Clinton Supporters Yearn to Bring Back the 90s
Posted at 1:06 pm on Monday, April 21, 2008, in 2008 Election, and tagged 2008, bill clinton, bin laden, bush, hillary clinton.
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. The Clinton years were good, so electing Hillary will bring back those good times. What a silly and disastrous argument. First, what does the First Lady have to do with anything the president does? It may be considered unfortunate, but very little. If Hillary wants to call the Clinton presidency her own, which she has repeatedly done on the campaign trail and in debates, then she has to take the good with the bad.
Bill Clinton presided over the longest expansion in our nation’s peacetime history. But a lot of that growth was subsequently squashed when the dot-com bubble burst shortly after his exit from the Oval Office. “Irrational exuberance” is what they called this in hindsight. Much like the “home ownership society” that Bush highlighted as a success in his term, Bill Clinton’s growth was shadowed by shady accounting practices, which trumped up the perceived worth of worthless internet companies, a practice that soon devastated hundreds of thousands of Americans’ savings accounts for years.
The globe certainly continued to heat up during the nineties, with little action by the Clinton administration to keep industry in check, and offered little to no discussion on the matter. When the economy is strong, it is apparently difficult to force companies to curb profits for the sake of future generations. The Clinton administration didn’t even try.
The president had a plan to go after Osama bin Laden at the tail end of the last century, but opted to present their actionable plan on the doorstep of the next president, George W. Bush (who then tossed it in the garbage, along with his credibility). Had the Clinton administration been more forthright on the importance of dealing with radical Islamic terrorists, namely Osama bin Laden, and the political courage to deal with the incoming political attacks on the issue, our nation’s recent history may have been greatly altered.
Hillary presented a reasonable health care proposal in the early days of the Clinton administration. The plan was widely panned in the media, although almost all of the attacks were irrational and irresponsible. Instead of fighting the republicans on the issue, however, bringing the pharmaceutical industry (and its lobbyists) and its policies to the center of the debate, the Clinton administration simply gave up and went home. Then they passed welfare reform. (Note: The second coming of Hillary’s health care policy proposal is that same early 90s plan wrapped with a different colored bow.)
The 90s was not all about AmeriCorps and raising the minimum wage. Campaign financing went unchecked, the Defense of Marriage Act effectively banned gay marriage, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” solved nothing, and continued corporate consolidation further weakened consumers.
I do not assess these failings of the previous administration squarely as failings of the previous First Lady, that would be ridiculous, but the New York Senator and potential presidential nominee is claiming ownership, barnstorming the country and calling for the U.S. to “bring back the 90s,” much like a commercial on VH1.
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April 22nd, 2008 at 9:06 am
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