have more options, but, to the less-educated ear, usually sounds standoffishly smart; John Kerry's elliptical, convoluted sentences didn't just confuse Bubba, they pissed him off.

Accessible smart seems to be the Holy Grail of politics; it is a combination that has eluded everybody but Bill Clinton. He really is the smartest guy in the room, but his easy, plainspoken style puts Bubba at ease. He is the Raymond Carver of politics: he crafts exquisite, nuanced prose that sounds like ordinary folks talking.

Clinton brought his high heat in his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which reminded me (and everybody else) how good he was, and how far short Kerry fell. He did it again today. His politics are too centrist and, I guess, too realistic for me. But the Democratic Party needs to take talking points lessons from him, and soon. If they can't argue persuasively in language Joe Sixpack can grok, nothing else they do will much matter.