What was so bad about Clinton?

Great Debates
1

I’m amazed at the severity of the hatred of Bill Clinton by some Dopers in various threads and of course by average citizens quoted throughout the Internet and other media. While I certainly never believed he was without flaw and born of a virgin, I overall approved of his presidency. While I thought he had a moment of unforgivable stupidity in the way he handled the Lewinsky mess, I ultimately felt the affair itself was his business and the actions of Starr were far more embarassing to the country. Also, while I didn’t vote for Dubya and generally don’t like him, I have nothing resembling the vicious hatred of the anti-Clintonians.

So, I’m not really trying to start a debate but I’m sure this will become one: for those who loathed Clinton, why? Was it his foreign policy, domestic policy, Monicagate, his views on healthcare, Whitewater, or what else? This isn’t rhetorical, I’m honestly curious.

BTW, to avoid accusations of trolling let me state now: while I intend to read this thread constantly, I probably won’t post to it for a while because my main goal is to learn an answer to the OP query.

2

Other than being shameless bounder, I really had no problem with him as President. The economy was certainly stronger with him at the helm. I dunno. I think maybe people confuse morality with eptitude.

3

Since it is almost dinner time, here is a brief list (not in order of importance):

  1. He allowed terrorists to strike at US Embassies, barracks, and ships, with no effective measures taken afterwards to track them down and take them out. Note the long-term effect of this.

  2. He allowed S.Hussien to boot out the inspectors, with nothing more then a desultory air strike to show his disapproval.

  3. He signed incredibly assinine gun-control legislation into effect.

  4. He has the morals of a…OK. He has no morals.

  5. He was going to try to nationalize our healthcare. Sure, our system isn’t perfect, but why make it worse?

  6. Waco and Ruby Ridge, although in fairness, these were as much Reno’s fault.

  7. He gutted the military. Training budgets were diverted to pay for Bosnia/Kosovo, and little care was given to fielding the next generation of weapons and equipment.

  8. He pussified the CIA and FBI.

4

Which one? Hard to decide which is worse…

5

He was, and is, a master politician. Is that a compliment?

I had one problem with WJC: foreign policy. About the time we lost two embassies in Africa, I began to frequently wonder what he was going to do fight al Qaeda. Although I don’t think I knew the term al Qaeda for another three years.

For that matter, where was he when the Twin Towers were attacked the first time? He essentially treated the attack like an ordinary crime. Meaning, he did nothing, IIRC.

I could cite example after example, basically four words should suffice: inattention to foreign policy. Or, “it’s not the economy, stupid.”

Oh yeah, one more thing, would one person explain to me why the speculative internet / technology boom and the booming economy which resulted was Clinton’s doing? I think, irrespective of party affiliation, presidents get far too much credit or blame for the economy. Furthermore, if you looked at the economy in Clinton’s last year it was clear that things were looking down. Yet, on TV at DNC fundraiser after fundraiser, Clinton was talking about the “longest peacetime boom, blah, blah.”

Nero, put down the goddam viola and do someting!

To be fair I should rant about Greenspan’s precipitous interest rate hikes that really killed the economy. He struck down the inflation that never was and killed millions of jobs in the process.

6

Continuing with Brutus’ list

  1. He curried political favors with China

  2. He outwardly lied in public using lawyer speak…

  3. He is a true poltician. He’d sway with the slightest breeze.

  4. He inherited and took credit for a hot economy which he then ruined and passed on to the next poor sucker in office.

  5. Dont know if this is good or bad but prosecutions of pornography was nil in his administration which led to the boom in the porno industry.

  6. Hilary Clinton.

  7. If you think he lied about Monica, he got away with Whitewater and Paula Jones.

7

Um, I believe Ruby Ridge happened on Bush the Elder’s watch. Why does everyone blame Reno?

:rolleyes:

8

The actual event, sure (Aug 21, '92). I’m no fan of Bush Sr., either, so…

The cover-ups and backpedaling? All Team Clinton.

9
  1. He wasn’t a republican.
    Everything else is windowdressing.
10

This is just a theory – and I wasn’t alive at the time, so I have no clue – was anyone like Rush Limbaugh around the last time a Democrat was in office? Was talk radio as big at the end of the 70’s?

Maybe the internet had something to do with it too. People had easier access to conspiracy theories and other types of misinformation to add to the partisan feelings they already had. Twelve straight years of a Republican administration might have had something to do with it. The hard core Republicans needed someone they could lash out against. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those that helped create and spread the feelings others in the thread have expressed.

