Quote:
Originally posted by sycamore
I have to wonder...why is there still so much animosity towards Clinton, 3 years after he left office? And why do so many people still like him a great deal?
|
The same could be said for Bush. There are some politicians who, for all their attempts at unity, end up polarizing.
If Clinton had gotten us to this point in the Iraq war, with the body count and attendent mismanagement, people would be marching on the White House with torches and rope. The amount of slack people are giving Bush is astounding. The way the Right is spinning Kerry, with a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and 3 Purple Hearts into some kind of honorary draft dodger, is amazing.
Clinton was an effective politician. He was the Democrats equivalent of Ronald Reagan, who was the smoothest orator I have ever heard and who successfully propped up an incredibly flawed economic policy on charm alone. I was amazed how Reagan could look at members of the press, who are asking serious and substantive questions, and admonish them like children for having doubts. Also how he can use the brilliant 'I don't remember' defense to defuse the Iran-Contra investigation.
To be fair, I don't think he did remember. I personally think the Alzheimers began in his second term and his advisors led him through it.
It seems that we are now at the point where %40-50 of this country will now have to put up with a president they dislike because both sides will play to the extreme right or left to garner the 'radical minorty who always votes' vote. Clinton was much more centrist than most people believe.
For all of the conspiracies about Clinton, he left us in better shape than Reagan did and did not get us bogged down in a two-front war in the Middle East costing hundreds of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.
I have an 18 year old son who just got his selective service notice. I personally believe that thanks to GWB, there is a %20 chance that we will have the draft reappear in the next 8 years, when he will be eligible. By that single measure, Bush has failed where Clinton, and almost any other modern president, would have succeeded. Mr. 'tax rebate' is responsible for the greatest loss of US servicemen and women since Vietnam.
So millions of American families get 100 rebate checks, and hundreds of American families get death notices. This is not an acceptable trade.
So I would be more than happy to have Clinton, sneak and all. Because having an effective, if sneaky politician in office is better than having a moralistic fuckup who hears only what he wants to hear and is happy to start a 'crusade' against 'evildoers' by spending the lives of men and women who signed on to 'support and defend the Constitution'. I never served, and neither did a lot of these self-righteous assholes on talk radio and TV. And to hear them criticize Kerry for his 'last man to die for a mistake' remark galls me. Because that remark was nothing if not prophetic given our current situation.
As for the 'dirty' campaign about Bush's guard service. I wonder at people who can buy all of the conspiracy theories about Clinton but who are shocked...
shocked.. at the suggestion that Bush was a 'fortunate son' who got preferential treatment during the Vietnam War. That's what I hate about a lot of the arguments. People write about how entertainers should stay out of politics, or how biased the media is, but only when they hear something that they don't like or disagree with the speaker.
Bush politicized the war the moment he stepped on that aircraft carrier in his flight suit playing 'warrior king'. Considering the sacrifice he is asking others to make, and the 'dirty tricks' his own side is playing at painting liberals as draft dodgers and wimps, his record is part of the story.
Command-in-Chief is a civilian position. It is one which justs happens to have been held at times by men who were in the service, and most of them were under fire at one point. Bush is a rarity in a president, he was technically a soldier during a war but never made it to combat.
I do not believe that it is necessary for a Commander-in-Chief to have been active military, but I do believe it gives them a good insight into the sacrifice they expect of others.
Eisenhower's farewell speech is an example of an ordered military mind evaluating and criticizing the political and economic power structure it had to deal with.
Clinton, for all of his faults, knew he was a fortunate son. He was overseas in school during Vietnam and never had to risk his life. For him, I believe that soldiers would be the 'them' whose deaths would underscore a choice he did not have to make. This may be why he was so successful in keeping casualties low.
Bush, I think, believes the big lie. In his mind he served and was ready to put himself in harms way, and could have been forced to do so at any time. He may not believe that there was ever a safety net provided for him. For him the soldiers are an 'us', and the sacrifice they make is one that he was perfectly willing to make at the time. They can share his crusade because he is one of them.
So yes, I liked Clinton as a president. And if he was preachy, it was a leave them alone kind of preachy. And while he may have nibbled on the Second Amendmant with gun control, it does not compare with the assault on the Constitution we must now endure. He appeared to have a good group of advisors, to whom he appeared to
listen. And they were able to keep themselves away from the 'best and brightest' hubris that got us into Vietnam, were able to negotiate internationally, and keep domestic policy on track.