Posted on 06/26/2004 8:20:05 PM PDT by Libloather
CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
Sat Jun 26, 8:00 PM ET
By Cynthia Tucker
Bill Clinton hopes to be acquitted by history. Fortunately for him, though, no subject of history is ever around to hear its verdict.
Scholars will probably wonder what drove legions of conservatives to hate Clinton with such fury that they wasted years and spent a king's ransom trying to drive him from office. They will no doubt note that Clinton accomplished much despite the "vast right-wing conspiracy": He righted the nation's finances after decades of dangerous deficits. He drove the initiative that stopped a pogrom in Bosnia.
And, quite contrary to conventional wisdom, Clinton contained Saddam Hussein. After the U.S. invasion, President Bush sent weapons inspector David Kay to lead the search for weapons of mass destruction. When he found none, Kay credited the combination of hard-nosed U.N. inspections through the mid-1990s and Clinton's bombing campaign against Iraqi targets in 1998 with eliminating Saddam's stockpiles of WMDs and most of his capacity to produce chemical weapons.
Still, as these first drafts of history are written, it seems unlikely historians will tag Clinton with greatness. Perhaps history itself -- which did not call upon Clinton to found a new nation, or save the union, or confront global tyranny -- robbed the 42nd president of the opportunity for pre-eminence.
But historians may well find that Clinton robbed himself. The fallout from his sordid dalliance with Monica Lewinsky distracted the president from doing that which could have made him great and, in many ways, it reduced his presidency to a foolish caricature.
Clinton's hubris allowed his foes to overwhelm him and hijack the national agenda. His second term might have been devoted to profound problems -- the racial divide, the shrinking middle class, Islamic terrorists. But it was wasted on scandal.
Look at what Clinton might have accomplished. His instincts on race were just right, targeting both racism and black self-destruction. He protected affirmative action; but he also gave a brilliant speech at a black church in Memphis in 1993, challenging activists on black crime, family dissolution and academic failure. Ultimately, however, the racial initiative of his second term came to naught.
A decade of unparalleled prosperity, ushered in by his economic policies, gave him the political capital to tackle the growing divide between rich and poor. He might have dreamed up strategies that would have helped American workers withstand the tidal forces of globalization. He did not.
And then there is the matter of Osama bin Laden and his network of jihadists, al-Qaida. In his autobiography, "My Life," Clinton writes of a difficult period in 1998 when he was trying to salvage his marriage while also confronting al-Qaida attacks on U.S. embassies. On vacation with Hillary, he said, "I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging forgiveness and planning the strikes on al-Qaida."
That about says it all, doesn't it? Even Clinton, with his legendary ability to "compartmentalize," couldn't possibly have concentrated fully on the threat. He was not only distracted, but he was also boxed in by the scandal. Any attempt to deal more harshly with bin Laden would have been derided by political foes accusing him of trying to divert the public's attention.
In "My Life," Clinton owns up to his sins, admitting that "what I had done with Monica Lewinsky was immoral and foolish." But he also spends a vast treasury of words to prove that a cabal of ultraconservatives was determined to wreck his presidency. He's right. They were.
But they weren't elected president. He was. If he genuinely believed that they didn't have the best interests of the nation at heart, he had a moral responsibility to outmaneuver them. Instead, he gave them the ammunition they needed to impeach him.
That's no one's fault but Bill Clinton's.
"Clinton lacked only three things to have become one of America's finest leaders: integrity, vision, and wisdom."
I always said thank God for Linda Trip being who she was.
Just think if little miss-used and abused had spilled her guts about Slick Willie to an unfriendly entity, who then BLACKMAILED Slick Willie/USA for all the things(and more) the rest of the world had to BRIBE that POS to get!!!
Seem to recall terrorists striking this country before Monica became an issue. What was his excuse for not grasping that wonderous opportunity?
These people make me sick. Longing to have terrorists cause bloodshed to build a political legacy.
