Ruddy, the story goes, changed his tune a few years ago, concluding that Clinton’s actual record as president — free trade, welfare reform, budget surpluses — didn’t warrant the hysteria that the right had whipped up while he was in office. And Clinton, happy to win over a key component of the right-wing noise machine, was ready and willing to bury the hatchet.

As a result, Clinton will now occasionally give exclusive interviews to Ruddy’s publication, which affords him a level of deference and respect that would have been unthinkable a little over a decade ago. But that doesn’t mean that Ruddy and Newsmax aren’t pushing a clear agenda, one that’s every bit as anti-Obama now as it was anti-Clinton back in the ’90s.

You can probably see where this is going. Clinton sat down with Ruddy at CGI for a 25-minute interview, which Ruddy and Newsmax then used to create a headline that gives Republicans a perfect talking point for their fight with Obama:

The idea that now is the exact wrong time to raise taxes, of course, is the basic line that the right is now using to counter President Obama’s new call for higher tax rates on the wealthy. Conservatives have taken delight this week in claiming that Obama is guilty of flip-flopping because he himself argued two years ago that “the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession.” (As Ezra Klein explained, there’s really no contradiction here — the economy is no longer in a literal recession, plus the taxes that Obama is now calling for wouldn’t go into effect for two years.) And now, thanks to the Newsmax interview, they’ll probably start claiming that “even former President Clinton agrees with us!”

The reality of what Clinton was saying seems to be more complicated. In the interview, his comments about not raising taxes are in reference to the jobs plan that Obama is now pushing — which is separate from his call for higher taxes on the rich. That jobs plan, Clinton noted in the interview, doesn’t include any tax hikes but does include “$250 billion in tax cuts, $250 billion in spending over a period of two to three years.” It’s at that point that he made the comment that became the basis for Newsmax’s headline: “I personally don’t believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending until we get this economy off the ground.”

It seems clear that Clinton was talking about the jobs plan, and the issue of what America should be doing right now to stimulate the economy. This isn’t in conflict with what Obama is calling for, which is a tax hike-free jobs plan to get the economy moving now and higher taxes on the rich two years from now, in order to reduce long-term deficits.

Newsmax probably knows this, but the headline it has chosen fits perfectly with the message the right is now pushing, and there’s no attempt in the article to explain the difference between Obama’s jobs plan and his tax plan. Not surprisingly, conservative opinion-shapers are already tweeting out the news that Bill Clinton said something that sounds an awful lot like what Republicans are now saying, and the Republican Party has apparently distributed his quote to the press.

Not that Clinton is blameless here. In the interview, he seemed to be trying to play the statesman/above-the-day-to-day-fray role — maybe because that’s the role he tries to play through CGI, or maybe because he was just happy to have a right-wing media outlet treating him with such respect.

Either way, he passed up a chance to remind Newsmax’s conservative audience of an aspect of his presidential record they tend to forget: He raised taxes on the rich when the economy was just starting to recover from a recession in 1993 — but it didn’t hurt the economy and did end up being one the major reasons for the budget surpluses of his second term. Instead, he told Ruddy that he’d personally be fine with paying a millionaire’s surcharge, “but it won’t solve the problem.” Thus, the first line of the article notes that Clinton said “that President Obama’s plan to increase taxes on the wealthy won’t solve the debt problem.”

What Clinton said is true — by itself, a millionaire’s surcharge won’t solve the debt problem. But Obama is actually calling for $1.5 trillion in new revenue, to come from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (returning them to their Clinton-era levels) and from limiting deductions and closing loopholes. By itself, this wouldn’t wipe out the deficit either, but Clinton could have cited his own tax hike (a tax hike that every single Republican in Congress voted against) as proof that it would help.

But he wasn’t looking for a fight. And neither was Ruddy — at least not with Clinton.

Barack Obama in 2012? Maybe. But the president who actually did it was Bill Clinton. (The program he ended was Title IV of the Social Security Act, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.)

