Douglas Brinkley, whose most recent book pines for a better historical portrait for Jimmy Carter, one of the biggest presidential failures of the century.
Here was Professor Brinkley on CNN, doing the same refurbishing routine for Bill Clinton: "Hopefully, we'll have a fuller view and also understand that he's had a great many important strengths. He is the first post-Cold War president, he had to put America into -- he signed a lot -- over 200 trade pacts around the world, NATO expansion, at least attempts at peace in places like Bosnia and Northern Ireland and the Middle East."
On Saturday night, Tim Russert booked Clinton biographer David Maraniss and the ubiquitous Doris Kearns Goodwin. Maraniss's biography is much more balanced than his syrupy 1992 Clinton campaign dispatches. (Any biographer more critical of Clinton - from Meredith Oakley to R. Emmett Tyrrell to Roger Morris - need not even bother trying to get on TV.) Goodwin is a regular on both Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour" on PBS and NBC and its cable outlets. Every once in a while, they'll note she worked for Lyndon Johnson. But they'll never mention she's a Friend of Bill and Hillary. (They loved her book on Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt so much that she was awarded one of those hundreds of Lincoln Bedroom sleepover slots.)
Then on Today on Monday morning, Katie Couric welcomed Douglas Brinkley and Doris Goodwin. Brinkley worried: "I think the serious scholars looking at the Clinton presidency will be able to pick and choose the best part, but unfortunately like Nixon, we don't realize Nixon is the father of the Endangered Species Act or the Environmental Protection Agency. We think of Nixon as Watergate. And I think Clinton will be remembered predominantly for impeachment, even though many other good things occurred on his watch."
I CAN'T THINK OF ONE!!!
The only real accomplishments Clinton can take credit for is signing GOP bills after 1995.
He tried the Mediscare approach and hurt Newt. Big Deal. The GOP got it's slower increase in spending and Clinton ran on the projected surpluses.
Ditto welfare reform. He fought it, fought it, fought it and vetoed it twice. Then he signed it and took all the credit for it's later success after saying at the 1996 convention he'd "fix it".
Now the Democrats talk of all those "surpluses" the Dems had like they are now the fiscally responsible ones. There was only ONE year of a surplus, the rest were projections and then the stock market burst and the economy downturned to a recession and then the uncertainty of 2000 followed by 9/11 and the corporate scandals that were the result of the market burst and fraud.
And don't forget the effect his penis had on the markets because he was impeached.
Clinton and then Gore in 2000 liked to talk of peace and prosperity. As we now know, both were fake. The peace was fake as Clinton ignored all the attacks builiding up to 9/11, mostly because only military personnel were dying. And the prosperity was fake because of the lies told by corporations under a lax SEC and campaign money to the Clinton's. Bob Novak had a good column a couple years back about how the economic numbers were fudged and overstated. Then you subtract the lies of WorldComm, Global Crossings, etc. and you don't get such a rosy picture.
Even the unemployment figure that around 1998-1999 went to 4% was put into question and found wanting in some of their assumptions. Knowing Clinton, they used the household survey while they all today whine about they payroll survey. (question: why does the government do these separate surveys and publish their different numbers knowing all politicians and pundits will pick and choose them? Are we being manipulated? Do they put out conflicting data just to argue about it and make us think they are doing something?)
It was all a house of cards.