I'm sure FDR diligently prayed he'd have Pearl Harbor fall in his lap. Reagan probably skipped down the White House halls shouting "I get to defeat the Soviets. Nanananaa!" Ane we all know that when the Towers were hit G.W. let out a holler and broke into impromtu cartwheels.
The truth is no one with a soul wishes the world to be populated by evil for the sake of a legacy. Clinton had every opportunity to confront terrorism as it was building but he lacked the characetr to do so. Popularity outweighed national security.
Furthermore, President Bush has been attacked far more than Clinton ever was. I do not hear similiar excuses arising from his mouth on how he is unable address the threat to this country.
Clinton's legacy will be more than that of impeachment. We were told character did not matter when choosing the President of the United States. Clinton will forever stand as the symbol to that lie.
<< ... "his economic policies" ... >>
Name them, Cynthia.
If, that is, you are ever able to find time from your dual tasks of being Peter-Pricipal Posterboy and walking breathing drooling proof of all that's wrong with affirmative action.
Meanwhile Cli'toon always was and always will be but an empty suit. Flotsam and jetsam in the swamp from which he oozed and who -- despite that he was carried for a time on President Reagan's boom and reluctantly signed into law a couple of the Republicans' changes -- achieved nothing of his own except the transfer of Triilions of Dollars of our secrets and technology to our enemies and the abject corruption of our corporations and markets.
clinton's legacy-
in 94 he lost 52 sets in the house and 9 in the senate
when he took office there were 29 dem govs, when he left 20. Plus literlly a 1000 more republicans in the state houses.
Bottom line best thing that ever happened to the pubs.
But *Crinton isn't too sure -
From 1/30/04 - When asked if he believed Saddam had WMDs, he replied, "[T]he United States and Britain bombed for four days in the places where we thought the remaining chemical and biological stocks were. Because there were no inspectors there, obviously we don't know if we got a hundred percent of what we thought was there, 50% or 10%."
Heck, Monicagate didn't even start until '98. His presidency was pratically over anyway! This is just revisionism trying to blame Republicans for Clinton's "do-nothing" presidency. It's obvious even to the liberal writing this piece that Clinton's presidency accomplished nothing significant and was just a blip in the radar between two eras of Republican presidencies (of which both ends begin with a Bush).
He might have been tried (let alone convicted) had there been any Reublicans with backbones.
Raising taxes will do that. Every time.
As opposed to the 8 years of Reagan where more families moved from the "poor" ot "middle class" than at any other time in history.
Reducing taxes will do that. Every time.
Examine the history of income strata related to tax policy since WW II and you will see that every time taxes have been reduced, employment and household income goes UP. And that the lower brackets grow at a more rapid rate than the higher ones -- thereby closing the income gap.
If the Democrats really wanted to "do something for the working people", they would learn the relationship between taxes and real income and practice accordingly. That they do not is proof that the liberals' real interest in tax policy is as a lever to gain political power...and keep it.
Good satire.
Even if every Republican in the Senate voted to remove Clinton, they still wouldn't have gotten the two-thirds majority required to remove Clinton.
I agree, but a trial would've laid out the case for the American people (witnesses being called for one) and should not have been limited to Monicagate. The Senate should have followed the constitutional procedure.
I tell my liberal friends that Clinton was the greatest Republican President of the 20th century. When he was elected, Democrats controlled a majority of the House, Senate and state Governorships. When he left, Republicans controlled a majority of the House, Senate, state Governorships, . . . and the White House. Here's to Bill!
Anybody got the audio of that...that would make a perfect campaign ad, BTW.
This needs a major barf alert.
What Clinton did was allow the UN the opportunity to embezzle millions of dollars from the Iraqi people. Given the Clinton's nature, I'm surprised that they didn't get a piece of the action, too.
-PJ
Oh I see, its *our* fault that clinton was a failure.
As much as I would have like to see clinton removed from office at the time, I am beginning to see the wisdom of *not* creating a President Gore.
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