Opinion of Bill Clinton

[Beet]

FF.

[Beet]

Wow, the Clinton Derangement Syndrome on here is strong.

Vile, homicidal, disgusting HP. Executed a mentally disabled Black man in 1992 in order to get more votes and avoid looking too lenient. Committed several war crimes in Kosovo/Serbia and Iraq (based on propaganda), while ignoring a real genocide in Rwanda.

How is presiding over a convicted murderer's execution homicidal? By that standard, every governor in the country who has presided over an execution is 'homicidal'.

Sure, he intervened in Kosovo/Serbia and launched airstrikes against Iraq, but his overall foreign intervention record was less than both of his successors, and either less than or comparable to all over post World War II presidents, with the exception of perhaps Jimmy Carter. The U.S. intervention in Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention against a dictator with a recent record of genocide already. Soon after the intervention, said dictator was overthrown, and in the 16 years since, the former Yugoslavia has generally been far more peaceful than it was before. It was also accomplished without the loss of a single American life, which is of great importance to the veterans of this country.

The U.S. cannot intervene in every humanitarian situation around the world- if we did, we would have overthrown the Assad regime in 2012. Some people around here have a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' attitude towards the U.S.

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It astounds me that some erstwhile coherent people can buy into the Clinton Derangement Syndrome stuff. There's something about Clinton that just sticks in the craw of a certain type of liberal - even Christopher Hitchens, an otherwise somewhat intelligent man - can fall victim to it. Just because he does not think exactly like you, it does not make him a terrible president. I'm happy to discuss the record of the Clintons in an open minded and reasonable manner at any time, with anyone.

[Beet]

As traininthedistance pointed out, part of what's going on is, he's being judged for his actions 20 years ago as if the political environment was the same as it is today. Of course, when Bill Clinton announced his run for the presidency in 1991, not only the Democratic party but the collective left was in the worst shape since 1789. Taking the first steps in the long road back will look unpopular now, when all of the rewards are simply assumed.

[Beet]

We can play with counterfactuals until all of we give ourselves aneurysms. I doubt that we'll find useful answers there. What is most important is that when we ask important questions - e.g. What did Clinton do on behalf of the causes that most of us on the left care about? Did his decisions help the poor, the disabled, workers, minorities, and women? Did he make those decisions under a well-informed belief that the outcomes would help those groups on the margin? - it is puzzling to argue, in terms of Clinton's most important policy decisions, that the answers are consistently favorable.

Of course Clinton helped marginalized groups. For one thing, he is the only president since the Warren Court to have moved the SCOTUS to the left - when Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced Byron White. Can you imagine if both White and Blackmun had been replaced by conservatives? You would basically have had a five-vote majority bloc led by Scalia from 1993 until at least 2005.

Some of the legislation passed during Clinton's first term would be almost unheard of today, even in the wildest ambitions of liberals - the Brady Bill, for instance. Or the 1993 revenue bill, which was to the left of anything ever proposed by Obama. While others, which scorn is currently heaped upon him for ("don't ask, don't tell") was actually a step forward. The Family and Medical Leave Act granted new rights to workers.

What Clinton did, however, is he changed the narratives on these issues. When a large ship is turning around, for a long time it will still seem to be moving in the wrong direction. By moving to the center on issues like regulation, crime, and welfare, he effectively destroyed the familiar right-wing narratives of the Reagan era, such as the "welfare queen", the "liberal mugged by reality", the "big inefficient government that can't do anything right". This was a prerequisite to new and different narratives emerging. The left had to get beyond the Great Society and address high crime rates and view of government as irredeemably incompetent. Clinton did all of these things. In the words of one progressive organization, the left needed to "move on" and that is what Clinton allowed us to do.

[Beet]

...and George Bush Sr. signed the Clean Air Act, not to mention the ADA. George Bush Jr. initiated PEPFAR.

