What will be the effect of this hypothetical for the 2012 election?
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are both Democrats, both are Presidents who contended with economic policy, both had political battles with Republicans; Clinton in 1994 onward, Obama in 2010 onward, Clinton had the post-World War II economic expansion; Obama had the post-9/11 economic crisis.
What will it mean for the electorate in 2012 if they believe Obama will not have a Lewinsky scandal? And, as a corollary, what will it mean for the electorate in 2012 if they believe** Obama will have a Lewinsky scandal**? Assume that a ‘Lewinsky scandal’ shall only occur in a President’s second term.
Republicans, Tea Party members will admit that Clinton had an effective economic policy. Those same voters will claim that Obama has a failed economic policy.
What is the difference ultimately between Clinton and Obama: Lewinsky.
I figure if the American public lets itself get mired in another vapid Lewisnki-ish circus (though I don’t expect Obama will get embroiled in one), they deserve another lousy follow-up president.
Do you really think that Clinton and Obama’s opponents really care about these issues? Their concern is getting any Democrat out of office and replacing him with a Republican. In furtherance of that goal, they’ll use whatever looks like it’ll work.
Look at Vietnam. In 1992 and 1996, we were told it was terrible how Clinton had avoided military service and it was unthinkable that anyone would vote for him against a veteran like Bush or Dole. It was a matter of principle not party.
Now go ahead to 2000 and 2004. Were any of those same people saying that it was unthinkable to vote for Bush against a veteran like Gore or Kerry? No, suddenly that principle was not longer important.
It’s tough to take a claim of how important and timeless a principle is seriously when you constantly see them being raised and discarded as needed. It’d be a lot more believable if these people would just come out and say “We think you should elect a Republican because we think the Republican Party platform is better. That’s what we thought last election and it’s what we’re going to think next election.”
As a matter of voting, I don’t think it makes a difference. Most Americans knew Clinton was a womanizer going in. The people who should have griped about it loudest didn’t care as long as he was keeping abortion legal by appointing activists to the Supreme Court.
And you wonder why most women don’t want to be called “Feminists” today?
If Clinton had Obama’s economy in 1998, he’d have been impeached, and his own party would have joined in the fun.
Now, I don’t think Obama will have a “Lewinsky Scandal”. Every indication is that he’s either a devoted family man, or if he does play around, he’s pretty discreet. I do think there is other scandal potential out there for him. How long in prison before Blago or Tony Rezko decide to break bad on this guy?
But his bad economy will probably do him in long before then… so those guys will probably get their pardons in January, 2013.
I’m not sure where this discussion is supposed to go. All administrations have scandals and controversies, but I don’t think Obama is likely to have the kind of personal scandal Clinton did (he had a reputation for skirt-chasing that went back before he was nominated). I don’t think people base their vote on the likelihood of a scandal. They base it on the scandals that have already happened.
About half a day. Seriously, you think that if Blago had some dirt on Obama, he wouldn’t have blabbed it immediately? Now, the fact that he hasn’t blabbed doesn’t prove that there isn’t any dirt on Obama, but it does at least prove that there isn’t any that Blago knows about.
Right. There’s never been a serious (non-hyper-partisan) reason to think Obama and Blagojevich were close. Obama always seemed to avoid the guy- perhaps because Blagojevich was an obvious sleaze or perhaps because Blagojevich thought he should be the one with a shot at becoming president, which made them competitors in his mind.
That’s Limbaugh-logic, right there.
Anyhoo, the way the American system is set up these days, impeachment rumblings will sound for any president, whether he screws up or not, because impeachment is now viewed as a ploy an opposition congress can use to try to look good to their constituents.
Other than his wife and daughter it’s hard to see who else was entitled to gripe about Clinton’s adultery. If other people wanted to, that’s their choice obviously. But I don’t see why women should have priority over men.
And by the same token, we should acknowledge that there’s no evidence that Sarah Palin ever worked as a prostitute.
Buddy, you don’t know IL politics very well. There are no clean politicians here. Obama started here, there’s dirt on him, and eventually it’ll turn up.
To the point, though, feminists have hounded men out of jobs for leers, jokes, not promoting people, etc. Clinton was a serial harrasser and adulterer, and they have hounded Republican and Democrats out of office for far less-
The short list. - Packwood, Wiener, Ensign, Sanford, Spitzer… I could google and find a whole list more of Republicans and Democrats who left office over something that should have been between them and their spouses. So why did Clinton get special treatment.
Maybe Blago was framed by elves. Back in the real world, at some point someone in the cabinet or the White House will get in trouble for something. How it reflects on Obama depends on what happens and how he reacts. To this point, he hasn’t hesitated to give people a shove when it looks like they will become a liability - we don’t know that he was directly involved with the Shirley Sherrod farrago, but the result made the agriculture department look very stupid. Obama certainly wanted Daschle in his administration, but let him go when the tax thing came up. I’m blanking but I think there was at least one other example. He didn’t stick up for Anthony Weiner, but that’s a wash because nobody did.
He was elected to the U.S. Senate almost seven years ago. We - well, you - are still waiting for the dirt.
This is a remarkably lazy analysis. The short answer is that once the Republicans starting moving to impeach, they lost the public because most voters did not feel Clinton’s offense rose to that level. A longer answer has to include that Clinton was the president, so there were different precedents at work and he had a different power base and a different relationship with Congress. Weiner, for example, was mostly pushed out by Democratic leadership in Congress. They had leverage over him and would have stripped him of committee assignments. They couldn’t do that to Clinton.
Yes! Correct. People don’t base their vote on the likelihood of a scandal; they base their vote on the likelihood that the candidate they vote for will be able to have an effective economic policy during the next four years. Like I said, people will admit that Clinton had an effective economic policy. The question for 2012 is: Why won’t Obama?
I hope this isn’t lazy analysis:
Any talk of a hypothetical Lewinsky scandal is just a distraction; it’s still the economy, stupid.
Because the economy in 1995-96 looked good, and right now, it doesn’t. Based on how the economy has performed in the last couple of years, he needs to convince people his policies prevented the economy from getting worse and (more important) that they’ll lead to improvement in the next few years. Evidence that the economy is really improving would help.
I think most of us would agree with that. Which makes me wonder why you brought up a hypothetical Lewinsky-type scandal.
Because when I step into the voting booth on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, I will be carrying out the following thought process before casting my ballot: If I vote for Barack Obama and if Barack Obama wins then Barack Obama will be President for eight years. Barack Obama is the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States. The last President who was a Democrat was President for eight years. Was the eight-year economic policy of Clinton effective? Yes. Will the eight-year economic policy of Obama be effective? Yes. Therefore, I will vote for Obama!
And if that’s your opinion, it’s a logical reason to vote for him. I think starting with a comparison to the Lewinsky scandal confused the issue a great deal.
