It it ain't broke don't fix it!

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The Democrats had a great team going with the Clinton Administration. There was a huge surplus of $300 million dollars going perhaps for another decade. If there was a vote to a third or fourth term Bill Clinton would have got it just like FDR. But Republicans party poopers that they are, ended that long a streak of successful government but putting in term limits. Of course we saw how awful Republicans are at governing starting wars and creating the Great Depression of 1929 and rumors of another depression as a result of the huge debt incurred by the War in Iraq and the effort to hide it with a housing bubble of low interest rates which brought us the sub-prime fiasco. Wall Street coerced Bill Clinton into removing the pillars of the financial world and allowing business mergers which resulted in a weaker banking system and a media controlled by Republicans.

Republicans fear a repeat of another Clinton Administration by tricking Democrats into fixing something that ain't broke i.e. a successful winning team. Republicans dread that and are forging a rivalry among Democrats by manipulative media creating a favorite who is easily damaged candidate over a proven one. Republicans smeared the Clinton but with a Democratic Congress that is a real fear for the Democratic Congress can investigate unsavory activities and bring it out to the public.

Don't let the Republicans-run media stampede you into rejecting another Clinton Adminstration.

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Re: It it ain't broke don't fix it!

talk72000 wrote:

Wall Street coerced Bill Clinton into removing the pillars of the financial world and allowing business mergers which resulted in a weaker banking system and a media controlled by Republicans.

Seems like some stuff was in fact broke even under Clinton already.

Sure the 90s look good in comparison with the disaster that came after. But it wasnt all that it could have been by a long shot.

Even before the psychodrama of Bill's personal life hit the vengeful conservative plots sensationally enough to eventually culminate in the biggest soap series the US Presidency ever presented, the Clinton admin was always already more "four more years / of things not getting worse" than any kind of progressive renaissance. FDR he was not. Not even LBJ.

Foreign policy was middling to OK. He was cowardly about the genocide Bosnia for too long, but eventually did the right thing both there and in Kosovo. A similar mix of good intentions, some concrete results and some f*ckups characterised other foreign actions. There was no disaster like now in Iraq.

Basically, the Clinton administrations were a welcome oasis of moderate, centrist policy in between conservative revolutionaries. But Clinton had neither the skills nor the inclinations to take things beyond that. And eventually he played a major role himself in submerging his terms into psychological drama.

It looks good now. But it was also a time of missed opportunities. If the Dems get a new shot, it should be with a new team.

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Clinton was a political neophyte being one of the youngest to be President like JFK who also screwed up and in fact got himself killed. That is why I am against Obama being President at this stage. He needs seasoning. Clinton was not a foreign policy guy. He merely followed in George Bush Sr. foot step in that area and muddled his way with a antagonistic Republican Congress and Kenneth Starr and a deficient Defense Chief of of Staffs. With a Democratic Congress things will go smoother and chase after the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Scaife culprit and their ilk. Now I am sure the Clintons are more mature and can strike out on their own and bring sanity back to Americans.

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False returns you forgot to add. Who was President when the crash of 1999 occurred and the DOW lost over 10% of it's value? Stop trying to sugar coat his time in office. It was not so great.

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I think Bill Clinton will be widely held responsible for this recession if as it appears likely it is a very bad one. The shadow banking system, outside of regulatory oversight or even the most rudimentary transparency, not only took shape on Clinton's watch but he was a major promoter of it. Anything for growth to make the government books look better in the short run and to keep the corporate elite and super wealthy ruling class happy. Clinton, the master politician, not only never gave a sh*t about the Democratic party, the same went for America's long term best interests. As with everything in his life, it is all about him.

The historians with get his ass good, and Greenspan's as well.

NOTE: "shadow banking system" is from Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/opinion/21krugman.html?ref=opinion

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woiyo wrote:

False returns you forgot to add. Who was President when the crash of 1999 occurred and the DOW lost over 10% of it's value? Stop trying to sugar coat his time in office. It was not so great.

The NASDAQ lost 50% of its value in one year, from Jan 2000 to Jan 2001, the last 12 months of the Clinton presidency.

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Re: It it ain't broke don't fix it!

talk72000 wrote:

The Democrats had a great team going with the Clinton Administration. There was a huge surplus of $300 million dollars going perhaps for another decade. If there was a vote to a third or fourth term Bill Clinton would have got it just like FDR. But Republicans party poopers that they are, ended that long a streak of successful government but putting in term limits.

Yes. Those evil Republicans turned on the "way-back machine", traveled back in time to 1951 and passed the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution just to twart a 3rd temr by Bill Clinton. Oh, how crafty those bastids are!

Quote:

Of course we saw how awful Republicans are at governing starting wars and creating the Great Depression of 1929 and rumors of another depression as a result of the huge debt incurred by the War in Iraq and the effort to hide it with a housing bubble of low interest rates which brought us the sub-prime fiasco. Wall Street coerced Bill Clinton into removing the pillars of the financial world and allowing business mergers which resulted in a weaker banking system and a media controlled by Republicans.

Yes! Bill Clinton was COERECED! He was, of course, entirely incapable fo thinking for himself. Someone else must be to blame. He certianly can't be faulted to for the low interest rates, increases in consumer debt, bad mortgage lending practices and not stopping the Enron's of the world during his administration!

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Republicans fear a repeat of another Clinton Administration by tricking Democrats into fixing something that ain't broke i.e. a successful winning team. Republicans dread that and are forging a rivalry among Democrats by manipulative media creating a favorite who is easily damaged candidate over a proven one. Republicans smeared the Clinton but with a Democratic Congress that is a real fear for the Democratic Congress can investigate unsavory activities and bring it out to the public.

