I don’t like Hilary much either, but I think if they could communicate the idea that a Hilary presidency is like a third term for Bill Clinton, it might be a lot more paletteable. In any case, there’s no chance in hell I’m voting anything but Democrat next year, because the idea of a far right Supreme Court is fucking terrifying.
Also, this John Dean guy, who’s been making the rounds lately for his Broken Government book likes to say that Bush and the neocons have authoritarian personalities. I think “authoritarian” is a fine descriptor for Bush’s governing policies, since “conservative” suggests to me empowering the states, and some philisophical relationship with libertarianism.
Yeah, the book is interesting in that he blasts Bush for “abandoned the central conservative principle of fiscal restraint” and he also blast Democrats for “rampant federal spending,” but praises Clinton and calls Clinton’s 1993 economic plan “an act of courage.” For someone who liberals have blasted in the past for being a conservative ally, due to his preference for tax cuts and lower federal spending, his effusive praise for Clinton is very interesting.
I read the bolded typo, and the first thing that came into my mind was Bill O’Reilly and his falafel episode. Then that was followed by a Bush & Condi falafel episode, and then… we’ll… the substance of your post was lost due to the juvenile nature of my mind. I do apologize, and yet… <hee hee>
That’s because once Clinton realized that goofy-assed handout schemes like his Medicare reforms weren’t going to work, he became one of the better examples of relatively moderate fiscal policy. Granted, he was helped by coming off of the prior Bush presidency and the economic wave that followed, but he still deserves a great deal of credit himself.
He was very good at reading the writing on the wall (Gingrich revolution, for example) and flowing with it to the extent within the very malleable nature of his viewpoints, as opposed to drawing hard lines and refusing to work. Clinton was one of those presidents who, in my opinion, was most horrible when he could actually unilaterally call his shots (because he overreached, and was corrupt when given unfettered power), but very valuable when working with an opposition (because he actually worked with them, and government still went forward).
A lot of people forget that welfare reform happened under Clinton, for example. The guy was nowhere near the liberal monster (at least on fiscal issues) that most of the nutcase hard rightwingers said he was. This, as opposed to our current guy, who seems corrupt and stupid when his own party is in power (like Clinton), but incapable of being flexible or getting anything done at all when it is not (unlike Clinton).
Would anyone aside from wacky conspiracy theories have predicted not only how hard-right-wing the “compassionate conservative” candidate would turn out to be, but how completely Bush has ravaged the rule of law in 2000? There’s lots of places that a left-wing administration could go that would be distinctly unpleasant. Which isn’t to say that would be what could happen in a Clinton administration - at her worst she’s a statist liberal, not an authoritarian socialist (which would be the left-wing equivalent to Bush’s authoritarian neoconservatism, I suppose). We might get a ridiculous health care bureaucracy but I doubt we’d see a nationalization of Exxon or something.
Everything I’ve read about the Clintons was that Bill was the pragmatist of the family, and Hilary was the ideologue. Which is why her current leaning-right is somewhat spooky. Fool me once and all that.
Slyfrog, do remember that the welfare reform was a wave that was coming, with some states leading the way, and Clinton was smart enough to get on board as a “sponsor.” But I think that illustrates why Clinton was one of the great politicians of our time: he could read the directions and trends of the country and work with the opposition in getting things done in those areas. Ironically, I think Clinton and Reagan were the two great politicians of recent times.
Greenspan’s admiration for Clinton says a lot, IMO. From what I have read of Greenspan, who had a huge impact on this nation in recent decades, he’s very analytical and pragmatic. He portrays Clinton as a detail oriented, intellectually curious, intelligently calculating man. While it is easy to write off the good economy during Clinton’s era as him just riding the wave and the dot com boom (and the general truism is that presidents get more credit/blame for the economy than they deserve,) Greenspan makes a good case that Clinton made some strong and politically courageous moves. Coming from a politically biased/motivated person, you could write that off. Coming from Greenspan, that’s quite a tribute.
When we’re in the re-education camps breaking rocks and wiping the sweat from our bar-coded foreheads, I’ll pause to admit you had a point. Then the guards will shoot me with Dagorian Pain Slime for slacking off.
If I remember correctly, Molly Ivins was predicting the compassionate conservative thing was all a head fake back in 2000. I can’t recall anyone predicting the quasi-fascist turn, though.
On the subject of “who could have foreseen” with respect to Bush, I don’t recall anyone thinking that “compassionate conservatism” was anything beyond a slogan. Obviously the guy was a social conservative – pro-death penalty, anti-gay, the system is working, etc.
