It was an ending that even Hollywood could love. The man with instantly-recognizable white and gray hair turned away after one last look at the Capitol, got into the limousine and drove away into the rain. Last Saturday, Clinton's White House, Clinton's economy and Clinton's politics came to end. The president who could enrage his opponents and dazzle his allies, can at long last be referred to using the word "former." For better or for worse, the Clinton era is over.
Love him or hate him, there can be no question that Clinton's sometimes Machiavellian tactics produced incredible results. His economic policies produced 22 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, and the highest home ownership in our country's history. There's a reason why he left office with a job approval rating of 66 percent, higher than any American President in recorded history.
Of course there are those that don't want to give Clinton credit for the successes of the past eight years. They might argue that it was Greenspan who gave the new economy the low interest rate environment it needed to grow and develop. Or that it was Robert Rubin's sound fiscal policies that allowed us to go from a $290 billion budget deficit in 1993, to a $256 billion budget surplus in 2000. But just as we blame Presidents for recessions (fairly or not), so too must we credit them with economic expansions.
The argument with the least credibility comes from those that would mistakenly laud the Republican congress of the past six years. Not only is it foolish to give thanks to Congress for legislative agreements that were often designed and brokered by the president (after all, the Democratic Congress of the 1980's certainly never received credit for the economic boom of the 1980's); the fact is that Clinton's veto saved us from many of the Republican congress's worst proposals. This should be evident from the new Bush team's scarce mention of the Gingrich and Dole politics of yesteryear. We shouldn't forget that in the absence of Clinton's veto, the Republican Congress would have pushed through their $792 billion tax cut two years ago, which, according to Alan Greenspan, might have over-heated the economy, lead to higher inflation rates, and caused a precarious economic crisis for the next president. Clinton's commitment to paying down the national debt has given us a better chance of maintaining a sound fiscal policy, even if tax revenue decreases as the result of an economic slowdown.
On foreign policy, Clinton had large shoes to fill. George H. W. Bush was a veteran diplomat and it was never easy for Clinton, a man with no military experience and no serious diplomatic experience before 1992, to deal with a world whose rules had changed almost overnight. But Clinton did have some foreign policy accomplishments. He achieved a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and made significant headway in the process of building a stronger peace in the Middle East. He negotiated peace in Bosnia and managed to prevent a major genocide in Kosovo without losing a single American life. Clinton's pursuit of free trade created stronger economic bonds of investment and trust between the U.S and our trading partners.
Some believe a president cannot be judged simply by the success or failure of his economic and foreign policy achievements. Clinton's indecent conduct and lack of morality while president may overshadow his legislative accomplishments and mar his legacy forever. Without getting into a debate of whether perjury is an impeachable offense, it is clear that Clinton's behavior was offensive and immoral. The real question is the more philosophical one of whether our elected officials have a responsibility to provide moral as well as political leadership. In Clinton's case, there seemed to be many conservatives who eagerly passed judgment on his moral choices, without taking the time to properly inspect their own consciences.
For many Republicans, the real paradox of Clinton's morality was that despite their best efforts at demonstrating that Clinton had none, there was never any public outrage over it. What Republicans never seemed to understand was that no one ever expected Clinton to have any morality to begin with. Like the stock market, success in politics is dependent on fulfilling expectations. After the Gennifer Flowers episode of the 1992 primary, almost every American knew that we could not expect Clinton to be a moral leader. Perhaps the reason that Americans' reactions to the Lewinsky scandal were so muted was that few were either surprised or angered to have their suspicions about Clinton's morality confirmed.
The conventional wisdom regarding Clinton's presidency seems to be summed up in the phrase, "What could have been." There were so many dreams that Clinton might have achieved, if he had just been a little wiser in his first term, or a little more prudent in his second. Health care reform, social security solvency, racial reconciliation, and gun violence were among the myriad of issues left unsolved. He could have used the US's unprecedented international power to prevent genocide in Rwanda, to bring freedom to the Iraqi people or negotiate peace in Kashmir. So although Clinton was not the greatest American president, he certainly was a good one. He helped this country achieve more prosperity than it has ever known. In a story told by Clinton to reporters on Saturday, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, summed it up best. As the two were leaving the Oval Office, Podesta, with tears in his eyes, said, "We did a lot of good. We did a lot of good."
