Bill Clinton Isn’t God

I’m going to editorialize for a moment. I know this is a personal blog, and I should feel comfortable doing it without any pretext, but this is a touchy subject. Here, I attempt to explain why I think it is OK for a Democratic presidential candidate to criticize former president Bill Clinton. Some of the points made in this post I agree with wholeheartedly. Other points are merely mentioned because I think they are subconsciously at work in the backs of the minds of members of my generation.

It is the dogmatic pro-Bill Clinton expectations put forth by other bloggers that prompted me to write this post. In particular, I am troubled by my friend Taylor Marsh’s recent opinion that she might not support Sen. Barack Obama should he win the nomination because Obama had the audacity to criticize Clinton, whom she repeatedly and admiringly describes as “the only two term Democratic president since F.D.R.”

Bill Clinton’s presidency was, in many ways, a success. We had eight years of relative economic prosperity, relative peace, and relative stability. I came of age politically during the Clinton years, and it certainly influenced my current set of beliefs.

But let’s not let Clinton’s political success overshadow the weaknesses that we were all aware of during his presidency. I wrote the other day that Obama benefits from engaging the former president for a variety of strategic reasons, but I also think he benefits because his criticisms ring true — even if some Democrats think it is a sin to admit it.

First, Ronald Reagan really did have a bigger lasting impact on American politics than Bill Clinton. This doesn’t mean Ronald Reagan was good and Bill Clinton was bad (in fact, I don’t know any Democrats who believe that), but just watch any of the recent Republican presidential debates, in which candidates adopt a half dozen or more strategies in an effort to lay claim to whatever pieces of Ronald Reagan’s legacy that they can.

Clinton led the United States through a period of prosperity that he gets plenty of credit for, but in 12 years there will not be a field of presidential candidates trying to out-Clinton each other, and the terms “Clintonomics” and “Clinton Republicans” will not be part of the lexicon. Reagan was a “transformative” president in ways that Bill Clinton was not, and Democrats have to admit it even if we don’t like it.

Second, from the perspective of most Americans looking back, the Republican party was, in many ways, the party of ideas during the 1980s and 1990s.

What was the Clinton doctrine on foreign policy? What was Clinton’s economic policy aside from a fairly moderated version of Republican economic policy? Where was our contract with America?

The explicitly centrist Democratic Leadership Council became the braintrust of the Democratic Party during the Clinton years. Many progressives blame that fact for electoral defeats all the way through 2004. The most-cited reason is that they failed to inspire Americans with original ideas to counter the original (albeit harmful) ideas of the GOP.

The Clinton administration exhibited a devastating inability to properly frame issues, which they admit was one reason why their efforts for health care failed. But it wasn’t just health care. Throughout the 1990s, the media wrote stories about sex scandals and welfare queens while the Clinton administration desperately tried to change the story. They won small battles here and there, but they lost the larger war.

Third, even some loyal Bill Clinton supporters believe that he’ll ’say anything to get elected.’ If one man embodies the definition of “politician” in the minds of most Americans, it’s probably Bill Clinton. The moniker “Slick Willy” may have been coined by right-wing radio hosts, but plenty of Democrats repeated it affectionately while loyally pulling the lever for Clinton in the 1990s.

The electorate expected the president to be likable, and they expected his administration to be good for their wallets and pocketbooks. Bill Clinton was, so who cared what he said or who he slept with? That’s what I remember hearing during the 1990s, anyway.

And finally, a lot of Democrats rightfully blame Clinton for a lot of things. Workers complain about NAFTA. Political strategists believe he poured gasoline on the flames of the culture war, poisoning about a decade’s worth of political discourse (they believe it even if they are too afraid for their own careers to say it out loud). Many young people are just a little tired of the Clintons. Some may wonder why Bush has been able to make so many more noticeable changes in their lives than Clinton did, even if they think Bush’s changes were bad.

The former president’s biography is truly inspiring, and his ambition is certainly impressive. There is no question that his presidency did a lot of good for a lot of people, and the man continues to work to develop solutions to the world’s problems through a truly innovative foundation. But a saint, he ain’t.