I don’t have anything against him and would have voted for him had he been able to run in 2000. I’m a Democrat, so the above were just guesses from personal feelings I have.

Upon preview, I couldn’t have said it better myself, Squink.

11

“He is a true poltician. He’d sway with the slightest breeze”

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL MEN WHO HAVE BECOME PRESIDENT WERE TRUE POLITICIANS AND SWAYED WITH THE SLIGHTEST BREEZE. THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES IS A POLITICAL OFFICE.

You really need to come up with something better than that as a something that was bad about him.

12

I don’t have any hatred for GWB, however much I might disagree with him on things.

But I miss having a president who sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. For me, personally, Clinton inspired so much more confidence than Bush.

As for why people harbor such venom for both Clintons, I think it’s because some people need the emotional release that hatred and blame offers. Otherwise they’d have to examine themselves and be critical of their own views and life choices. Politicians in general are convenient targets because their human imperfections and mistakes are easy to magnify.

Take the September 11th attacks, for instance: I wouldn’t be surprised to find that lots of people, perhaps even some responding to this thread, ascribe equal responsibility for these tragic events to Bill Clinton and Mohammed Atta. Your reaction to that suggestion is a good indicator of whether or not you are nursing an obsessive, consumptive hatred of Bill Clinton. To most people, this should sound irrational, even Coulteresque. If you read that statement and said “Well, that’s a good point”, then you just might be… a Clinton-hater!

13

cuauhtemoc wrote:"I don’t have any hatred for GWB, however much I might disagree with him on things.
But I miss having a president who sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. For me, personally, Clinton inspired so much more confidence than Bush."

My opinions exactly. I recently watched a Clinton interview in which he fielded questions on cloning, nanotechnology, and alternative fuel resources and he was knowledgeable on all three without having to confer with advisors; I may be wrong and hope I am, but I honestly don’t think Bush could do that. (The “favorite political philosopher- ‘Jesus Christ’” moment was when I knew I could never vote for him.)

I honestly feel that the man who sits in the Oval Office needs a certain degree of intelligence and intellect. Clinton was a Rhodes scholar; Bush, even though his father was one of the most powerful men in the state and in the country, was turned down for admission to the University of Texas law school and had a career that defines mediocrity as a Yale student.
I certainly have major issues with some of Clinton’s political decisions (China [which I think never became more of an issue because quite a few Republicans would have sunk with that barge as well] and “don’t ask don’t tell” come to mind) and I think he is a consummate politician along the lines of Gore Vidal’s famous comment (“By the time a man becomes president he’s been bought and sold twenty times”), but he definitely inspired more confidence. Also, I remember seeing lots and lots of “IMPEACH CLINTON” bumper stickers long before anybody knew who Monica Lewinsky was.

14

What was so bad about Bill Clinton was that he confounded the success dogma of the right. When Democrats lose elections (1972, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2002 spring to mind), certain Republicans titter about the supposedly inherent failings of the Democrats: [ul]
[li]They run ineffectual campaigns (can’t do justice to the hyperbole here; “incredibly bad” is a common but relatively mild put-down, making me wonder what “incredible” means in the first place)[/li][li]They look silly in tanks[/li][li]They are out of touch with ordinary people[/li][li]They are snobby intellectuals[/li][li]They don’t get anything worthwhile done[/ul][/li]
These are all criticism of the Democrats as candidates. Naturally the reasons these would make the Democrats bad leaders or even bad people are left up to the imagination. There is a sort of ethic that winning elections, particularly by “landslides” (which are defined as “whatever vote fraction the Republican achieved last time around”, e.g., 51% in 1980), makes your person Better. It is a sort of intellectual descendant of “might makes right”.

I ask the right exactly what was wrong with George McGovern. Acid, amnesty, and abortion they say. I tell them they know damn well he wasn’t for those things. Sure, they say, but he allowed himself to be portrayed that way. I ask them if it was really his fault, or could it have been that he was trashed by unsympathetic media. No, the media have a liberal bias - it’s just that even they had to see the truth that McGovern was an extremist. This sort of logic is created by the same brains, you’ll note, which assign blame for Ruby Ridge to a President elected after it happened, and which assign blame for Iraq expelling weapons inspectors to Clinton when in fact they were ordered out by the U.N.

What exactly was wrong with Walter Mondale? He chose his running mate to balance the ticket, he was big spender, he worked for interest groups, and he had a narrow ideological agenda. I asked why you despise Mondale, not why you love Reagan.

