Bill Clinton Credits Lehman Bros. for Obama’s Win

Former President Bill Clinton now says that letting Lehman Bros. fail was a mistake that wound up clinching the election for then-candidate Barack Obama, reports Money & Company, the L.A. Times’ Business blog. Clinton’s remarks came before a meeting of the World Business Forum in New York on Wednesday, and were first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

“In 2008, we held our presidential election on Sept. 15,” Clinton said. “When the Bush administration decided not to help Lehman Bros … McCain’s chances of winning an election went from 1-in-4 to 1-in-50. The election ended Sept. 15.”

Debating whether the government should have let Lehman fail is a worthy pursuit, and one best debated by economists and policymakers still probing the near-collapse of the country’s financial system. For Clinton, however, it’s a different matter. Blaming Lehman keeps Clinton from giving any credit to Obama for winning on the merits of his campaign. It helps take the focus even further away from Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful primary campaign, and Bill Clinton’s own role in stirring up controversies that detracted from her effort.

Coming from a more neutral observer, these kind of comments about Lehman might be worth pondering further. Coming from Clinton, they sound more like self-serving revisionist history.