Experiencing Clinton
You've gotta love those Clintons!
Hillary supported the war before she sort of opposed it, as you know.
And now it turns out that Bill actually opposed the war before his wife supported it and even before she opposed it. Maybe having the Clintons back in the White House really would be fun for those of us who write for a living. Maybe it's time for me to plant one of those pro-Hillary "Turn Up The Heat" lawn signs out in the front yard.
Even more wonderful, Bill now tells us that he "resents" the Bush tax cuts because that denied him the chance to financially support the troops!
Does Bill know the WGA is still on strike?
Isn't he worried about scabbing on the comedy writers?
Is there something I don't know about that has kept him from donating 30% or so of the $10 million he earned in speaker fees last year to the USO? Man, did he ever get gypped by Bush!
Anyway, back to Ms. Clinton who is now pounding away at Barack Obama and touting her domestic and foreign policy experience garnered as First Lady. (Didn't Hillary, by the way, used to be known as Hillary Rodham Clinton precisely because she wanted to be her own woman and not co-dependent as Bill's lawfully wedded wife?).
So what's the theory here? That Hillary became a policy genius though osmosis? Does that mean that Laura Bush is ready to be Secretary of State (though she'd probably be an improvement over the current occupant)?
Truth be told, Hillary Clinton's policy experience is mostly linked to two high-profile catastrophes: the failed health care push of 1994 and the infamous vote to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002. If I were Hillary, I'd try not so hard to remind everybody of my policy feats.
But if Hillary is going to take credit for Bill's policies, does that mean she is also accepting authorship of:
1) His triangulation of his own Democratic Party to pass NAFTA?
2) His order to Janet Reno to blockade traditional border crossings causing migrant deaths to soar ten-fold?
3) The abolition of the federal welfare safety net?
4) The signing of the 1996 Effective Death Penalty act which exploited the Oklahoma City bombing to strip death row prisoners of habeas corpus rights and to lay the legal groundwork for the Patriot Act?
5) The execution of the mentally retarded Rickey Ray Rector to distract attention away from Gennifer Flowers?
6) The Waco BBQ?
Just asking.
It's about judgment. Not "experience." We've had enough experience with this family, I think.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:40 am
And don’t forget 6) (or 2a), Clinton’s immigration “reform,” the IIRAIRA:
http://www.nyls.edu/pdfs/WLDoc03_07_2006_03_43PM.pdf
November 28th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Marc’s got two number 5′s in his list, but I would like to zero in on the second number 5: Waco. Although this has become a cause celebre for some on the right, the CS gassing of the compound, which led to the deaths of nearly two dozen children in the resulting fire, was an incredibly irresponsible and despicable act–one which Bill Clinton bears full responsibility for. The evidence is manifest that he approved Janet Reno’s decision, despite his attempts to distance himself from it afterwards. The episode represents the kind of irresponsible opportunism that has characterized the Clintons all through their political careers; even worse than Hillary’s vote for the Iraq war, in my view, was her running to a New York City rally to support Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which also resulted in more than a thousand deaths of innocent civilians. This is how they act, and this is how they will act, when and if they get back in the White House.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I don’t even think they even have principled positions on the wrong side of sisues. A lot of family members of mine who are AIPAC types don’t trust Hillary in/re that specific issue suddenly rallying to Israel’s side during their brutal war on the people of Lebanon – they feel that after Clinton was on stage with Suha Arafat who spouted what I would say to be inarguably Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that Clinton needed a symbolic act like that to regain her stature among Israel supporters.
The Lobby prefers Guiliani, or even Obama.
Not to say that this makes me like Clinton, but she’s got no positions on anything that are principled, right or wrong.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Gee you forgot their role in the Lindburgh baby kidnapping!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Clinton dealing with immigration: Action – Results
November 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Of course I could go thru the list of accomplishments – like the greatest reduction of poverty since the sixties, thje first rise in real wages in a decade with the lowest cohort getting the largest increase, the Fsmily and Medical Leave Act, SCHIPS, Northern Ireland etc. And all this – including a surplus that was retiring the private debt and leaving the treasury with $200+ billion a year that could go to domestic programs instead of to bond holders without ONE PENNY OF TAX INCREASE – accomplished with a GOP Congress investigating his butt constantly and demanding a special prosecutor for every cabinet member for littering.
