Bill Clinton’s yelling at pro-life protesters in Steubenville, Ohio didn’t get processed by the networks as a sign of bad temper, or of sour and hyperbolic attacks on pro-lifers. On Monday’s Good Morning America, reporter Jake Tapper’s quick summary of what was going on with the top presidential candidates only noted he "took on some anti-abortion protesters" and ran this soundbite: "We disagree with you. You want to criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree!"
That is clearly a sentiment that media liberals support, but it’s only a fraction of what he yelled. ABC’s Political Radar blog carried more detail, but in neither report did ABC seem to ponder the the political oddity of Clinton’s angry retort: that he and Hillary were in effect more pro-life than the pro-lifers – not to mention it’s always odd to hear Clinton yelling at others to "Tell the truth! Tell the truth!" Over a cheering liberal crowd, Clinton said:
I reduced abortion. Tell the truth! Tell the truth! If you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother, as an accessory to murder, in prison. And you won't say you wanna do that, because you know that you wouldn't have a lick of political support. Now, you can't name me anybody presently in politics that did more to introduce policies that reduce the number of real abortions, instead of the hot air putting out to tear people up and make votes by dividing America.
Basking in the applause, Clinton concluded:
This is not your rally. I heard you. That's another thing you need is a president, somebody who will stick up for individual rights, and not be pushed around, and [Hillary] won't. The policies she spearheaded saved a heck of a lot more lives than all the TV ads that were bought and all the hot air that was spread. And we ought to talk about that.
Before he grew angry, Clinton more calmly declared the same theme, that Hillary was a doer, while pro-lifers were just haters who divided people with angry rhetoric:
But when Hillary was in the White House, she supervised our efforts to, number one, let young women, who have children out of wedlock, live with their parents and still keep all their welfare benefits, so that the grandparents can take care of the kids while, the women went to school...Number two, [she] led a serious effort to reduce teen pregnancy, and we had the lowest teen pregnancy rate since the statistics had been kept ... And guess what? Without overturning Roe v. Wade, or trying to keep people all torn up and upset or calling them killers, the abortion rate went down almost 20 percent on our watch.
Looking at the usual data source for these statistics – the Guttmacher Institute, an arm of Planned Parenthood – it is true that teen pregnancy declined and went to new lows during the Clinton presidency. But it’s also true that the decline began before he was elected and continued during the George W. Bush years, meaning that it’s true that they had the lowest rate since "the statistics had been kept" (Guttmacher seems to start in 1972, noticeably after the Sexual Revolution began), but it kept on declining under Team Bush. The same general trend is true of the abortion rate: it declined under Clinton, but also under President Bushes, father and son. (Hillary's tried to claim otherwise.)
This takes us to the question of whether Clinton can claim "I reduced abortion." Abortion declined during his presidency, but is the causation direct? Clearly, when voters select a president actual results matter. But Clinton’s presidency, in its rhetoric and its policies and judicial nominations on abortion (all seen as overseen by Mrs. Clinton), was profoundly in favor of abortion and its providers.
Tapper and other reporters also skipped over the idea that Clinton’s outburst at protesters (however rude they were) didn’t match the way Barack Obama handled the same situation. MRC’s Scott Whitlock forwarded to me this from Jonathan Last in The Weekly Standard, praising Obama for engaging pro-lifers in New Hampshire, not taunting them as haters:
A few minutes after Obama took the stage, a group of about a dozen protesters in the balcony interrupted him, chanting, "Abortion is abomination!" This sort of thing happens all the time at political events. Sometimes the intruders are the "community of peacemakers" who call themselves Code Pink, sometimes they're LaRouchies. When anti-abortion folks disrupt an event, the response is usually the same: The pro-abortion audience heckles the banner-wielding protesters; the speaker tosses off a barb or two; security escorts the demonstrators away; and the audience cheers, partly in self-satisfaction, partly in derision at the rubes who think babies are not choices.
But at the Obama event, something extraordinary happened. The protesters chanted "Abortion is abomination!" Obama lost his place in his speech and stared up into the balcony, looking to see who was interrupting him. The crowd began booing lustily, and suddenly Obama turned on them.
"There's no need to boo," he chastised them. After silencing the crowd, Obama turned back to the protesters and said he appreciated their point and would be happy to talk with them afterwards if they'd let him finish his speech. The protesters continued, and the crowd, thinking Obama simply didn't want them to be negative, tried shouting them down, chanting "Obama! Obama!"
At which point Obama turned on them again. "Hold up," he commanded. "This is an example of nobody hearing each other." The Obama partisans desisted once more. The anti-abortion chanters continued, and Obama tried to engage them. "For the folks who are opposed to abortion, I understand your position, but this isn't going to solve anything," he said plaintively. He gave them time to make their point, and eventually they were led away.
The crowd cheered wildly as the demonstrators were taken down the back staircase by the local police, and here Obama cut through the applause to lecture them one final time. "Let me just say this, though," he said. "Those people got organized to do that. And that is part of the American tradition we are proud of. And that's hard, too--standing in the midst of people who don't agree with you and letting your voice be heard." The audience, a bit stunned, didn't quite know what to make of this.
I didn't either. From my point of view, it would be much better if Barack Obama were willing to help protect the lives of the unborn. Still, his treatment of those protesters--and especially his treatment of his own supporters--spoke to his intellectual seriousness and his temperament, both of which seem to be first rate.