From the last Jolt of the week, making its way to subscribers now:

Get Better, Bill
Bill Clinton’s hospitalization seems like a good moment to reflect on how he looks a little better as a president, ten years later and with the contrast of the Obama administration. My Clinton-opposition goes back to when FreeRepublic.com was getting breathless updates from the anonymous and mysterious “Quidam” – updates which I think didn’t pan out – and most of the former president’s misdeeds from that era still look pretty ugly.
But with time, we begin to appreciate things we didn’t realize at the moment, and what sticks out now is that Bill Clinton was in many ways a “Bubba,” and there was a certain love of engaging with Americans of all types that we haven’t seen in many leading Democrats since then. This is not to say he didn’t have arrogant moments, but it’s hard to imagine him explaining to a crowd of San Francisco liberals why small-town Americans are bitter and cling to guns and religion. Obama is adored by the elites and obviously can campaign in the worst neighborhoods of the most troubled cities, but he sticks out like a space alien in diners and truck stops. He (and to a certain extent Al Gore and John Kerry) can relate to deep-fried-Twinkie Americans only as their secular savior. And even if Bill Clinton’s “y’all gotta hear about my Astroturf in my pickup truck” routine was an act, Clinton still felt like he owed whoever was before him his best back-slapping extroverted charisma. (For a long time, it seemed like Hillary didn’t have this quality, until she started throwing down shots and beers in the Pennsylvania primary.)
There’s a lot of road still left to travel in Obama’s presidency, but in many ways it seems to be echoing Clinton’s early years – a health care reform effort that turns into a quagmire, scandals in cabinet appointees, erupting fissures in Congressional Democrats, a reunited and rejuvenated opposition from Republicans, and a general overestimation of an electoral mandate. The 1994 Republican Revolution slapped Clinton hard in the face, and he recovered by veering to the center (including his signature achievement, a fairly conservative version of welfare reform). Obama seems to be offering us a fascinating alternative scenario: 2010 might be similar to 1994, but this Democratic President may not veer to the center. It’s not his style, and not what he thinks he was elected to do.
Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin sees a lesson for the health care reform debate: “Best wishes for the former president’s recovery. Now, a timely reminder: Stents don’t grow on trees. They were not created, developed, marketed, or sold by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. One of the nation’s top stent manufacturers, Boston Scientific, has weighed in on the Democrats’ proposed massive taxes on medical device makers: ‘Boston Scientific Corp (BSX.N) warned on Tuesday that a proposed tax in the U.S. health care reform bill that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week could have serious consequences for the company, including job losses.’ A teachable moment: Taxing innovation in the name of ‘health care reform’ has consequences.”