Had Al Gore (remember him?) taken over as he should have those first steps would have led to a very different America today. But no Marc, you and Ariana and Chris Hitchens and all the other oh so pure “Left” Progressives just knew better and went off and enabled Nader. So please! I don’t back Hillary in this race. I prefer Edwards. But I’ll be damned if I let your ilk hand us Guiliani or Romney. If she gets the nomination I’ll bust my hump for her. And an yone who sits it out or moans or shits or any such nonsense is an enemy of those peoplke they claim to support.
Sorry to be so negative but I’m tired of bs. The real thing you’ve got against Clinton is his sin of winning. For too long the left in this country has been holier than thou. It made the perfect the enemy of the good. Well tought! You don’t want to play in the Demjs sandpile. You’ve said that over and over. Fine! Then stay out and let us grown ups handle it.
I hear Vegas is nice this time of year. Go play some Hold-em and let us do our thing!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:19 am
RLC – I hear and understand your passion but utterances like, “And anyone who sits out or moans or shits or any such nonesense is an enemy of those people they claim to support” only serves to further polarize those of us who are looking for a change and don’t see it in the “polarizing” form of Ms. Clinton.
If I disagree with you I’m your “enemy”? And you call yourself a “grown up”?
Until we as a people learn to shift our mindset away from “those who disagree with me are bad” there will never be any change in this country. And it happens on the Left and the Right.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Sorry but I know a lot of folks who – if they are lucky – live in motels and depend on the local soup kitchens for a meal each day. I know plenty of folks who are not too well off physically eithert and depend on Medical or IMS (a County indigent health program). So I know that the Clinton years made a difference in their lives.
Arianna can run her “shadow” Conventions as she did in 2000. And she can mourn the loss of Al Gore. But back then she was singing a different tune. It didn’t affect her. It was an intellectual excercise.
It isn’t to me.
November 28th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
There’s a lot of nonsense sputtered here about the Clintons, but I agree with those who feel strongly that liberal Democrats should be doing their best right now to push for an alternative to her candidacy. I’m glad that there at least appears to be a chance to stop her. But if she’s the Democratic candidate, Richard is absolutely right. We should work diligently for her election, because as much as I don’t like having “the future” diminished to an echo of the recent past, a return to “the Clinton years” would be a blessing compared to ANY Republican administration on offer. Anyone who hasn’t learned that minimal lesson is absolutely not a friend of the disadvantaged or those struggling to keep it all together, nor of the young people serving in Iraq.
No “viable” GOP candidate has a health care plan worthy of the name, none have clearly disassociated themselves from this administration’s endless occupation of Iraq and none have pledged anything other than continuing to stack the Supreme Court with fringe ideologues.
Maybe you disagree on these issues. Fine – but if you claim to be “liberal” yet can’t support Hillary in the general election, my attitude is “fuck you” – you’re trying to sell an “idealism” in a general presidential election – the most inherently compromised of arenas- that strikes me as little more than self-regard and a deliberate evasion of rational political calculation.
Richard is right that, on what may appear to be “the margins” to many middle-class “progressives”, real people lose in tangible and very hurtfui ways when “the greater evil” gains access to greater power. Anecdotal Clinton horror stories largely involved with perceptions of “character”, political calculation or compromise and some of which are simply bogus, don’t even begin to compare – not one iota, frankly – to the damage that the “alternative” will have systematically wrought on this country over 8 years.
I don’t think that “anyone who disagrees with me is bad”, but I do think that people who claim to care about folks who are dependent in some way or another on “the system” need to chek themselves and their motives if they are so wrapped up in their contempt for the Clinton’s that they are willing to hand our essential governmental institutions over to be run by the people who despise them (or at the very least devise an electoral strategy based on wooing the folks who despise them).