Why exactly do you heap so much scorn on the Democratic election effort of 2002? They had no party-wide, ideologically consistent challenge to the administration. Welcome to the United States - we don’t have strong, small, cadre parties like Europe. We have big, weak, non-ideological parties which exist as a way of channeling debate. We don’t have paid-up memberships - we have partisan primaries for chrissake. With the exception of 1994, parties never put forth broad, bold, soundbite-friendly election platforms during midterm elections. Saying the Democrats failed because they weren’t ideologically united enough is like saying a jogger got tired because the atmosphere is only one-fifth oxygen.

I’m not really surprised that unfair criticisms are directed at Democrats by certain Republicans. It happens they other way around all the time - the Dan Quayle “I wish I had brushed up on my Latin” urban legend, the claim that support for affirmative action is incontrovertibly the sine qua non of support for civil rights, etc. I am trying to highlight the tone of the criticisms - an ad hoc “we’re the popular kids and you’re the school dorks” sort of smugness.

Only with Bill Clinton does the bile really start flowing. The failure of other Democrats to be popular is appreciated - even welcomed - by GOP insiders. Bill Clinton obviously never had that failing. He broke all the rules. Democrats are supposed to be clones of Adlai Stevenson - bookish, gentle, and easy to best in a sound-bite war. Clinton was none of these.

His administration made plenty of mistakes, but Republican criticisms - even those with merit, and there were some - rolled off, as far as opinion polls were concerned. We have the monopoly on teflon Presidents, grumbled the right. The public didn’t get up too up in arms over the administration scandals; even the Lewinski matter was popularly considered more titillating than horrific. Unspoken comparisons to the Iran-Contra scandal loomed. All we did was sell arms to terrorists, and we had to endure Congressional hearings. Then Bill Clinton uses a different definition of “sex” than Kenneth Starr uses, and the only punishment the Dimmocrats get is Congressional hearings! What is the world coming to?

Let’s update the little list of criticism from the top of the post for Bill Clinton. [ul]
[li]His campaign was effective, to be sure, but it was slick and “political” (which makes me wonder what “political” means in the first place)[/li][li]He never served in a tank[/li][li]He relies too much on how he is in touch with ordinary people[/li][li]He is a hillbilly[/li][li]He got all sort of worthwhile stuff done that we would rather have done ourselves[/ul][/li]So you can see that the right had a huge store of righteous indignation over the complete and total destruction of American civilization wrought by the Clinton administration. Kan they really be expekted to spell his name with a “C” given this litany of horror?

15

Oops. They don’t get anything worthwhile done, from my original list, is an exception to my later statement that the list was all criticisms of the Democrats as candidates. The pitfalls of non-linear writing.

16

To make a long story short:

Then later:

That’s better than nothing, don’t you think?

17

Insofar as President Clinton and his actions are what I was speaking about, that is exactly nothing.

These terrorist attacks were not hatched in a vacuum here in the United States.

18

Let’s take some of these one at a time, shall we?

  1. He allowed terrorists to strike at US Embassies, barracks, and ships, with no effective measures taken afterwards to track them down and take them out. Note the long-term effect of this.

You’re right, 'cause each time the terrorists would leave their business cards with their name, address and phone number on them. Get serious. Sixteen months after 9/11, we still don’t have Osama bin Laden under lock-and-key or with a tag on his toe, and that was using far more “effective measures” than Clinton used. Are you drawing up impeachment papers for Dubya yet?

  1. He allowed S.Hussien to boot out the inspectors, with nothing more then a desultory air strike to show his disapproval.

Wrong. Chief U.N. inspector Robert Butler ordered them to withdraw. Had nothing to do with Clinton.

  1. He signed incredibly assinine gun-control legislation into effect.

Can you be more specific on this? While I certainly don’t have objections to people owning handguns, I think assault weapons are a different story. And please spare me your paranoid diatribes of an E-ville Federal Gummint and their black helicopters coming to enslave us all but for your AK-47.

  1. He has the morals of a…OK. He has no morals.

He cheated on his wife. Heinous. So did Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Bush Sr.

  1. He was going to try to nationalize our healthcare. Sure, our system isn’t perfect, but why make it worse?

Maybe because at the start of his presidency over 50 million Americans, even working, had no health coverage. For the supposedly wealthiest nation in the world, this is hardly excusable. If you must condemn him, condemn him for the sin of hubris.

