Re: Obama XII: The shine is off the glass slipper
I think you're quite wrong. Clinton didn't do anything to fundamentally change our economic policies and priorities. Welfare reform was nice and slight tweaks to the tax code were nice, but he and the GOP Congress mostly lucked into their windfall because (a) the dot com boom gave them surging revenues, (b) the demographic demon hadn't been released yet because Boomers were still working and not retiring to live off the public teat, and (c) he had a fairly stable world that should have triggered massive reductions in our Cold War footing, both in the defense budget and in our ludicrously overreaching global empire. (The same empire that ****ed the natives off enough to throw planes through our buildings -- and even that he didn't have to deal with.)
Now, I will grant you that (c) was partly to his credit since he didn't do anything as maniacally stupid as Bush's War to Avenge Daddy. But all of Clinton's supposed hard ball toughness was directed towards his own constituents. He had a landscape where he could have restored fairness to the tax code and sanity to the military budget, yet he never made a move to do either because it was just too hard. He ran scared of lunatics on talk radio and cynical opportunists in the GOP Congress when he should have been taking the wood to them for being Wrong On Everything. Gore didn't lose just because he was a wooden indian, but because the left was so utterly unimpressed by Clintonism that they sat on their hands or voted for a numbskull like Nader. And that has made all the difference.
Kep this is ridculous on multiple levels. I'd expect this rant out of Ann Coulter.
Lets address one by one.
a) dot com bubble = surplus is chapter 1 of The Book of Right Wing Talking Points. In reality that's ludicrious. The 22M jobs gained under Clinton's admin never went away, as they would have if an overwhelming % of them were based on an unrealistic bubble. By spouting this idiocy you play into the hands of those who wish the 90's never existed because they do not want a recent standard to be measured by (really, if what you say is true politicians can just throw up their hands and say balanced budgets can't be done...even though they WERE done a decade ago).
b) The demographic boom was well aware of, which is why paying down the deficit was the primary focus of the budget. See, if you aren't in debt, or are in a lot less debt, it makes handling the demographic issue a lot easier. Instead post Clinton we got a tax cut and spending spree, which is the real cause of the country's problems.
c) stable world my@ ss. Another talking point. Rather it was a dangerous world but one where US relations with allies was much better. Think about it - Clinton uses force to end genocide in Balkans. Serbs run to Russia for help...who promply tells them to get lost. China starts threatening Tiawan...US send warships through Staits to send them a message - ****. Good relations, and the peace and prosperity of the 90's, didn't happen by accident. People believing that is what got us George W Bush.
The bottom line is, be it you're a liberal, moderate, or conservative, there's credit to be passed around for everybody for the 90's economy and budgets. Newt Gingrich, a guy I don't like, did his job and made the necessary deals to pass the Clinton budgets for example. However, if you're going to take the tact that none of that was real, you have nobody to blame but yourself if you don't have a standard to hold current officeholders too. Simply put, the voters made a catastrophic mistake switching from level headed financial planning (balanced budget = investor confidence in US market = capital inflows = job creation) to Santa Clause economics (huge tax cuts + huge spending increases = balanced budgets). If we are to believe your take on history, there's no reason for them not to do so again since the level headed planning never existed apparently.
The beauty of our government is that you get what you voted for. The country's current state of affairs is in direct relation to a stupid change of direction 10 years ago, and there's nobody to blame for that but ourselves. The notion that we wouldn't be in a much, much, much better fiscal situation if we'd continued the policies of the Clinton/Gingrich era is one I strongly reject.
