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Bill Clinton touts global policies during W.Va. visit
Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the West Virginia Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007 in Charleston, W.Va.
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CHARLESTON — The United States could match the new jobs it added to mobilize for World War II if it takes seriously the threat posed by climate change, former President Bill Clinton told a West Virginia crowd Saturday.
“It has to be at the heart of our economic strategy,” Clinton said. “We could save the planet and revive the economy.”
Developing new energy sources, increasing the efficiency of existing ones and arresting greenhouse emissions could provide the influx of new jobs that the national economy requires every five to eight years, Clinton said.
Lauding former Vice President Al Gore for his recent Nobel Peace Prize win in this area, Clinton also said West Virginia coal could play a part through clean-emission technology.
“This creates jobs for people at every education level, every skill level,” Clinton said.
Without such a source of new jobs, Clinton said, “the middle class is going to get the squeeze.”
An estimated 3,100 people bought tickets to hear Clinton speak at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, an annual fundraising event of West Virginia’s Democratic Party.
Clinton told the crowd to expect a banner year for their party in 2008.
“America turns to us when they need something done,” Clinton said. “When they want someone who will hyperventilate and demonize, we’re just not as good as doing that as Republicans are.”
He singled out their attacks on Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old Baltimore boy who suffered severe brain damage in a car accident three years ago. Frost and his family have become the human face of the vetoed bill to expand the state Children’s Health Insurance Program system.
Clinton defended CHIP, created in 1997 during his administration, and the bill’s push to enlarge its rolls.
“It was set up for people who weren’t poor,” he said, citing the Medicaid program for that segment of the population. “Everybody knows that the health care system doesn’t work for households of modest income.”
Clinton said voters also want to know why the number of uninsured has grown despite the spending of $700 billion a year on health care.
“We need to get this country back in the solutions business,” he said.
Clinton also lambasted the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, and repeated his call to begin the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.
“It is a great time to be a Democrat,” he said. “But it is a sobering time to be an American.”
And while he touted his wife’s presidential campaign, Clinton told the audience that they could be proud of much of their party’s field of candidates. He also spoke of his friendship with Gov. Joe Manchin, which dates back to 1992 when the then-state senator was an early supporter of his White House bid. Clinton recalled approvingly of watching Manchin’s handling of last year’s Sago Mine disaster.
Earlier in the evening, Clinton anchored a reception for Manchin’s 2008 re-election campaign. Seeking a second term, the fellow Democrat has gained Clinton’s ear as he pursues a role for his state’s abundant coal reserves in future energy policies. Manchin touted a potential partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative when he introduced the former president Saturday.
Clinton was similarly slated to fete supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Her presidential bid has already raised more than $240,000 among Mountain State residents, her campaign has reported.
Hillary Clinton visited West Virginia in July for a fundraiser and a Town Hall-style meeting. Both she and rival Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., were among an array of state Democratic candidates whose campaigns offered T-shirts, buttons and other materials outside Saturday’s dinner in the Charleston Civic Center lobby.
Obama spoke at last year’s dinner, setting a record for fundraising, which the former president broke Saturday, party officials say. Bill Clinton previously headlined the dinner in 1988, while governor of Arkansas. He carried the state in his 1992 and 1996 election bids.
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