Actually, Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act... Bush Sr. merely signed an amendment to it. As to the rest... so? I believe there was a thread recently about what you liked about George Bush Jr. A lot of people just said something ironic. I mentioned PEPFAR and genuinely praised him for it. (Edit: I was not the first or only one). It really is something he doesn't get enough credit for.

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Lol, first, he's blamed for intervening, then, he's blamed for dragging his feet not intervening? This is classic CDS. In any case, getting elected as a Democrat is more than could be said for his four of his five predecessors as Democratic nominee (and two of his successors). Which is precisely the point. One has to get elected in order to implement policy, and to get elected one needs a majority coalition, or at least very near one... which is what Bill built. Since 1992, Democrats have won the popular vote in five of six elections, whereas beforehand they had lost five of six. There are thousands of administrative decisions taken by agencies every single day which are effected based on who the president is, and hundreds of judicial decisions handed down which are affected by the temperament of the presiding judge(s). These are the actual governing of the country, not big-name bills.

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I assure you... political debate today looks nothing like it did pre-Clinton. In 1984, a white man on the subway shot four unarmed black men simply for them asking him for five dollars, and was cheered as a hero!.

[Beet]

Lol, first, he's blamed for intervening, then, he's blamed for dragging his feet not intervening? This is classic CDS.

Are you replying to me or are you pontificating into the great beyond? I don't expect you to keep up with my opinions but I don't appreciate being conflated with whichever ignoramus was blathering about "war crimes" and "imperialism" on the preceding page of this thread.

I guess my point is, no matter what side people stand on the Kosovo question, they always seem to find whatever negative it is, that they don't like and highlight that. Clinton literally can't win here, and this is a classic manifestation of CDS... which is a social syndrome, not an individual one.

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A sample size of six on each side is pretty damn big when you're talking about presidential elections. If you flip a coin and it comes up tails 5 of 6 times, then an event happens, then you flip the coin and it comes up heads 5 of 6 times, what is the probability the event was not significant? And it's not just wins and losses... if you look at which states Clinton made reliably Democratic, it's more than any other Democrat since FDR.

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Being used and being effective are two very different things.

[Beet]

The point seems to be that Clinton's policies are so indefensible on their own terms ... Qualifications of this sort are unfailingly a sign that any substantive disagreement is about to be dismissed as the product of the other party's madness, malice, or ignorance.

Lol, am I supposed to debate every true leftist who insists that Hillary killed Vince Foster? Have I not engaged you? Bill Clinton's policy in question here (Kosovo), I defended the substance of at the outset of this discussion. That doesn't change the fact that there are legions of people out there who will twist any Clinton action in a negative way, and then twist the precise opposite action in a negative way as well.

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Actually, it is fair to blame the fact that we had a Democratic president elected in 1992 for the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994. But the reason I don't look at it, is because the presidency is more important than Congress.

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Do you think presidents have an impact on the prospects for their parties at all, then? If everything is determined by "fundamentals", then why does it even matter who a party nominates? Why does it matter which policies are enacted? If, as you argue, incompetence and wrong policies and wrong political strategies are rewarded with a growing coalition, victories at the presidential level, a booming economy, a balanced budget, falling welfare rolls, falling poverty rates, peace abroad, broad-based incomes gains, and respect around the world, then what is the reward of competence and good policies and good political strategies?

Clinton's substantive policies and political strategies were right for the time when he was in office. I see a lot of liberals saying, "well, that hasn't continued... poverty isn't falling anymore, wages are stagnating, crime peaked in the early 1990s... and Clinton's policies are an inappropriate to action." Which is all true. Times change, the facts change, and so our positions change. Bill is no longer president, and hasn't been for 15 years. If he were president today I'm sure his own policies would be very different.

[Beet]

Clinton got 3 million more votes than Dukakis. And 38% of Perot voters said they would have gone for Clinton in a two-way race. That's 7.5 million more votes, for a total of 11.5 million more votes in hypothetical a two way race.