A bit of a contradiction here. That "sucessful winning team" was Bill Clinton as President with a Republican controlled Congress yet you seem to favor a Congress controlled by Democrats. Why do you want to break up a "winning team"?

And the Democrats in Congress have already shown that they are only willing to look at "unsavory" acts commitedd by Republicans. They are no better than anyone else at investigating their own.

Quote:

Don't let the Republicans-run media stampede you into rejecting another Clinton Adminstration.

Sorry, but unless you are willing to ceed the Congress back to Republicans and repeal the 22nd Amendment it's not going to happen. Hillary isn't Bill and she isn't "proven". In fact, her resume is largely inflated and she attempts to take credit for things she had no involvement in.

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real life wrote:

The NASDAQ lost 50% of its value in one year, from Jan 2000 to Jan 2001, the last 12 months of the Clinton presidency.

The tech bubble, the housing bubble, bubbles all over the place, and they always break, almost always in an unpleasant way. It all has to do with the same thing, incompetence at organizing the society economically, a failure to regulate the system in a way that keeps people from getting unduly hurt and keeps resources going to the best place for them. We can't do that anymore, the entire economic system is built on sand. Clinton was a major promoter of irresponsible practices. Follow Clinton with a brain dead Bush and whammo, we're screwed.

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real life wrote:

The NASDAQ lost 50% of its value in one year, from Jan 2000 to Jan 2001, the last 12 months of the Clinton presidency.

Of course, even after that happened, it was still at some 500% of the value it had when Clinton became President, at the end of Bush I's presidency.

And it kept falling after Clinton's second term ended, and even now, almost a full two terms later, has barely reached the level it had at that time.

If someone is indeed as foolish as to suggest a direct relation between who is President and how the NASDAQ developed, there is little in this graph that reflects badly on Bill; even including the 50% loss in 2000, the NASDAQ did better under his Presidency than it had done in decades, if not ever.

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/7623/nasdaqhistoricalgraphqi3.png

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Tricks of statistic deception. Narrowly focus on a graph over some item rather than present a broad time span. The Republicans brought term limits after FDR's death fearing extinction as a result of FDR pulling America out of a Depression brought in by the 'beggar thy neighbor' policy of Hoover.

Thanks nimh for the NASDAQ graph.

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hawkeye10 wrote:

I think Bill Clinton will be widely held responsible for this recession if as it appears likely it is a very bad one. The shadow banking system, outside of regulatory oversight or even the most rudimentary transparency, not only took shape on Clinton's watch but he was a major promoter of it. Anything for growth to make the government books look better in the short run and to keep the corporate elite and super wealthy ruling class happy. Clinton, the master politician, not only never gave a sh*t about the Democratic party, the same went for America's long term best interests. As with everything in his life, it is all about him.

The historians with get his ass good, and Greenspan's as well.

NOTE: "shadow banking system" is from Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/opinion/21krugman.html?ref=opinion

You can realistically hold a President responsible for 18 months after his presidency ends. The first Bush recession can be Clinton's, but the current one is clearly Bush's. Either he did not fix issues with the previous administration or his policies are directly responsible.

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engineer wrote:

You can realistically hold a President responsible for 18 months after his presidency ends. The first Bush recession can be Clinton's, but the current one is clearly Bush's. Either he did not fix issues with the previous administration or his policies are directly responsible.

It is much easier to give a gift than it is to take it away. Clinton gave huge gifts to the corporate class and the wealthy ruling class. Even if Bush would have been smart enough to know that it was a mistake it would have been impossible for him to force the shrinkage of the shadow banking system. The corporate class and the wealthy had the ability to retaliate by driving the nations economy into the ditch on purpose to teach all of the political leaders a lesson about f*cking with the economic leaders. There is every reason to think that they would have do this. Unless Bush could prove that the Shadow banking system was too risky to allow to continue he could not have gained public support either. Clinton's foolishness was impossible to fix until the scheme collapsed. Bush did pile on though with his own mistakes, not fixing the mortgage situation after it was clear that there was massive fraud in the system is but one decision historians will gig him on.

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hawkeye10 wrote:

engineer wrote:
You can realistically hold a President responsible for 18 months after his presidency ends. The first Bush recession can be Clinton's, but the current one is clearly Bush's. Either he did not fix issues with the previous administration or his policies are directly responsible.

It is much easier to give a gift than it is to take it away. Clinton gave huge gifts to the corporate class and the wealthy ruling class. Even if Bush would have been smart enough to know that it was a mistake it would have been impossible for him to force the shrinkage of the shadow banking system. The corporate class and the wealthy had the ability to retaliate by driving the nations economy into the ditch on purpose to teach all of the political leaders a lesson about f*cking with the economic leaders. There is every reason to think that they would have do this. Unless Bush could prove that the Shadow banking system was too risky to allow to continue he could not have gained public support either. Clinton's foolishness was impossible to fix until the scheme collapsed.

That's an interesting theory, but Bush actively participated further by enacting tax cuts that pumped even more cash into the financial markets. The markets continued to overheat with businesses flush with cash looking to lend money to anyone who might pay them back with interest. Clinton is not responsible for that.

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engineer wrote:

That's an interesting theory, but Bush actively participated further by enacting tax cuts that pumped even more cash into the financial markets. The markets continued to overheat with businesses flush with cash looking to lend money to anyone who might pay them back with interest. Clinton is not responsible for that.

I agree completely

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It it ain't broke don't fix it!

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