The other day while at the airport I saw a few minutes of a Democratic debate in which Hillary Clinton commented that it took a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush and it will taken another to clean up after this one.
That got me thinking about the Clinton years -- you know, that idyllic time when the world loved us, things were peaceful and the economy boomed.
Well, let's take a trip back into time, starting with the first Bush Administration. Bush the Elder, aka 41, was hardly a fire-breathing Reaganite. His signature accomplishments were signing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a Clean Air Act, and a tax increase. He appointed one liberal Supreme Court justice (Souter) and one conservative one (Thomas). His administration also negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was not passed until Clinton assumed office. This is not the kind of stuff that had people at the Heritage Foundation doing back-flips.
Then Bill Clinton came along. Operating with a Democratic Congress Americans were handed a tax increase, the Family and Medical Leave Act, an Assault Weapons Ban and a health care debacle. Other sideshows included Waco, Jocelyn Elders, Les Aspin, gays in the military and a variety of nominees that hadn't paid taxes on their domestic help. NAFTA, meanwhile, was passed with mostly Republican support. Americans were so thrilled about this performance that they voted for Republicans in 1993, taking the governorship of Virginia and the mayorship of New York City. 1994 saw an even more crushing defeat for the Democrats in which even the Speaker of the House Tom Foley lost his job.
From that point on Clinton was effectively neutered. The remainder of his time in office saw the passage of welfare reform and even a capital gains tax cut -- Republican ideas both. Then Republicans became more obsessed with demonizing Clinton than actually accomplishing anything and the rest of the decade sputtered to the conclusion with the government basically doing a whole lot of nothing -- no wonder the economy boomed.
And to be frank, given the current Republican crop of candidates, if Hillary vows to spend her time in office doing little more than chasing interns, I'll vote for her.
That got me thinking about the Clinton years -- you know, that idyllic time when the world loved us, things were peaceful and the economy boomed.
Well, let's take a trip back into time, starting with the first Bush Administration. Bush the Elder, aka 41, was hardly a fire-breathing Reaganite. His signature accomplishments were signing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a Clean Air Act, and a tax increase. He appointed one liberal Supreme Court justice (Souter) and one conservative one (Thomas). His administration also negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was not passed until Clinton assumed office. This is not the kind of stuff that had people at the Heritage Foundation doing back-flips.
Then Bill Clinton came along. Operating with a Democratic Congress Americans were handed a tax increase, the Family and Medical Leave Act, an Assault Weapons Ban and a health care debacle. Other sideshows included Waco, Jocelyn Elders, Les Aspin, gays in the military and a variety of nominees that hadn't paid taxes on their domestic help. NAFTA, meanwhile, was passed with mostly Republican support. Americans were so thrilled about this performance that they voted for Republicans in 1993, taking the governorship of Virginia and the mayorship of New York City. 1994 saw an even more crushing defeat for the Democrats in which even the Speaker of the House Tom Foley lost his job.
From that point on Clinton was effectively neutered. The remainder of his time in office saw the passage of welfare reform and even a capital gains tax cut -- Republican ideas both. Then Republicans became more obsessed with demonizing Clinton than actually accomplishing anything and the rest of the decade sputtered to the conclusion with the government basically doing a whole lot of nothing -- no wonder the economy boomed.
And to be frank, given the current Republican crop of candidates, if Hillary vows to spend her time in office doing little more than chasing interns, I'll vote for her.
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