Hillary Clinton is touting her “experience” in the White House as reason to elect her or vote for her in the primaries.

KNOXVILLE, Iowa — The economy needs help and fast, Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday, claiming the experience for the job and saying the nation can’t afford to break in a newcomer.

In speech that kicked off a two day campaign swing through Iowa, the New York senator painted a bleak picture of a U.S. economy battered by home foreclosures, rising oil prices and lack of good jobs for middle class workers.

The former first lady compared the situation to 1992, when her husband ran against the first President Bush.

“There seems to be a pattern here. It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush,” she said to applause.

Without mentioning names, she suggested Democratic rival Barack Obama — less than three years into his first term in the Senate — and other candidates lack the experience necessary to address the nation’s myriad fiscal challenges.

“There is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for — our next president. That could be the costliest job training in history,” Clinton said. “Every day spent learning the ropes is another day of rising costs, mounting deficits and growing anxiety for our families. And they cannot afford to keep waiting.”

The last time I checked, unemployment under former President Clinton was around 5.6% on a good day. We have been hovering around 4% under President Bush for a long time.

Yes, the dollar is falling, but that’s only because Alan Greenspan took the interest rates to almost zero and that allowed people to buy things they otherwise couldn’t afford. Then the adjustable rate mortgages went up and they really couldn’t afford their new houses and toys. We have no one to blame for that but ourselves.

Now, I’m a bit older but when I voted in 1992 and 1996 I remember seeing the name Bill or William Clinton on the top of the Democratic ticket. Nowhere did I see Hillary Clinton, but if her experience as co-president (two for the price of one) is her argument then we could make the argument she is not eligible for the office of President of the United States because she already served two terms.

I wonder how that would fly.

Actually the biggest accomplishments during the Clinton administration came because a Republican Congress forced him to reform welfare and do other things. The so-called balanced budget he left was more of two sets of books and it didn’t take us long to find it out.

If continuing to allow our ships to be blown up without doing a thing about it, waging air wars under the auspices of the United Nations (against our Constitution), scandal in every department of the government including the White House itself and this very candidate (lost files that turned up mysteriously after the statute of limitations had run out), pardons of shady characters, funny money from the Chinese, and outright gifts of our technology to the Chinese for those donations are what they have to offer us again I’m going to pass.

The only good thing I could see in a second Clinton presidency would be maybe they’ll return all the furnishings they trucked off when they left the last time. Even that isn’t enough to get me to vote for her. She can keep the stuff for all I care.

I have no doubt she was a big influence in the Clinton administration, but let’s not get all teary-eyed wishing for the past. It wasn’t anything to brag about.