November 28th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
“despise them” referring to the institutions of govenrance, not Bill et. al.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Over at Beautiful Horizons, Richard “Praise Clinton!” LoCicero writes:
“Remember what happened to Robert Danner and Robert Perry when they dare to report on massacres in El Salvador in the early eigthties? Danner, a New York TIMES reporter saw his paper fold and fail to back him up when the Reagan Administration complained.”
Robert Danner? I think you mean Raymond Bonner of the Times, who was placed on the metro beat. There is no Robert Danner who wrote about El Salvador. There was Mark Danner, who wrote about the El Mozote massacre for the New Yorker, but that’s a different guy at a different outlet. Robert Perry was in fact Robert Parry, who wrote (with Brian Barger) about contra atrocities for Newsweek and AP, without censure, I might add.
Before you assure us of all the wonderful “successes” of the Clinton years, you might want to do some simple fact-checking, ‘else we might get the impression that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
So the names are confused (both Bonner and Danner wrote on this for the NYRB. by the way) but the point being made about the Times ditching their reporter under pressure is correct.
Now what was it exactly that rlc wrote about the Clinton record that you believe is factually incorrect ?
November 28th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
And then there’s Wen Ho Lee.
Of course, the editors of NY Times also behaved in a vile and irresponsible manner with that one.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=32
November 28th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
You’re right and I shall correct it forthwith
November 28th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Of course Bonner and Danner both reported on the same story. GuessI’m getting brain lock as I get older!
November 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
6) the Blowjob Bombing of Sudan
November 28th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Actually it was Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto. Danner wrote a lengthy New Yorker article (indeed IIRC it was the entire issue) about El Mozote that was turned into a book.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
This is the part I love: Democrats struggling with the fact that good ol’ Bill is a sociopath.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
The only sociopath who has been in the Oval Office is the current occupant buddy! See Tucker Carlson’s profile in the WEEKLY STANDARD, see the books by Suskind, Woodward, Marc Crispin Miller. Sorry but you’re not allowed to get away with that crap anymore!
November 28th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
What was wrong with Romney’s health care for all plan in MA? Why can’t we require everyone to have a health care policy, and means test those that need gov’t help in paying for it?
Why does it have to be FREE and the SAME for EVERYONE and paid in full by the GOV”T? Why are we not means testing, then gov’t subsidizing only where need, all those that receive ENTITLEMENTS paid for by the rest of us? In some cases actually getting benefits paid by workers much less well to do than those getting it for FREE.
Excuse me, but its bankrupting us and FREAKING CRAZY!
November 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Not to mention unjust and socialistic. Oh sorry, I repeated myself.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
So RLC, while not taking a position (though leaning towards the affirmative), you really believe that George W. Bush is the only sociopath to ever live in the White House?
November 28th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
The Waco denialism of this crowd is also disturbing. Guess its OK to use state power against white reactionaries, right?
November 28th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Good question, Jim R. Ask Mitt Romney, who’s running away from it…
November 28th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Marc, you also forgot #6 (7?): Invited Hillary’s pals (and campaign contributers to both Clintons) to co-write the Clinton Health Care proposal of 1994, which would have been a corporate welfare boon to the insurance industry by mandating high-cost, low maintenance care for all businesses great and small, a lousy yuppie piece of legislation that would have done nothing to help the huge problem in this country of the underinsured (and indeed, would have expanded that number), who outnumber the “uninsured” by millions…
Or we could also add elevating the embargo on the Cuban people (Helms Burton signing), after telling Bush Sr. in the debates that even he was too soft on Cuba…
Or we could add bombing Iraq, as well as pharmaceutical plants in Africa (without restitution), to take attention and heat off of Monicagate and his weenie…
Or Joining with Joseph Lieberman and Jesse Helms to push for greater censorship of television, movies, and video games; including for grownups…
Or joining Newt Gingerich in supporting school prayer…
I have to disagree with Ric and Reg – a Clinton Presidency would NOT be a preferable alternative to any Republican administration. I live in Kansas, and my Republican representative in Congress – Jerry Moran – has a more progressive record in congress than Hillary Clinton. Even him. He was one of a handful of Republicans to vote against the popular Medicare prescription plan a few years ago because in his words it was unfair to those who were not covered. He also voted against No Child Left Behind…the list goes on.
