Thanks...the Clinton definition was my very first post on FR under my first screen name 'mad-as-hell' in Jan/Feb? 1998. Of course as more was revealed about the man, his wife, his adminstration, the definition/references grew and grew. Much as his lies and his negative, adverse unfavorable legacy.
Programmatically, he actually DID NOTHING.
He realized that any programmatic action he might take would cause some of his support to bleed away, so he extemporized on a daily basis to maintain his base of support. He allowed things to happen which harmed our nation, but his priority was power. He grabbed it and he held it, against some fairly heavy odds.
He also managed his communications brilliantly. It does no good for our team to point out that the media was his creature and he was their darling. He could and did take that for granted. For example, he managed to convince the nation that it was a "Clinton Economic Boom" and he kept the perception alive for a year and half after it collapsed so that it became a "Bush Downturn."
I think instead of bashing this guy, which is all too easy, we should do a "Lessons Learned" session with each other. For example, never again should we have a President who takes office with so few votes. There should be a system of state-by-state run-off elections before the electoral college meets and votes.
Al Gore makes a BFD about his apochryphal "Popular Vote" victory. But no Democrat ever points out the embarrassing fact that Bill Clintom was twice elected by a clear MINORITY of the citizenry.
The candidacy of Ross Perot directly caused the election of this bad man and this shouod never be allowed to occur again. We'll be paying for Clinton's presidency for generations to come, domestically and internationally.
Nor is Perot solely to blame. Gore missed one of the great oppos of our history, when he failed to demand Clinton's resignation, or offer his own. Bush the Elder failed to use the damaging evidence of this man Clinton's criminality while Governor of Arkansas. This is not a matter of conjecture, the record was damn clear. This failure of the '92 campaign remains the great mystery of 20thC politics.