Opinion of Bill Clinton

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

FF on balance

[SATW]

FF, but would not vote for in 1992 or 1996.

[FairfaxFred]

The first Black president.

[Ebsy]

Best living president.(normal)

[TDAS04]

FF.

[Beet]

FF.

[NeverAgain]

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.

I agree with everything you said, but I voted FF, because Lewinsky was a hard to get kinda a gal.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Slime

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

One of the most accomplished Republican Presidents.

[The Mikado]

I have a very, very low opinion of Bill Clinton. He's one of the worst men to occupy the White House in the last century (and only "one of" the worst to create an exception in case someone wanted to bring up literal caricature of a human being Richard Nixon as a contender).

It astounds me that there are people I generally agree with who feel that putting the Clinton clan back in the White House is a good idea in any way, shape, or form.

[Ebsy]

I have a very, very low opinion of Bill Clinton. He's one of the worst men to occupy the White House in the last century (and only "one of" the worst to create an exception in case someone wanted to bring up literal caricature of a human being Richard Nixon as a contender).

It astounds me that there are people I generally agree with who feel that putting the Clinton clan back in the White House is a good idea in any way, shape, or form.

Did Bill Clinton rape your father and kill your mother?

[Thunderbird is the word]

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.

All of this, plus ramping up authoritarian policing with the 1994 crime bill, Waco, bombing an aspirin factory, NAFTA, overall moving the Democratic Party to the right. Really one of the few good things he did as president was the Earned Income Tax Credit.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Pretty gross overall.

[Oakvale]

"His" decent policies in office were mainly just authored by the Republican Congress and signed by a desperate Clinton reeling from his disastrous performance in his first term, and the man himself is an unabashed criminal and probable rapist. HP.

[bedstuy]

He was a good President.  Although, the moment of the 1990s made him somewhat irrelevant.  Presidents at times of crisis tend to matter more and get more done, Obama for example. 

[traininthedistance]

They say that a man is defined by his enemies.  Clinton was lucky, in a way, to be defined by the GOP's lunatic witch-hunt impeachment proceedings against him, an act that transmuted his gross personal improprieties into, somehow, a brave stand against disingenuous extremism and for the rule of law.

His policies?  As I've said before, his entire presidency was a rear-guard action against the cresting of the right-wing wave.  They are easy to slam from a distance– and will probably continue to look worse as time goes by– but I'm skeptical that anyone else would have done much better.  And some good stuff did come out of his first two years.

Eh.  Abstain.

[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.

[Oakvale]

Worth pointing out of course that Clinton was extremely cowardly and reluctant to intervene in Kosovo and had to be pretty much forced into it by Tony Blair.

[All Along The Watchtower]

[TNF]

The worst.

[All Along The Watchtower]

From welfare reform, to financial deregulation, to a foreign policy that ranged from bumbling to somnambulant, Bill Clinton left the country worse off in nearly every respect. (And that's all without getting in to the man's truly vile personal life.) It took nearly a decade for the country to realize the full consequences of one of the most incompetent and self-serving presidencies in American history, and we continue to reel from them.

It's a shame that some Democrats are so hesitant to admit to this, presumably so that they can continue to herald the supposed "booming Clinton economy" as a credit to the party. If Clinton had not had the good fortune to preside over a period of economic growth, I wonder how they would regard him.

All of this, basically. I would also add that Bill Clinton's obsession with opinion polling really drove his Presidency;  more than any other recent President,  Clinton was a shameless panderer to (carefully selected, focus-group tested) "constituencies" that he thought would help him get reelected, or otherwise make him look good.

Plus, running as a "New Democrat" (case in point - wasn't that simply a branding tactic for Clinton, rather than an actual commitment to exploring new ideas? *insert cliches about "Reagan Democrats" and wealthy campaign donors here*) may have endeared Clinton to Very Serious People (TM) in Washington, but it certainly didn't mean that Clinton's much-celebrated "centrism" was anything close to a coherent means of governance.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I would've voted for him in 1996 if I was of voting age at the time, but a lot of his policy sucked. Mild HP.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Does anyone take the term "humanitarian intervention" seriously in 2015? It sounds like Newspeak.

[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.

[DemPGH]

This thread went much like I would expect a JFK thread to go.

FF all things considered - there's good, there's bad, and in retrospect he was vastly preferable to the other options. Considering where the country was in 1989, 1999, and 2009, I'll take his years over the others as well. I believe that Presidents inherit everything that came before them back probably a couple decades, and he did the best with what he had that I reasonably think he could have.

His policies?  As I've said before, his entire presidency was a rear-guard action against the cresting of the right-wing wave.  They are easy to slam from a distance– and will probably continue to look worse as time goes by– but I'm skeptical that anyone else would have done much better.  And some good stuff did come out of his first two years.

Agree.