Bill Clinton has been in the news the last few days. He gave a spirited defense of his record fighting terrorism while he was in office. He took Chris Wallace of Fox News to task for asking impertinent and misleading questions.
My question for you all is, what do you think of Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton? What are their pros and cons? What should the present day Democratic Party take from them and what should they reject?
My opinion of Bill and Hillary are that they are both undoubtedly geniuses, capable of remembering huge amounts of info and capable of quickly synthesizing far-reaching conclusions from this database in their heads.
The problem comes with understanding their intentions or true desires. Bill is a flawed genius, letting his little head get in the way of his real genius head. Also in the past, his desires to be accepted by wealth and power may have tainted his judgment somewhat. Most recently, I think he is truly starting to worry about the direction of this country, but it may be a bit late.
Hillary is a genius, but is also an unknown genius when it comes to intentions and possible flaws. She may well be Gods gift to humanity if given the chance, but I just do not know at this time.
Bill taught us that you can win against the Republican machine, while Hillary taught us that you can work hard, develop good programs and still be beaten by them. They are seasoned and have honed they God given talents to strategize. I don’t doubt that Bill purposefully stepped out of the limelight in order for his voice to be heard when he wanted it to be. He likes going into crowds now where, in his words, the room becomes as quiet as a church, waiting for him to speak and tell the room what’s going on. Hillary doesn’t have his charisma, so who does? But how many other people, men or women, do we know that can hold their own against Bill? Says alot about her. We all talk about Bill’s shadow. Who would she have been without him? Where but in America can it be said that we have a strong candidate who faces opposition from a crazed bunch that eats slime for breakfast and comes back for more and she is the devil because she is married to a man who was one of the brightest and strongest Presidents America was fortunate to have. The problem may not be Hillary or Bill.
He has what I consider politicans ought to have: brains, willingness to listen, ability to adjust, ability to compromise and a goodly sense of compassion (or at least enough that people of color and people like myself felt that he COULD FEEL.)
He has always been more conservative than me. He has embraced things like NAFTA and so-call Welfare Reform where I never would have thought a dem should go. I am not totally opposed to NAFTA except where our standards for workers and environment were totally neglected. I truly believe we should encourage trade of all sorts. But why should we work toward the lowest common denominator?
I liked Hillary. I have felt that both she and Bill weathered the incessant drum beat of negativity far far better than most folks could. I truly believe that she and her husband feel that their relationship is very important and their committment to their dreams is shared and their committment to their daughter is shared. I don’t believe that Hill really WANTED to believe Bill would cheat. And I truly believe that Bill was foolish and stupid but he sure isn’t the only fool in the world led astray by hormones and pheronomes (sp?). I feel that sex is one of those things that nature did to us to get us moving (as well as a serious mandate to procreate!). And sometimes it gets us going and we get seriously misled. Those folks amongst the radical religious base are hypocrites of the first water. A lot of the more vocal characters are serious wife and child abusers. If not physically then mentally.
Hill is more practical than Bill, although they both can read the political winds better than most. They will do whatever they feel the folks want them to do. They are not totally morally challenged in their desire to lead, but they definitely are not saints either.
Would I like Hill as president? She wouldn’t be so totally bad. But I would wish, as I did with Bill, that she was progressive.
I don’t think these people are geniuses, they are quite intelligent and certainly crafty, but genius would have been pulling off universal health care for Americans.
They are bright manipulators. Hiliary’s voting record in the Senate has been DINO if you ask me, since she’s my representative.
Bill is too conciliatory, as most idealists are once they get into the Presidency. (cf Jimmy Carter) Admittedly, he had to put up and fend for himself from the furies of the entire Republican and right-wing machines in the country, but if Georgie-Ball-for-Brains can get away with all the murder and destruction his people have wrought, Clinton certainly could have done more, been more gutsy and confrontative.
And he never should have hidden his affair with Monica. Biggest mistake of all. He should have admitted it. He would have become even MORE popular if you ask me.
As for Hiliary, she’s like a willow tree, with her roots planted half in the water, half out. She’s a hawk-centrist, and ready to go out and slaughter millions across the globe for preserving the ultra-upper class by destroying the working, middle and upper middle classes.
They may be smart people, but their motives and goals are not of an inspiring or high level. Clinton’s work with AIDS and Africa are commendable, but he’s not pressuring pharmaceutical companies to give up their unreal profit margins to provide access to the millions of poor. But he’s slowly seeing the light of what goodness really is, and what world service really is. I give him that much credit.
They aren’t enlightened people, just intelligent manipulators.
But he’s slowly seeing the light of what goodness really is, and what world service really is.
Maybe that happens to ex-Presidents who don’t go senile. Carter, Clinton, even 41 seem to be using their high-profile positions to do some good.
Even George Schultz, for a moment, had a glimpse of the reality of the wordl’s unnecessary suffering, but he fell back to the board of Bechtel again, and was lost to his neocon progeny.
I don’t have much of an opinion of Bill, either pro or con. I think he did good things for the country, but he let himself get distracted, shall we say, and most of his second term seemed to involve dealing with that distraction.
Same with Hilary, except that even if America is ready for a woman president, I don’t think it’s going to be her. She just carries too much excess baggage. Plus to those of us who are paying attention to politics she seems to be too much of an old-school politician, willing to take corporate money and act in the interests of the aristocracy, not the working class. Half the country won’t accept her for that reason, and the other half will get hit with a Swiftboat oar to see if they can be made to believe it (even though it will also be true of the Republican candidate, whoever he is).