  1. Waco and Ruby Ridge, although in fairness, these were as much Reno’s fault.

Ruby Ridge – such a great coverup that everybody knows about it. And Waco, the machinery for that FUBAR was already going by the time Clinton took office. Plus, to be frank, a bunch of religious gun-nuts burning themselves to death, not exactly keeping me awake at night with guilt (well, maybe the kids, but that’s as far as go.)

  1. He gutted the military. Training budgets were diverted to pay for Bosnia/Kosovo, and little care was given to fielding the next generation of weapons and equipment.

The military, during the Reagan years, were pissing money out of portholes. Recommissioning the New Jersey was the most lamebrained idea since the Maginot Line. And don’t get me started on Star Wars. Besides, Bush the First did more gutting his first term than Clinton did in his two.

  1. He pussified the CIA and FBI.

The CIA spent the 80’s training secret armies, murdering nuns (or covering up same) installing dictators, toppling democracies…they needs to be bitch-slapped. Don’t know what your referring to about the Bureau. And hey, the NSA is still tapping into our communications illegally, so what are you worried about (besides the Fourth Amendment)?

  1. He curried political favors with China

So did the Republicans. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…

  1. He outwardly lied in public using lawyer speak…

Yes, he did. And he should not have. “Using lawyer speak” – he’s a lawyer? If we elected a doctor for president and he uses medical jargon, are we gonna hang him for that?

  1. He is a true poltician. He’d sway with the slightest breeze.

ZZZZZZzzzzzz

  1. He inherited and took credit for a hot economy which he then ruined and passed on to the next poor sucker in office.

Oh, Grand Funk Railroad. The economy was in the toilet when he took office, and his '93 tax increase, passed over the screaming objections of the Republicans, starting paying down the deficit and eventually created a surplus, paving the way for the best boom we’ve had in forty years. Granted, it did tilt a little downward, but “the next poor sucker” hasn’t done jack squat in two years to reverse this. My god, when McDonald’s starts posting quarterly losses, you know the economy’s in trouble.

  1. Dont know if this is good or bad but prosecutions of pornography was nil in his administration which led to the boom in the porno industry.

So? These are consenting adults. Besides the “actors” there are a lot of people who work for this industry. With this boom, at least they’re not on welfare. People who buy these videos are contributing to the economy (sales tax, etc.) and if they are stimulating themselves at home, at least they are not out spreading STDs. So, what’s your problem?

  1. Hilary Clinton.

I’ll see your Hilary Clinton, and raise you a Nancy Reagan. 'Nuff said.

  1. If you think he lied about Monica, he got away with Whitewater and Paula Jones.

Whitewater. $100 million dollar investigation about a $60,000 land deal back in the 80’s. Several people jailed simply because they would not testify against Clinton. Paula Jones: her story was not credible, but was artifically inflated by the checkbook journalism back by multi-millionaire and ardent Clinton-hater Richard Mellon Scaife (read Blinded by the Right by David Brock). While were at it…Kathleen Willey. Her story could not be corroborated; the woman she claimed could corroborate her, Julia Hyatt Steele, was harassed, threatened, lost her job, her house and nearly the custody of her son, thanks to Ken Starr and the OIC, (gee, sounds impartial and non-partison to me), all because she would not lie on the stand to back up Willey’s bullshit story. Juanita Broadrick? Changed her story so many times a first-year law student would have torn her to shreds. Not credible.
See? Most of the stuff right-wingers harrangue on about Clinton, fall apart on examination.

NNNNNNNext!

19

So far, many of the answers given have tried to explain a strong emotional reaction against WJC with intellectual arguments. IHMO you’re barking up the wrong tree. It really doesn’t matter whether he was a succes or a failure at any of the items listed above. If he’d have nailed all of the complaints, the haters would just come up with a different list. The foundation is animosity, the details are immatterial. (Did anyone…really…start out loving him and then transform into a hater? Be honest, the haters started out that way.)

So, the question is why? Here’s my take on it: It’s like the republicans were all these high-school guys. They were the “in” crowd, played on all the sports teams, it was all going good for them.

Then this new kid moves into town, and he doesn’t give a f*ck about the local guys, doesn’t try to join the clique. And he’s a hick! But he’s smooth, he can throw a football farther than any of them, he’s smarter than they are, and worst of all, the girls dig him baaaaaaad!

And that, my firends, is where the hatred comes from.

20

That’s right, Janet Reno’s Justice Department winning terrorism convictions is nothing. Creating new cabinet departments is where anti-terrorism is really at. :slight_smile: