These media liberals need to learn that Brand Clinton was never as popular as advertised. I remember once seeing an article proclaiming that Slick Willie was more popular than Reagan based on poll data. But the electoral reality doesn’t support that.
Reagan won both of his elections with an outright majority of the popular vote. In 1980, he won a majority despite the race being a three-way contest. He won re-election in 1984 by an enormous popular landslide. In contrast, Clinton failed to win a majority of the popular vote in either of his elections. In 1996, he couldn’t win a majority despite a good economy and a weak, aging opponent.
Reagan won electoral college landslides in both of his elections. 44 states to 6 in his first election and 49 to 1 in his re-election. Clinton won okay electoral college majorities, but nothing more, and it’s quite likely he wouldn’t have even won in 1992 without Perot.
Reagan had coattails. He swept the GOP into control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter of a century. He narrowed what at the time was a massive Democrat majority in the House to create a situation where conservative Southern Dems and the GOP created a working majority for him. His party didn’t suffer appreciable losses until the mid-term elections of his second term. Clinton had zero coattails and the voters creamed his party in the first mid-terms after his election, putting the GOP in charge of both houses for the first time in forty years.
Reagan’s VP was easily elected president in 1988, Clinton’s VP was defeated in 2000.
Case closed.
The Clinton Brand is highly overrated.
Except this is about Brand Clinton in the international arena, not here. Clearly so long as Clinton could claim to be at the nerve center of American politics, and married to the probable next President, Brand Clinton had a step up on, say, Brand J. Carter or Brand B. Gates or Brand K. Annon. The problem is that sleaziness here alone is more a resume builder abroad. What will hurt is not whether he is is is not honest (and we all know the answer to that) but whether he can deliver U.S. goodies to his international buddies.