"I Feel Your Pain"

When on the campaign trail (specifically during the second presidential debate) Bill Clinton famously told suffering Americans "I feel your pain."

Today it seems common for political historians to present the words as some sort of political masterstroke.

However, even though I am sure I watched that debate I don't remember that particular moment, or for that matter anyone being all that impressed by it. What I remember is the great Phil Hartman repeating the words so as to make of them a catch phrase when playing Bill Clinton in satirical Saturday Night Live sketches. Because that was all the words deserved, really--as Clinton made all too clear when he showed that, no matter how much he professed to feel the pain of working people, he was a plain and simple "Neo-Liberal" and "neoliberal" who spent his eight years in the White House carrying forward the principles and policies of his Republican predecessors.

Whether or not Clinton was actually lying when he claimed to be empathetic, the point is that any empathy he felt made no difference to his actions whatsoever--actions whose consequences are all too clear in what the country's economy and its politics have been in the twenty-first century.