I still want to see Feingold win if Gore won’t run, but I’m prepared for a big letdown.
Stalin/Hitler, Stalin/Hitler.
Whom do I choose?
USA — 2008
McCain/Clinton II, McCain/Clinton II
That’s what I’m afraid the big letdown will be.
You may well be right, and I would not be happy about voting for Clinton Redux.
But I will not, under any circumstances, vote for a Republican for President. Or McCain either.
I’m never forgive Bill Clinton for allowing the Republican frame to define “welfare reform” and for then signing something that condemned hundreds of thousands of families to misery. (You don’t know that — no, you don’t. One of the things they stopped doing after 1996 was paying for research on what happened to those pushed off assistance.)
Bill proved you could win elections without any vision of a good society, relying entirely on opportunistic bobbing and weaving. The guy ran back to Arkansas in mid-campaign to execute a retarded guy. How low can you go?
Democratic wannabee leaders learned his lesson and they are not even smart enough to pull it off.
Til I see different fruits, I view both Bill and Hilary as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Both are immensely talented politicians, with Bill being a bit better than Hillary.
Both are in it for themselves.
Most importantly, Bill Clinton is probably most responsible for turning the Democratic Party into a party that has no clear direction except the one that leads away from Bush. Hillary Clinton has simply been a politician that has reinforced that frame.
The other day when we were taking about music and Wharton, I forgot to mention that I was six or seven when Wharton was pointed out to me. That’s why I could only remember trees and brick walls. Lots of Philadelphia memories are warped because I young when we moved to Texas.
I second your take on the Clinton’s. Bill’s presidency was a monument to ability wasted.
Bill’s really not that good a politician.
He was good at getting his personal self elected, but when he finished we had overwhelmingly Republican government throughout America.
As for American politics I think he has consistently been far behind the times. Not in the issues that would be nice for an American government to address, but in the nature of the Republican threat. He really, totally does not get it.
And he doesn’t get what the gallop of technology means for our so-called system of government and how the right has been playing policy vs progress to destroy democracy wherever it isn’t structurally mooted.
I’d love to concoct an epoch appropriate to Clinton’s skills and outlook, and beam him there for the sheer entertainment value, but ours is clearly over his head.
you’ll fall for anything — that’s where I see the Democrats as heading after the Clintons’ “leadership”.
Don’t get me wrong, I voted for Bill both times. But he disappointed me in his welfare “reform” acts (though the poor were at least marginally better than they are under this current misAdministration), and I was extremely disappointed in “don’t ask, don’t tell” — WTF were the military folks going to do, quit? They survived Truman’s desegregation of the military (ever notice how most movies portray Marine drill sergeants as tough black dudes?), they’d muddle through this one. All it would’ve taken is some equal enforcement of sexual misconduct rules…then again, that was probably the problem, equal enforcement…
He was too eager to try and please too many people to get elected — and thus backed down from many important issues.
I agree that he should’ve come clean about his relationship with Monica…I don’t know if it would have made him more popular, but there are probably a lot of men who would’ve understood — and maybe even a few women that would’ve understood Hillary’s position, making her a bit more of a sympathetic character…
Bill Clinton had beaten the Bushes and neocons, but he still got their simplistic “gloves off” game very late. Since 2000, he was too much nice to Bushes for nothing but smear.
I see parallels with the history and Rome and Carthage. There were good prosperous times around the Punic Mediterranean, but there was an aggressive empire rising that wanted to reap it all. Carthage did not get the game the Romans were playing. But Romans would never forget the scare of the early Carthage fleet, and later of Hannibal. A senator regularly shouted “Carthago delenda est!”, and Carthage was indeed destroyed to the last stones. Similarly, “Clinton delenda est” is a war cry of many right wing nuts.
I think the story of Bill Clinton has all the makings of a tragedy of biblical proportions. He was and is an astonishing mixture of historic greatness and human failure. Intellectually brilliant, politically astute, he will be remembered as one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century. He might have been the greatest. On issue after issue he came that close to achieving greatness. He came closer than anyone to cracking the Palestinian-Israeli impasse. That alone would have secured his place in history. National health care. Eight years of the nearest thing to peace and prosperity the US has ever seen. And on and on.
But he just couldn’t keep his pants zipped. And the Republicans ate him alive for it. I will never forgive Bill Clinton the man for what he did to Bill Clinton the president. And I will never ever forgive the Republicans for what they did to him, and what that has meant for the US and for the world. I’ve been a liberal and a democrat all my life, but I was never really a partisan until I saw what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton. Now as far as I’m concerned, every Republican anywhere has a big target on their back.
Hillary? I wonder how many of us would ever have heard of Hillary Rodham if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton. Rewind history. Before the White House years. Before the Arkansas state house years. Erase Clinton from the end of her name and fast forward again. Apparently she made something of a splash with that speech at Wellesly College, but what else other than being married to Bill Clinton would have called her to our attention? Maybe she would have earned a place in our attention, but I wonder.
Granted she has earned some recognition in her own right now. By most accounts she is an accomplished and successful junior senator from New York. But I wonder, if she had been Hillary Rodham Anything But Clinton, would she be in the Senate now? And would any of us be talking about Hillary and 2008?
that reminds me of a joke Clinton told one time about an old boyfriend of Hillary’s. Bill said something about ‘what-if she had stuck with him instead of going out with the guy that would become President’. And, according to Bill, Hillary responded, ‘you don’t understand, if I had stuck with him he would be President instead of you.’