It’s no accident that President Obama appears to be following the Clinton script. After all, it worked. Despite a 1994 midterm election that delivered Congress to the GOP and was widely seen as a repudiation of his presidency, President Clinton went on to win re-election. And many of Mr. Obama’s top aides — including Chief of Staff Bill Daley, National Economic Council head Gene Sperling and Pentagon chief Leon Panetta — are Clinton veterans who know the 1995-96 story line by heart.

Republicans have obligingly been playing their parts this time. In the fall of 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich was the firebrand, making budget demands that the public interpreted as causing two government shutdowns — while President Clinton appeared to be the great compromiser. This time it’s House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his Republican allies who appear unwilling to bend and risk defaulting on the nation’s bills — while President Obama offers to cut Social Security and reduce $3 of spending for every dollar of tax increase.

And with Moody’s threatening to downgrade the nation’s debt if the debt limit isn’t raised soon, Republicans appear all the more radical.

So will Barack Obama pull a Bill Clinton? His real problem is one Mr. Clinton didn’t have to contend with: a continuing terrible economy. The recession in 1991-92 was relatively mild, and by the spring of 1995, the economy was averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring — with 434,000 new jobs added in February alone.

I remember suggesting to Mr. Clinton’s then-political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Mr. Morris wasn’t interested. The election will be about the economy — nothing more, nothing less, he said. He knew voters didn’t care much about policy. They cared about jobs.

President Obama isn’t as fortunate. The economy remains hampered by the Great Recession, brought on not by overshooting by the Federal Reserve but by the bursting of a giant housing bubble. As such, the downturn has proven resistant to reversal by low interest rates. The Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than two years, opened the spigots of its discount window, and undertaken two rounds of quantitative easing — all with little to show for it.

Some in the White House and on Wall Street assume the anemic recovery will turn stronger in the second half of the year, emerging full strength in 2012. They blame the anemia on disruptions in Japanese supply chains, bad weather, high oil prices, European debt crises, and whatever else they can come up with. These factors have contributed, but they’re not the big story.

When the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home values, it crushed the nest eggs and eliminated the collateral of America’s middle class. As a result, consumer spending has been decimated. Households have been forced to reduce their debt to 115% of disposable personal income from 130% in 2007, and there’s more to come. Household debt averaged 75% of personal income between 1975 and 2000.

We’re in a vicious cycle in which job and wage losses further reduce Americans’ willingness to spend, which further slows the economy. Job growth has effectively stopped. The fraction of the population now working (58.2%) is near a 25-year low — lower than it was when recession officially ended in June 2009.

Wage growth has stopped as well. Average real hourly earnings for all employees declined by 1.1% between June 2009, when the recovery began, and May 2011. For the first time since World War II, there has been a decline in aggregate wages and salaries over seven quarters of post-recession recovery.

This is not Bill Clinton’s economy. So many jobs have been lost since Mr. Obama was elected that, even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s — averaging 300,000 to 350,000 per month — the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall below 6% until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least. If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day, while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

So Mr. Obama’s challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Mr. Clinton’s in 1996. Most Americans care far more about jobs and wages than they do about budget deficits and debt ceilings. Even if Mr. Obama is seen to win the contest over raising the debt limit and succeeds in painting Republicans as radicals, he risks losing the upcoming election unless he directly addresses the horrendous employment problem.

How can he do this while continuing to appear more reasonable than Republicans on the deficit? By coming up with a bold jobs plan that would increase outlays over the next year or two but would credibly begin a long-term plan to shrink the budget. To the extent the jobs plan spurs growth, the long-term ratio of debt to GDP will improve.

Elements of the plan might include putting more money into peoples’ pockets by exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next year, recreating a Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to employ the long-term jobless, creating an infrastructure bank to finance improvements to roads and bridges, enacting partial unemployment benefits for those who have been laid off from part-time jobs, and giving employers tax credits for net new hires.

The fight over the debt ceiling will be over very soon. Most Washington hands know it will be raised. Political tacticians know President Obama will likely appear to win the battle, and his apparent move to the center will make Republicans look like radicals. But the Clinton script will take the president only so far. If he wants a second term, he’ll have to come out swinging on jobs.