The Clinton Presidency? Most truly serious observers agree that if the 1996 welfare “reform” act had arrived at George Bush Sr.’s desk in 1996, he would have vetoed it. It is that simple. Furthermore, I don’t believe that NAFTA and GATT would have been swallowed by Congress – Democrat or Republican – if a Republican had been in office, and neither do many insiders in D.C. The outrage against a Republican president advocating either a loathesome trade deal or a welfare bill that strips children of bare necessities would not have stood with either the public or congress.
This is why I am more disgusted at the prospect of Clinton Part 2 presidency than I am at a Republican presidency – she and her pig-rat husband will do or say anything to get elected and maintain power.
But even more, I am sickened by their rabid core supporters who support Hillary (and her husband) for ALL the wrong reasons – these mornonic supporters support her for one major reason, in fact, that trumps all: they want to stick it to the Clinton critics in the Republican Party who (I agree) were quite absurd in their loud and borish dyspeptic rantings in print and on airwave throughout the Clinton years. What is so ridiculous about all of this is that Clinton might be in the top three echelon of most desired candidates (of both parties) of the vast majority of neo-conservatives in this country.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
To add to this – despite what the mainstream media may have you believe, I would argue vociferously that the reason why W.’s approval ratings began to dramatically go south beginning in late 2005 is NOT because people in this country wanted a return to the Clinton years – it is the precise opposite. Core support for or against Bush didn’t dramatically change, but independents became disenchanted with Bush because they viewed him, as one independent friend of mine told me, as “playing Bill Clinton better than Bill Clinton” (Plame leak indictments, the cornucopia of changing rationales for the invasion of Iraq, relaxing on vacation as an American city’s poor drowned).
November 28th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Someone here actually believes that the number of people living in motels and eating in soup kitchens will necessarily go down if Hillary Clinton is elected President? Fannnnn-tasss-tic!
More likely the amount of Kool-Aid consumed will rise.
Oh.. a couple of other “accomplishments” of the Clinton era:
– Losing the Congress to Republicans.
– Losing the majority of state houses to the Republicans.
– Losing the majority of state legislatures to Republicans.
Whose fault is that? Fox TV? The VRWC? Or the incumbent party that was unable to galvanize and secure a governing majority?
November 28th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Preach on, Marc…lost amidst all of the (albeit justified) yuks of some in the punditocracy over Hillary and Bill’s revisionist rewriting of their support/non-support (which will probably magically change a third time if Hillary gets the nomination) is Hillary proclaiming in debates and on campaign stops that she and her husband “took on the insurance industry” [in 1994 to push for health care reform]. Puh-shaw. Hillary has been in bed with the insurance industry since her early days in Arkansas with Bill. She invited the insurance industry into the white house to co-write the bill itself! We don’t hear about THAT.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
I should have stated in the first sentence, “Hillary and Bill’s revisionist rewriting of their support/non-support of the 2002 push for war in Iraq.” That gets all of the attention, but the fact that she wanted to work with the health care industry to boost its profits in 1994 – despite her audacious statements that claim the opposite – is just as outlandish as her statements on her support/non-support (not sure which it is today, since it changes constantly) of the Iraq war resolution in 2002….or, her support/non-support (which is is?) of undocumented workers acquiring drivers licenses. Such a damn confusing politician, yet her lovely core base seems to really be in synch with her…sheesh.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
…and speaking of FOX News/News Corp….Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen estimated that one of Bill Clinton’s other crowing “achievements” – signing into law the Republican Party written, pork-laden 1996 Telecommunications Act – gave away to the broadcasting industry anywhere from 20 billion to 100 billion dollars in free property (e.g., corporate welfare) in the form of the digital spectrum. The biggest winner in this giveway bonanza, as written by the Republican congess and signed into law by Clinton? Rupert Murdoch. And who, according to Z magazine (and other sources) was the biggest campaign supporter for Bill Clinton most responsible for turning around his fortunes in Nov. 1996? You guessed it: the Telecommunications Industry….his opponent, Bob Dole, even refused to vote for the bill as senator from my state, calling it “corporate welfare”…which it was.
