PrintApril 12, 2009
The Parallel Universe of Clinton and Obama
In 1993, many of the citizens who voted for Obama last year were probably still in grade school. They can be forgiven for not remembering the early years '93-‘94 of the Clinton administration. Their parents, however, have either lapsed memories or are simply simple-minded.
I well recall the euphoria at the Clinton inauguration. So many young people excited about having a youngish president who played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show and bravely told the MTV audience whether he wore boxers or briefs. American voters had no particular beef with George H. W. Bush other than he "lied" when he said "read my lips, no new taxes." One of my Democratic sisters admitted that she voted for Clinton because Bush was too old.
I tried to empathize with the same political passion of the Clintonites by comparing it with my teenage exhilaration with JFK's election. But that scenario didn't wash because JFK had a background that lent credence to my infatuation. He was a military hero, a Pulitzer Prize winning author (we did not know at the time it was ghost-written), a U.S. Senator with a storybook albeit falsified family life. Clinton on the other hand was the governor of a state that ranked 49th out of 50 states in many important measures. He was a draft dodger who had protested in Russia when he was supposed to be studying in Oxford. The Rhodes Scholar's educational record there was never disclosed and Clinton also had a personal history that sparked rumors of sexual misadventures with various women.
Nevertheless, Clinton appealed to the lowest common denominator of the American electorate who came out to vote for the man who promised to improve the economy that was proven not to be as bad as his campaign alleged.
Just as Barack Obama's campaign misled the public and ran against his own ultra liberal record, Clinton ran as a centrist and won. Once in office however, his actions exposed his liberal bent and his allegiance to the left wing Democrats who laid low during his campaign.
The man who loathed the military immediately cut the defense budget and laid the background for future attacks on the U.S. and its interests. Barack Obama has done the same in spite of the looming threats by Korea and Iran.
In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. Clinton treated it as a criminal act rather than a national security threat. It has been argued that this sent a message to terrorists that the U.S. was a paper tiger.
In Somalia, President George H. W. Bush had ordered U.S. troops on a mercy mission to assist the U.N. in the distribution of life saving food and medicine. This was largely successful but the region was a hotbed of militant warlord factions and the woefully inept Commander-in-Chief Clinton was in charge of a mission that encountered resistance. U.S. Commander Thomas Montgomery requested gunships and armored vehicles to give his men more security and offensive capability. Defense Secretary Les Aspin refused to send them because he wanted to avoid escalation of U.S. involvement in the region. Does the term Black Hawk Down mean anything to you?
Co-president Hillary Clinton decided that she knew best how to raise our children and that we needed universal health care just like the Europeans have. She also decided that we really didn't need to know any of the details of the proposed plan and how much it would cost us. Her surreptitious handling of the health care issue led to the U.S. being sued by health care professionals and cost the U.S. nearly $300,000 in legal fees. The term "Hillarycare" became synonymous with heath care fiasco yet similar socialist programs are looming again in the Obama administration.
Bill Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes for the middle class and raising them only on the upper class. The campaign succeeded in promoting class envy but as soon as Clinton became president he broke that promise weeks after taking office. Clinton also had a stimulus package of $60 billion that turned out to be mostly pork for socialist programs. Remember the defunct $64 million inner-city midnight basketball?
Clinton's early missteps in governing the country cost the Democrats the control of Congress in 1994 and for the first time in 40 years, the Republicans became the majority party in both houses of the legislature. It would do well to summarize these mistakes and remind the Obama voters what they can look forward to next year. Hopefully Barack Obama will follow Clinton's return to the center under a Republican Congress. Thanks to the mainstream media, the electorate continues to credit the Clinton administration for the economic recovery for which the GOP Contract with America was largely responsible. If the GOP saves the economy again, it should expect the same ingratitude.
