Failing to address economic problems. The phrase was invented by Bill Clinton’s strategist, James Carville, during Clinton’s 1992 campaign for the presidency. Carville suggested Clinton was a better choice for president than George H. W. Bush because Bush had failed to do anything about a recent recession. It hung as a sign on Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. The New York Times writer and Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman used it: “What political scientists . . . tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid” (July 18, 2010). The term not only was repeated enough to become a cliché but gave rise to similar locutions for blame, such as “it’s the voters, stupid” or “it’s the oil spill, stupid.”