(The quiz starts at the 7-minute mark)

I don’t know what’s creepier, some of the multiple choice answers they throw at the former president (“The right to mate” is never going to be the correct response to a question about cutie marks), or the fact that he actually knows the answers.

Late Friday, the 85-year-old statesman died at his home in Los Angeles of complications from bladder and kidney cancer, said Sonja Steptoe of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, where Christopher was a senior partner.

As he prepared to step down in 1996 as secretary “for someone else to pick up the baton,” he said in an interview he was pleased to have played a role in making the United States safer.

Along with his peace efforts, he told The Associated Press that his proudest accomplishments included playing a role in promoting a ban on nuclear weapons tests and extension of curbs on proliferation of weapons technology.

The loyal Democrat also supervised the contested Florida recount for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, decided for George W. Bush.

While his efforts with Syria didn’t bear fruit, he was more successful in the negotiations that produced a settlement in 1995 for Bosnia, ending a war among Muslims, Serbs and Croats that claimed 260,000 lives and drove another 1.8 million people from their homes.

Some critics said the administration had moved too slowly against the ethnic violence. Then-Rep. Frank McCloskey, an Indiana Democrat, called for Christopher’s resignation and virtually accused the administration of ignoring genocide against Bosnian Muslims. A handful of State Department officials resigned in protest.

Christopher also gave top priority to supporting reform in Russia and expanding U.S. economic ties to Asia.

While Christopher often preferred a behind-the-scenes role, he also made news as deputy secretary of state in the Carter administration, conducting the tedious negotiations that gained the release in 1981 of 52 American hostages in Iran.

President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. “The best public servant I ever knew,” Carter wrote in his memoirs.

In private life, Christopher also served. Among many other things, he chaired a commission that proposed reforms of the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the videotaped beating by police of motorist Rodney King in 1991. When four officers arrested for beating King were acquitted of most charges the following year Los Angeles erupted in days of deadly rioting.

In examining years of police records following the riots, the Christopher Commission found “a significant number of officers” routinely used excessive force.

“The department not only failed to deal with the problem group of officers but it often rewarded them with positive evaluations and promotions,” according to the report.

Numerous reforms were eventually put in place, including limiting the police chief to two five-year terms and having the chief appointed and supervised by a civilian commission.

Christopher’s calm intervention amid political turmoil prompted the Republicans to turn to an elder statesman of their own, James A. Baker III, to represent Bush in the election dispute.

Accepting Christopher’s resignation as the nation’s top diplomat, President Bill Clinton said Christopher “left the mark of his hand on history.”

As Clinton considered a successor, Christopher offered the criteria he would apply if the choice was up to him.

“It would be somebody who has the capacity to provide forceful leadership, someone who has great tenacity, someone who has endurance and a lot of stamina,” he said.

His travels became the stuff of diplomatic legend.

In the skies over Africa and approaching his 71st birthday in October 1996, Christopher set a new mark for miles traveled by a secretary of state over four years, the normal length of a presidential term: 704,487.

The crew on his Air Force jet presented him with a congratulatory cake.

Christopher overcame sleep deprivation, difficult negotiations with the likes of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad and nagging ulcers to keep his eye on American interests.

Always crisp, modest and polite, he drove home an agreement in his last year on the job to halt fighting in Lebanon between Israel and extremist Shiite guerrillas.

“We have achieved the goal of our mission, which was to achieve an agreement that will save lives and end the suffering of people on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border,” Christopher said in Jerusalem, his weeklong mission a success.

Madeleine Albright stepped in for Clinton’s second term and Christopher returned to his law firm of O’Melveny & Myers with Clinton’s “deep gratitude” for his service and with president’s playful description of Christopher as “the only man ever to eat M&Ms on Air Force One with a fork.”

Unlike some who held the job, Christopher worked smoothly with the president’s other senior advisers.

Although critics complained that the Clinton administration’s foreign policy lacked dramatic initiatives, the poised and cautious Christopher indicated he was pleased with the results, especially with what he called the “triple play” of a NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, the APEC expansion of U.S. economic ties to Pacific Rim nations, and the GATT accord on international tariffs and trade.