I expected trouble, certainly, but not of this nature and nothing Gore wouldn’t have been capable of. I expected more free trade, falling real wages, rising inequality and unemployment, and so on.
I didn’t predict the war, but nobody did. Bush never would have gotten to have his wars without the assistance of 19 upstanding gentlemen of faith in the latter part of 2001.
I think you are making the same point I did. Certainly I do not think Clinton would have been on the vanguard of welfare reform coming in around 1992. But he saw which way the winds were blowing. It was completely in his opportunist nature to co-opt it. He was not above cooperation, if he thought it would win him points (always hard with Clinton for me to tell how much he cared about it being the right thing; currying public will always seemed most important for him). Some good things were accomplished simply because he was not an inflexible one-trick pony. At the same times, that flexibility caused some of the sleaziness that disgusted a lot of people as well.
Oh yeah, the guy was brilliant. In fact, that was apparently also one of his problems. He had boundless energy, and was such a detail wonk that he sometimes got lost in the trees.
Think of the pardons scandal with Rich. Throw out the political debate part of it and just focus on a neutral point with respect to Clinton - here was an administration that in its last days was desperately trying to use every last second of time to run through everything from creating new national parks designations to pardoning people to tweaking anything else that executive power would let them tweak. It was an incredibly energetic administration in that way (though some of it was likely making up for the time that Monicagate took away). I understand he pretty much exhausted himself, damn near not sleeping during the last weeks.
Can anyone imagine Bush doing that? I picture him leaving the office at about 4:00 in the afternoon two months before his term ends and heading to Crawford to cut brush and take afternoon naps.
Yeah, I remember reading an article a few months back (Vanity Fair? Atlantic?) describing the health care debacle under Hillary, and how Bill had basically salvaged a last-minute compromise solution, which Hillary dropped the ball on.
The man was good at getting consensus, and he had a phenomenally productive second term, given that he was saddled with Newt & Co. Contrast that to Bush who has basically been a lame duck his entire second term, even before the Democrats took over congress.
The introduction to Paul Krugmans’ The Great Unraveling is a good read on how the tactics of Bush et al. actually marginalize the opinions of those who saw it accurately.
Entrenched politicos see “compassionate conservatism,” and the bullet points that go with it, as a slogans and stuff you have to say to get elected. They recognize this game - setting the terrain for the eventual compromise you will make. “They don’t really mean that, it’s just posturing.”
Insightful folks see the radical agenda behind the slogan and speak up about it are isolated, what they say doesn’t jive with the politicos who think it’s all just ‘playing the game’, making it all the easier for Bush and crew to paint them as with the paranoid conspiracy monger crowd (who were already fearful of Bush dynasty, Skull and Bones, Bush-Saud family links, New World Order, Denver Airport Mural, Blue Helmets in Black Helicopters, Plan for New American Century folks, etc, after having gotten tired of Bill Clinton’s drug smuggling operation through Mena Airfield in Arkansas, White Water, Vince Foster, and my favorite story about the impeachment deal being fallout for Clinton letting one of his guys try to dig into the Roswell story).
The interesting thing is that this pattern wasn’t something that Krugman came up with - it’s from Kissinger’s doctoral thesis about people not seeing a revolutionary movement (in this case, Napoleon, but Kissinger was alluding also to Fascism) for what it is until it is too late (but those who do are get picked off first).
A long way to go to say, some of those people thought of now as paranoid conspiracy theorists were only painted that way by the effective work of Bush and crew (so, probably mostly Rove). I think Greg Palast might have been early on the “Bush is Dangerous” bus with Molly Ivins.
There are a lot of factors influencing which countries have a lot of women elected, some being majority vs. representative voting, party system, legal mandate and so on.
My biggest problem with Hilary is that, if elected, we’ll have had only two different families in the White House for at least 24 years if she serves out one term, 28 if she’s re-elected. Something about that just doesn’t sit right with me. I’ll probably still vote for her, though. Go figure. If it’s worth anything at all I’d much rather vote for Obama, and maybe I’ll get the opportunity.
I think the whole women/minorities can’t get elected attitude is utterly defeatist, and frankly it disgusts me a bit.
Most people here aren’t old enough to remember, but Kennedy’s being Catholic was a HUGE issue during his campaign, far more than Romney being Mormon. There was a lot of “he’ll have to do anything the pope tells him to do” type of hand wringing.
