Clawing For A Second Chance
Charles Krauthammer analyzes Bill Clinton's legacy this morning in his Washington Post column. Or, more correctly, Bill Clinton's lack of a legacy. Krauthammer writes that Clinton simply threw away any real chance of a legacy from his time in the White House and is simply trying to claw his way back to the Oval Office, even if he has to do so by proxy by getting his wife into the Presidency.
Reagan changed history. At home, he radically altered both the shape and perception of government. Abroad, he changed the entire structure of the international system by bringing down the Soviet empire, giving birth to a unipolar world of unprecedented American dominance.
By comparison, Clinton was a historical parenthesis. He can console himself — with considerable justification — that he simply drew the short straw in the chronological lottery: His time just happened to be the 1990s, which, through no fault of his own, was the most inconsequential decade of the 20th century. His was the interval between the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, and the return of history with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001.
Clinton's decade, that holiday from history, was certainly a time of peace and prosperity — but a soporific Golden Age that made no great demands on leadership. What, after all, was his greatest crisis? A farcical sexual dalliance.
Clinton no doubt wishes he'd been president on Sept. 11. It is nearly impossible for a president to rise to greatness in the absence of a great crisis, preferably war. Theodore Roosevelt is the only clear counterexample, and Bill is no Teddy.
What is the legacy of the Clinton presidency? Consolidator of the Reagan revolution. As Dwight Eisenhower made permanent FDR's New Deal and Tony Blair institutionalized Thatcherism, Clinton consolidated Reaganism. He did so most symbolically with his 1996 State of the Union declaration that "the era of big government is over." And more concretely, with a presidency that only tinkered with such structural Reaganite changes as tax cuts and deregulation, and whose major domestic achievement was the abolition of welfare, Reagan's ultimate social bête noire.
These are serious achievements, but of a second order. Obama did little more than echo that truism. But one can imagine how it made Clinton burn. He is, after all, a relatively young man who has decades to brood over his lost opportunity for greatness and yet is constitutionally barred from doing anything about it.
Unless you count Clinton's failure to adequately address the rise of islamist terrorism during his time in office as a legacy, Krauthammer has pretty well nailed it. Clinton actually accomplished little and has been judged more on the basis of the historical accident of a good economy during his tenure. Krauthammer is quite correct: that must enrage Clinton. While Clinton has toned down the attacks on Obama in recent days, one can be sure that he is still actively working to destroy the man who stands between him and some chance of the redemption of his lost legacy.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » It’s All About Bill — February 3, 2008 @ 9:22 am
By Geoffb, February 2, 2008 @ 11:16 am
If Clinton had actually wanted to be a wartime leader he with his rhetorical gifts could have started the showdown with Islamic terrorism, he had plenty of opportunities.
Instead he decided to downgrade the power of the US because of his whole administration’s view that is was not right for there to be only one superpower in the world. China was supposed to be the balance to US power. His “the era of big government is over” in reality meant the downsizing of the US military but increasing the size of the other parts of the Federal Government.
He only avoided Jimmy Carter status because we faced no threat as organized as the USSR during his Presidency. His failure was to allow the terrorist threat to metastasize and allow nations such as Pakistan and North Korea to develop into nuclear threats.
By CG, February 2, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Remember too that history very nearly “returned” in February 1993, when the partially-successful bombing of the World Trade Center occurred. Had the bomb been placed in a slightly different position at least one of the towers would have collapsed on that day, resulting in what would probably have been a far higher number of casualties (the bombing occurred around noon on a Friday). It is an interesting counter-factual scenario to imagine how the Clinton of 1993 would have responded to this catastrophe.
By NortonPete, February 2, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
I agree CG, had the 1993 bombing been successful; one of the towers would have come down fast with 25,000 people working in it.
I was there that day working at 7 WTC. I will never forget it.
NY Waterways did a heroic job of getting 100000+ people off of Manhattan; the subways were all knocked out.
Initially we were told that there was not any chance of a bomb bringing the down the tower, but a closer examination of the damage sent a chill through many engineers’ spine. There was a tremendous amount of damage and now we know that the entire WTC complex, built by the Port Authority, was a collection of less than adequate designs.
Sheik Rahman’s gang of misfits tried again in 1997, they were caught but only after having made a bigger bomb in a Queen’s warehouse.
Many of my fellow workers would comment during the 1990s, “They will be back; it is only a matter of time.”
All this while the Clinton administration was ignoring attack after attack.
By Scott Wiggins, February 3, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
No legacy…Are you kidding? His legacy is bimbo-gate, FBI file-gate, State Trooper-gate, Pardon-gate, Impeachment, Disbarment, and a supporting cast of thousands including Charlie Trie, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Jaunita Broadrick, Marc Rich, Sandy Berger, Vince Foster…I could go on but what’s the point. He has a legacy…It’s just not one he chooses to remember.