Bill and Hillary Clinton: American progressives.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
What I like to see (shown today microcosmically in the above hyperbolic postings ) is the destruction of the corporate and quasi- fascist two party reign in the US Empire, and with that the Empire itself.
Consequently, I am leaning to supporting the candidate that destroys the U.S. as presently configured the most: a close race between Hillary and any Republican,
November 28th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Although I’m more on the rlc/reg side of the debate here, I take exception to the argument from economics. Bill Clinton rode to the White House because it was “the economy, stupid”, and he knew it. He won a second term in large part for a similar reason: an improved economy under his administration. But to what extent was that to his credit? And how much better did our economy become *fundamentally*?
He delivered a $200 billion federal surplus without a tax increase? Wait just a minute here. Don’t capital gains on stocks — which soared wildly during the bubble — count as a tax increase in some sense? They were certainly a revenue windfall. You might remember the big argument about what to do about the huge federal budget surplus projected for decades. Well, that projection was based on productivity-growth numbers that turned out to be bogus, but the mentality engendered by the projection only sent stocks higher (and thus, capital gains tax receipts.)
Presidents get a lot more credit for a good economy than they should; likewise, they shoulder a disproportionate amount of blame for a bad one. To a great extent, market economies have a life of their own, and resist most policy manipulations. I’m reminded of what one wag (a member of Clinton’s cabinet IIRC) said on matter: something like, “In my next life, I don’t want to come back as President. No, I want to be reincarnated as the bond market. Then I could kick anybody’s ass.”
November 29th, 2007 at 12:56 am
David – your boy Jerry is an ultra-conservative who has one of the worst environmental records in congress. He votes, occasionally, against a bad bill as well as good ones because he is against “big government.”
As for the rest of it, it’s nonsense – remarkably unconvincing, predictably anecdotal, and selectively “factual” ( GHW Bush would have vetoed welfare “reform”? Bob Archer Daniels Midland Dole is an opponent of corporate welfare ? Actually, he reversed himself on the sale of spectrum telecom issue when broadcasters approached him and said they’d quit supporting his presidential bid if he didn’t relent. But, yes, originally he – and John McCain – were right about compensation.)
I’ll admit that my “lesser evil” argument is as tired – banal even – as the “not a dimes worth of difference” refrain, but on health care alone, Hillary is far ahead of every potential GOP opponent – to a degree that makes her not just a “lesser evil” but moderately progressive. The recent SChip brouhaha proves the point about relative negative outcomes with Hillary vs. her GOP foes. Of course, how many people here actually need the SChip expansion to cover their kids. I’d love for the clever lefties to come up with some such person who would agree with them on sitting out the election, voting third party or casting an “apocalypse” vote for one of the 4 Horsemen of the GOP. But even the issue of health care pales when one contemplates the question of the supreme court under another GOP presidency. I honestly don’t know what the hell people are talking about who take the nihilist position of either welcoming a GOP victory over Hillary or at least not caring one way or the other – aside from the cool pose. It’s embarrassing to keep arguing this, it’s so damned stupid.
Also, Michael is right to the extent that Presidents can mostly only manage at the margins in terms of economic success….but they can do real damage by mismanaging with stuff like irresponsible tax policy, which – unless one is devoted to millenarian politics of the apocalypse like Sergio – is something that one would try to avoid by electing reasonably competent “adult” administrations. Clinton’s was. Actually, we should thank Sergio for making the essence of the counter-argument clear. He’s rather like Pat Buchanan in that he’s not loathe to put the “crank” agenda in 25 words or less. I respect the honesty.
