Former President Clinton touts Obama at Owens CC rally

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Former president Bill
Clinton speaks to a crowd at Owens Community College during a rally for President Obama. (Photo: Enoch
Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

Former President Bill Clinton, hoarse but undeterred, came to Owens Community College to rally the Obama
faithful Thursday afternoon just five days from Election Day.PHOTO
GALLERY

Owens
Community College, Clinton told the crowd of 1,950, “is the perfect venue for an Obama campaign event.
Community colleges work the way America ought to work.”
They bring together people from all backgrounds, to study and learn skills that will provide them a job
after they graduate.”
That the election may well come down to Ohio is fitting, he said, because “Ohio is a microcosm of where
we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.”
Clinton has been traveling the Midwest and his ragged voice displayed the wear of so many rallies. “I
lost it in a good cause.”
He said being on the campaign trail is a break from how he usually operates. Since leaving office he has
worked with people of all parties to fight hunger and disease around the world.
“I don’t understand all this hate filled rhetoric,” he said.
No president could have led the country out of the crisis it was in when Obama took office, the former
president maintained. Economic experts have told him that it usually takes 10 years, and that the
country is ahead of that pace.
But Gov. Mitt Romney would have voters believe that returning to the policies that caused the financial
crisis will somehow remedy the situation.
He touted Obama’s record, including signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That’s not just a woman’s
issues, he said. “Every man who’s ever been married to a woman who works for a living wants equal pay
for equal work.”

Former president Bill
Clinton greets crowd members at Owens Community College. (Photo: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

He also praised Obama for his reform of the student loan program. Starting next year the fix loan program
will make it easier for graduates to go teach in rural areas or practice medicine in inner city clinics
without worrying about paying off burdensome student loans.
He concluded by praising the auto bailout. Romney opposed that bailout, which was actually initiated by
the Bush Administration.
Clinton noted that the Japanese and German automakers supported the bailout because without it
the auto parts suppliers they also depend on would have gone out of business.
Now, Clinton said, the Republicans are claiming that Chrysler is shipping Jeep jobs to China.
When auto officials called the charge false, and that instead they were going to build Jeeps for the
Chinese market in China,
the Republicans doubled down and “doubled their ad buy.”
“The truest thing the Romney campaign ever said
is that they would not let their campaign be dictated to by fact checkers,” Clinton said.

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