I have never heard George W. Bush offer a substantive evaluation of his predecessor's presidency. During the 2000 campaign, he wore out the line about restoring "honor and dignity to the White House," but pretty much stayed away from anything that would constitute an objective analysis of the Clinton presidency.
In today's Washington Post, there is a story which suggests the Bush administration is more willing to listen to dissenting viewpoints than it has been in the past. I suspect it's just more spin, but who knows?
What caught my eye, however, was this paragraph about Bush's fabled resolve.
In Bush's view, certitude has served him well -- a fidelity to core principles that avoids the sort of equivocation that he believes undermined Bill Clinton's presidency. But as he headed into his sixth year in office, the president was derided in a Newsweek cover story titled "Bush in the Bubble," which characterized him as perhaps "the most isolated president in modern history."Excuse me?
Does Bush really believe that Bill Clinton's presidency was unsuccessful? If so, in what way? I wish somebody with access would ask him.
The Clinton presidency was characterized by eight years of peace and prosperity. Clinton left as his legacy a projected budget surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars. He had begun an initiative to interdict terrorists that, if Bush had continued it, would have averted 9/11 in all likelihood. Corporations were prospering and so were their employees. The stock market was booming. Teen pregnancy was down. Abortion was down. I could go on and on and on.
Yes, there was impeachment. However, that hysterical, partisan overreaction to the Lewinsky scandal did not in any way undermine Clinton's presidency. He continued to do his job and do it exceedingly well. President Clinton left America a better place than it was when he found it.
I have heard the anecdotes about Bush's determination, when he took office, to do the opposite of everything that Clinton had done. If that really was his goal, then I would have to say he reached it. But, I can't say much for the results.
1 comments:
well, so much for restoring dignity and honor to the white house. one of the first things bush did was reverse most of the 8 years of clinton most notably the environmental and contraceptive to other countries initiatives. he can't offer any synopses(first because he wouldn't know what that word meant) because he probably didn't even know clinton had been president. he saved most of his salvos for gore- and i am not certain even then that he realized that the man was anything other than his democratic opponent. complete moron. i knew then that we were in trouble.
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