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Ive often heard Clinton compared with Nero. You know, fiddling while Rome burned? Except in Clintons case it was more like Diddling....

I'm almost as reluctant to pin this on Clinton as on Bush. Yes, Clinton reduced funding, but that was probably more reflected in fewer missions than in safety cutbacks. My unprofessional opinion is that the tiles were going to fail one of these days and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. NASA experts have described the tiles as the shuttle's "weakest link," and it was probably just a matter of time. The only "solution" would have been to start from scratch and design an entire new vehicle, and Congress probably wasn't going to do that no matter who was president.