There was a surplus in the last year of the Clinton presidency, so I presume he's referring to George W Bush. There was also the whole 9/11 and War on Terror thing in the first year of his presidency though, so it's hardly a fair comparison. Gore would have blown his budget if he'd won too.
Largely speaking democrat administrations reduce the deficit while republican administrations increase the deficit, despite this being the polar opposite of political talking points.
I remember the budget hawks in the aughts saying that if the administration wanted to spend a ton of money on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (this: unrelated to 9/11), that it would be fiscally prudent to raise tax revenue to cover the costs. Bush instead cut tax revenue substantially.
I'm not making a judgement either way, just saying that there was a choice here and Bush made the choice to increase the deficit. (Dick Cheney was correct when he advised Bush that deficits don't matter. The increase in the deficit indeed didn't matter to the electorate, and the deficit spending, in part via tax cuts, did win him a second term.)
Both Gore and Clinton were actual budget hawks. A big part of his campaign was highlighting the fact that the last few years had been budget surpluses, and talking about paying off the debt entirely.
We all know he would have been better than Bush, the bar is low, but you don't have to make it look like we missed out on the least shitty president in all of US history.
Largely speaking democrat administrations reduce the deficit while republican administrations increase the deficit, despite this being the polar opposite of political talking points.