(And, of course, Hillary is NOT my candidate. I’m working to defeat her in the primary – and believe we will.)
November 29th, 2007 at 6:34 am
“Also, Michael is right to the extent that Presidents can mostly only manage at the margins in terms of economic success”
Maybe to the extent that no legal or ethical guidelines are breached, but Clinton broke both on a regular basis, although I will admit that his legal and ethical transgressions pale dimly in relation to the current president.
My problem – among others – is that putting both Clintons back in the White House next year rewards them for their behavior from 93-01…
Jerry Moran is in favor of expansion of health care to cover more Americans than practically any Republican in Congress. And when the Kansas Republican delegation in Congress (Tiahrt, Moran in the House; Roberts and Brownback in the Senate) votes on Republican legislation, Moran is quite often the dissenting vote, siding with Dems Boyda and Moore. Moran would definitely be more favorable than any of the current GOP presidential candidates.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:36 am
And Hillary and Bill’s health care legislation from 1994 would have made things much worse than they are now.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:37 am
As usual reg springs to the bait, defending the corrupt two party status quo that enables him as a shut-in serial poster-frother.
Fortunately for society, reg fails to speak for anyone, despite the pelotudo’s predilection for posts in the plural.
If I were reg’s GW Bush government minder, I’d be upset at all the Federal money he’s wasted at his keyboard trying to make GW Bush’s government look good. Time for our serial poster to look for another line of work, like Hillary will in a few years.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Jesus Serg, If you have nothing coherent to contribute, the ‘time’ is for you to either ban yourself from polluting Marc’s blog with pathetic pot shots, or think about the classic wise reminder that it is better to remain silent and appear to have nothing to say, than post anyway and remove all doubt?
November 29th, 2007 at 10:45 am
That was the funniest post from our aging, apolitical hiptard since the one about the “hot Republican babes” that made the ’80s so exciting for him…
November 30th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Marc, yes people living in those SROs were doing better in the 90s. Sorry that you were too busy bleeding for all thos poor exploited “undocumented” coming here to notice (what was that Woody Allen joke? Oh yes: “The food here is terrible!” “Yes and such small portions!”)Michael, I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. Yes Clinton raised taxes on the top 2% and was precluded by political reality fromj introducing a “Carbon Tax” – Al Gore’s innovative idea that also fights global warming. What I was disuccing was the use of the surplus to retire the Privately held Federal Debt. Interest on the debt was the fastest growing itemin the Fed budget. (Thanks to Bush that is true again) The annual payments on that debt – interest that is – was somewhere north of $200 Billion. And it was a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle to the bond holders (like Ross Perot who had most of his money in Treasuries). What would you like to see the Govt spend on? Infrastructure? Defense? Health Care? Well not one dime of that money does any of that! But the Clinton plan would have freed that money for other purposes – and at a cost of not one dime inh new taxes.
TYhe failure of the Left to understand this was one of the great blunders of the 2000 campaign. But then, they would have had to reasonhj – rather than bleat about “Welfare” and those poor campasinos who were struggling to come here even though we’re such a corrupt place!
December 1st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Each time we hear a talk radio Nazi say “She can’t win,” it means they’re afraid of her.
Talk radio whores are saying great things about Obama, which should make you wonder.
Why would a facsist bastard say nice things about Obama?
I have nothing bad to say about Obama.
If Obama wins – whoever wins the Democratic nomination, I’m behind him/her all the way.
But seriously, between the Black guy with two years experience
and the only team to win back-to-back presidential campaigns since FDR,
(the team that beat war hero Bush and war hero Dole),
…who do you think the super-racist GOP wants to run against? … Rudy?
(Some call that “Hillary worship.”
Looks like common sense to me.)
I’m not helping to elect Rudy!
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:38 am
Have another Wil. You are helping elect Rudy.
December 2nd, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Jim R, You think Obama is going to be our next president? Have a talk with Senator Harold Ford JR!