A new ABC-WaPo poll out tonight shows that by strong margins Americans believe Bill Clinton is an asset to Sen. Clinton's presidential candidacy and they give high ratings to his eight years in office.

To which I would say, no kidding.

As many luminaries of the liberal blogosphere have noted many times, the pundit class, official Washington, whatever, has never managed to get its collective head around the fact that Bill Clinton was a very popular president, certainly from late 1995 on. And he also didn't wreck the country, like the current guy, which is saying something. So why shouldn't people give his tenure high ratings? As big of a fan as I was of Bill Clinton's presidency (and I was a really big one), it's stunning to me how different a world it is from the 1990s. It seems like a different era. So many of our key problems today hardly existed. Or at least we didn't recognize them. But why shouldn't people think of him as an asset? Look at who we have now.