In the news, that is.
Or, rather, at the center of an Op-ed inspired debate among Democrats and others.
President Bill Clinton — a Democratic president who did a teeny-weenie thing that many Democrats hadn’t done in a long time (won a presidential election and got re-elected) is being “dissed” and “defended.” But then there’s nothing new about that: he has been disssed and defended on talk shows, television, on blogs, columns and on in Congress.
In fact, today Bill Clinton is a vital part of the Bush administration.
Apart from his late-blossoming friendship with George Bush The Prequel, his name figures in many responses official spokesmen give when the administration is criticized.
Reduce the “under Clinton”s from their repertoire and the spokesmen sometimes wouldn’t have very much to say.
Take the “Clinton” references out of Rush Limbaugh’s three hour show and you’d have about two hours (30 minutes if “Hillary” is cut out, too).
But this time the fire is coming from Democratic quarters. Specifically, at issue is this thought-provoking op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Daily Kos creator Markos Moulitsas. It mostly focuses on Hillary Clinton, arguing she is too much of a Clinton Democrat. It should be read in full. But here’s the relevant passage on Bill Clinton:
Our crashing of Washington’s gates wasn’t about ideology, it was about pragmatism. Democrats haven’t won more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election since 1976. Heck, we haven’t won more than 50.1 percent since 1964. And complicit in that failure was the only Democrat to occupy the White House since 1980: Bill Clinton.
Despite all his successes — and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at — he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president’s personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his “third way” of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.
While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations. The disconnect was stark, and ultimately destructive. Clinton’s third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and, despite its undivided control of the party apparatus, delivered nothing. Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic “message,” a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
Actually, Bill Clinton didn’t kill off Jesse Jackson’s wing of the Democratic party: Jesse Jackson killed it off due to his hubris (“Hymietown”), lack of overwhelming proven clout at the polls, his running into a buzzsaw of bad publicity due to books and articles about how he operated with his organization, and his personal life becoming tabloid-fodder. Not Clinton’s doing.
Taylor Marsh, in a MUST READ post that must be read in full says, in part:
Bill Clinton was by no means a perfect president. However, in the end he won two terms in office, had effective policies and is still one of the only people who can go anywhere in this country and fit in, be welcomed and cheered. People are currently pining for the days of Bill. Consider me one of those people. Clinton’s appeal and wins are because he started out as the “original average Joe,” who could sell strip club stock to born again Christians. His failings come in the same package, but the man knows how to win. At least Moulitsas adds that “eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at.” If not a sneeze, then Moulitsas delivers a hacking cough….
…. I’ve said this over and over again, but it bears repeating. In the end, people don’t vote for policies. They vote through emotion and the identification they feel with the person on the ticket and the excitement that person inspires. Good policies will never outweigh the I want to identify with him/her reality. I believe in him/her. I want to help him/her win. Policies don’t inspire participation, it’s the politician….Bill Clinton didn’t cause our losses in 2000, 2002 and 2004. But if you believe he did get ready to lose some more.
In another must-read-in-full-post DLCer Bull Moose writes, in part:
What is it about peace and prosperity and a two term Democratic Presidency that the donkey doesn’t like?…Shock and horror – Clinton did not exceed the 50 percent mark in his two Presidential victories. Odds are that Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry could have lived with that!
Well, first of all, the reason that the Democrats lost so many seats back in ’94 was that the Clinton Administration betrayed its New Democrat roots in the first two years and veered to the left….These netroots types think they are something cutting edge when they are merely McGovernites with modems. One only wonders why the much maligned “Main Stream Media”, much less elected officials, pay so much attention to them. And their complaints about the political establishment just echo those of the New Politics folks who culturally marginalized the party until Bill Clinton came along.
Then, from yet another perspective, there’s Oxblog’s David Adesnik who writes of Kos’ piece:
No balanced budget (the first in decades)? No economic boom? No victory in Kosovo? No 60% approval rating? And killing off the Jesse Jackson wing justifies the Clinton presidency all by itself.
Gee, I guess Kos’ article was pretty effective if it has me singing the praises of Bill Clinton. Anyhow, I still think Hillary is in trouble because so many loyal, mainstream Democrats I know consider her unelectable. If she doesn’t have the mainstream and doesn’t have the “netroots” what does she have?