“Taking it overall, we’ve done very well on the major issues,” he said at a news conference in 1993, during which he also cited U.S. support for economic and political reform in Russia and the “partnership for peace” proposal to expand the involvement of former Communist adversaries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Christopher also looked back with gratitude on how far he had come from a childhood in Scranton, N.D., marked by bitter winters and modest circumstances. His father was a bank cashier who fell ill, and the family moved to Southern California during the Depression. After his father’s death his mother supported the family of five children as a sales clerk.

An ensign in the U.S. Navy reserves, he was called up to active duty during World War II and served in the Pacific.

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California in 1945 and, after attending Stanford Law School, served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in 1949 and 1950.

In the late 1960s, he was a deputy attorney general in the administration of Lyndon Johnson.

In 2008, Christopher was co-chairman of a bipartisan panel that studied the recurring question of who under U.S. law should decide when the country goes to war. It proposed that the president be required to inform Congress of any plans to engage in “significant armed conflict” lasting longer than a week.

As a successful Los Angeles lawyer, Christopher had a seven-figure income, and a beach house in fashionable Santa Barbara.

He is survived by his wife Marie, and had four children in two marriages: Lynn, Scott, Thomas, and Kristen. Plans were pending for a private memorial service.

AP writer Andrew Dalton contributed to this report from Los Angeles. Barry Schweid reported from Washington.

Most importantly, they’re worried the President’s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year — large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won’t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

Shortly after the Democrats’ “shellacking” last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. “It’s 1994 all over again,” he said. “Now we move to the center.”

The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That’s partly because so many of President Barack Obama’s current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton’s own shellacking in 1994. It’s also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.

From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton’s campaign script — distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama — or so it’s supposed.

The superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there’s only correlation. In fact, there’s no reason to believe that Clinton’s lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery.

By the spring of 1995, the American economy had bounced back, averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring — creating 434,000 new jobs in February alone. I remember suggesting to Clinton’s political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president should come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Morris scowled. This election will be about the economy — nothing more, nothing less, he said. Morris knew that voters didn’t care much about policy. They cared about jobs. “The president,” said Morris, “is going to say, ‘You’ve never had it this good, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.’”

The 1991-1992 recession was relatively mild as recessions go. As is typical of most recessions, it had been brought on by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates too high in response to fears of inflation — meaning that a recovery would occur when the Fed reversed course and reduced short-term rates, which then-Chair Alan Greenspan obligingly did.

President Obama won’t be as fortunate. The Great Recession resulted from the bursting of a giant debt bubble. Wall Street’s irresponsible lending and speculating, negligible oversight by federal regulators, and the insatiable desire of Americans to use their homes as ATMs created a toxic mixture that exploded at the end of 2007 and continues to sicken the economy.

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than a year and has opened the spigots of its discount window, without much result. Unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. Economic growth is pathetic.

While jobs used to follow corporate profits, American corporations now rack up big profits without expanding employment. Their profits are coming mainly from buoyant sales by their foreign operations — especially in China and India — combined with cuts in jobs, wages, and benefits here in the U.S.

The richest 10 percent of Americans, who own about 90 percent of all financial assets, are buying again (sales at Neiman Marcus and Tiffany’s are way up). But most Americans still have little purchasing power. Under a huge load of debt, worried about meeting mortgage payments, and seeing their major asset — their home — continue to drop in value, they’re holding back from the malls.

A strong recovery cannot be sustained by the richest 10 percent. Before the Great Recession, the top 10 percent received about half of total income, but they accounted for only about 40 percent of total spending. Forty percent of spending isn’t enough to convince businesses to invest in new capacity and jobs, which is why corporations are still sitting on $1.4 trillion of cash.

So many jobs have been lost since Obama was elected and so many people have entered the workforce needing jobs that even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s, year after year, the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall below 6 percent until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least.

If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Obama’s challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Bill Clinton’s in 1996. He must fight the Republican plans to cut the budget deficit this year and next, and explain to the public why he’s doing so. And he must convince Americans that public spending during the next few years is necessary to get the economy moving, reduce the long-term debt as a portion of the total economy, and get jobs back.