Former President Bill Clinton won’t go on the record saying Barack Obama is ready to be President, as Ace of Spades points out. But here’s an even more important thing (quote from the Daily News [New York]):
“I certainly learned a lot about the job in the first year,” Clinton said from Rwanda. “You can argue that even if you’ve been vice president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office.”
Bill Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993 after winning the 1992 election.
On April 6th, 1994, the president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, was assassinated, sparking the Rwandan genocide. Bill Clinton had been President for over a year (441 days) by that point.
While Bill Clinton sat on his ass for a hundred days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed by the Hutu militia.
It was only after the genocide ended that Bill Clinton bothered to lift a finger. And all he did then was have humanitarian supplies flown in.
If that’s the caliber of work we can expect from Barack Obama after some on-the-job training, we’re really screwed.