Our view? Putting aside Hillary Clinton, here’s how we see it.
The roots of the Democratic party’s present tensions actually go back before the McGovernites. Many people don’t remember, but in 1968 when Senator Eugene McCarthy essentially forced LBJ out of the race and Senator Robert Kennedy jumped in McCarthy and his followers were extremely bitter. They considered Kennedy a usurper: he wasn’t the REAL Democratic liberal, because he was a Bobby-Come-Lately to being anti-war, and got into the race right at the time when McCarthy seemed to be catching on.
RFK was murdered, McCarthy fizzled (in 1968 and as a national candidate in the future), Vice President Hubert Humphrey ran — and Richard Nixon won. Twice.
The McGovernites were passionate anti-war activists, out to retake the party. They were dedicated, progressive political activists in a time before “netroots.”
They took over the Democratic party. And lost. But their influence within the party remained dominant. If history proved them correct in their views on the Vietnam war (and some still dispute that), their sometimes politically toe-stubbing, take-no-prisoners rhetoric turned many Americans off. There WAS what Richard Nixon called “the great, silent majority” — and TGSM wasn’t with the McGovernites and the way they pitched their ideas. The McGovernites were a Godsend to many Republicans for years.
Enter Jimmy Carter. He didn’t run as a member of the McGovernite wing of the Democratic party, but he was wise enough to essentially neutralize them, win them over and get the nomination. And he won. For one term.
What did Clinton do? If you go back and re-read the news accounts, he did indeed look for a “third way” and as he campaigned he seemed like a salesman trying to overcome a skeptical prospect’s objections. On many issues on which the McGovernite/left-wing of the party seemed to alienate the majority of Americans, Clinton came up with a different plan. Or, at least, a more conciliatory, inclusive tone.
Yes. In a way he “stole the thunder” of the Republicans, moving his party (kicking and screaming in some instances) to the center of the American political spectrum, scrapping some positions that lost in the past and moving closer to positions that would incorporate a Democratic approach with a Republican approach. Was this “me-tooism” or political adaptability?
So is that why he won? Not quite.
He probably would have not pulled it off due to deeply rooted skepticism on the part of many Americans — except for a guy named Ross Perot who also helped siphon votes away from George Bush The Prequel.
Political scientists and historians can debate Clinton’s term in office, but the bottom line is that throughout it he was nimble enough politically to adapt, attempt to aggregate interests and build cohesive political coalitions.
It wasn’t just his personality that got him the high ratings — it was that he reached out. It’s when he reached out to Monica (or when she reached out to him) that his presidency’s efficacy was doomed.
YES: Clinton was NOT a leftist Democratic president. But he was one who knew how to look at the panorama of America and build coalitions that went beyond just appealing to his party’s own base.
Today, we see George Bush’s government by the base, for the base and of the base.
The cautionary note for the “netroots” is that they are in danger of becoming a mirror image of just that: insisting on an ideological purity that will eventually only reflect a segment of the Democratic party’s base (so just where will the other Democrats GO?). Just as American broadcasting has devolved into often artless “narrowcasting,” so is American politics in danger of devolving into “narrowcampaigning” if people on the left don’t proceed thoughtfully.
The idea of the “netroots” working hard as you see here to get people involved in politics and relentlessly press their agenda is admirable. Participation always is — whether one agrees with the specific cause or not.
The problem is if it results in a mirror-image political crusade similar to those Republican conservatives who want to purge Republican moderates from their party.
What have the “netroots” produced so far? Funding and great potential. But so far any candidate who would totally hitch their wagon to the advice of people writing weblogs (right, left or center), assuming that it would mean victory at the ballot box, is jumping the political and Internet evolution gun. To be sure, politicos are increasingly campaigning on weblogs. But there are few signs so far that people reading weblogs and computers have changed the course of the final votes on Election Day. Raising funds? Yes. Getting people excited? Yes? Actually winning elections? Nooooooooooooo…
But Bill Clinton? He knew how to win elections.
Which is slightly important — and admirable — in politics.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.