Posted on 09/28/2001 1:03:58 PM PDT by VinnyTex
The Sorrow of Bill Clinton By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru |
No president obsessed over his "legacy" as much as Bill Clinton did. He sometimes complained that he had no enormous national crisis to contend with, meaning that he didn't have a fair shot at attaining historic greatness. "The first thing I had to start with was, you know, we don't have a war," he told the New York Times in 1997. "We don't have a depression, we don't have a Cold War." Poor guy. He never really had a chance. Some of us worried whether he was up to handling Haiti, never mind a global crisis. It's no surprise, however, that he's in a funk now, as his successor is being lauded for his handling of a national catastrophe, praised for delivering one of the great speeches in American history, and hurtled into stratospheric levels of popularity according to the opinion polls that Clinton so treasured during his tenure. Today's New York Times describes Clinton as lamenting that such a thing didn't happen on his watch. Richard L. Berke reports, "A close friend of Mr. Clinton put it this way: 'He has said there has to be a defining moment in a presidency that really makes a great president. He didn't have one.'" More than 6,000 people die to terrorism, and Bill Clinton still thinks it's all about him.
Part of the reason is the bipartisan sentiment that the president should be free to conduct foreign policy. Trade liberalization tends to be achieved by strong presidents overcoming congressional parochialism and logrolling. When presidents are weak, protectionism surges. It was after the Reagan administration was crippled by Iran-contra that Dick Gephardt was able to pass legislation authorizing retaliatory tariffs against countries deemed to be "unfair traders." And it was a sign of Clinton's second-term weakness that he was unable to win trade-promotion authority (then called "fast track"). President Bush's political strength has, of course, increased dramatically since September 11. Bill Thomas, the chairman of the ways and means committee, has made passage more likely by reaching a compromise with New Democrats. The compromise includes some provisions on labor and the environment. But as Brink Lindsey, a trade analyst at the Cato Institute, notes, that should not be a red flag to free-market advocates so long as the language is "hortatory not mandatory." Since we're not going to be able to get other countries to sign a global free-trade deal with such conditions, there's no reason for Bush's trade negotiators to take the labor-and-environment provisions too seriously. A more serious problem is that the compromise asks negotiators to protect the country's egregious "anti-dumping" laws, which target countries that commit the crime of selling products to us too cheaply. This demand should be softened: Negotiators could be asked to safeguard the goals of anti-dumping laws, such as they are, without necessarily committing to the laws themselves. But at least the compromise ignores the proposal of Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that the president's authority not extend to any deal that would require a change in American laws which would abort negotiations before they even start. The global economy could use trade liberalization at the moment, not that it's relevant to the political dynamics on the Hill. After the attacks, currency markets saw the typical flight to safety which hit the economies of Latin America, especially Brazil and by extension Argentina, hard. As Mark Falcoff of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, the continent is already backsliding from democracy. We don't need instability to our south right now, or demands for U.S. aid. Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, an increasingly influential voice in Republican economic-policy debates, thinks trade-promotion authority can pass. "It's important for the economy, and it's important for national security," he says. "We have no choice. We've got to pass this. It's too important." |
Poor x42, having to suffer the "consequences" of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
This guy is such a loser.
He could have done everything that President Bush is doing now and would have been deemed great by history. Instead, history will judge him by opportunities given and not acted on. He will be on the list of the worst of our Presidents because he cared more for himself than he did for Country.
The guy said that during the 2000 campaign Clinton's attitude about candidate George W. Bush was a bizarre mix of extreme anger and wistful envy. On several occasions Clinton expressed his displeasure about how a plain-speaking, easy-going (and "dumb," in the minds of Democrats) guy from Texas could attract so much attention without any effort. Clinton was particularly despondent because even many people in the media who had been Clinton's strongest apologists actually LIKED Bush.
In retrospect, the defining moment of the Bush administration came during the six-week hiatus between Election Day and the end of the Florida recount debacle. The BBC had a round-table discussion about the U.S. election results that included a small group of talking heads from both the U.S. and Great Britain. One of the British panelists launched into a simpering, sniveling attack on George W. Bush for his lack of intelligence, "stealing the election," etc. Lanny Davis was one of the panelists (yes, THAT Lanny Davis!), and he proceeded to tear a new @sshole or two into the British guy.
When I heard about this afterward, I was quite confused. I mentioned it to someone who knew George W. Bush personally from years ago, and he could only laugh about it.
"You have to remember," he said, "that Lanny and George were classmates at Yale -- and nobody who has ever known George W. Bush will ever have a bad thing to say about him.
This was a mistype. It should have said "That SorryAss Bill Clinton".
Translation:
Bill Clinton would have gladly allowed twice as many citizens to be murdered if it would have given him the chance to bite his lower lip and "feel our pain".
It' so disgusting..........Hasn't the Media figured out by now that we don't want to hear any more about that creep?....When will they get over their love fest with that abominable excuse for a man?..........He is so pathetic, wallowing in his own self pity......We've had enough already!!! CEASE AND DESIST, YOU PANDERING MEDIA. You have a REAL PRESIDENT TO WRITE ABOUT NOW..
Have you been communicating with the National Review?
In case you forgot again Bill, it was your response to the overweight intern snapping her thong at you.
He had a defining moment--"Ahh did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski." It just didn't make him a great president--in fact, it was just the opposite...
Woe is he...nothing to do but dork 22 year old interns and...well....finish himself in the sink.
Too bad we can't trade this despicable bast*rd for one of those killed by the terrorists.
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