I'm not a fiskin' kinda guy, but this post by the normally thoughtful Tacitus really deserves a little special attention. So let's start at the top and run through the whole thing, shall we?
Yglesias is upset that retrospectives on Clinton are focusing on the single most significant event of Clinton's presidency. Funny how that goes.
Actually, Matt's complaint was just the reverse, but since Tacitus cleaned that up with an update, we'll move on.
If you think I don't like the implicit contrast with the premier Republican president of the last quarter-century, think again.
The premier Republican president of the last quarter-century? Sure, I'll buy that. President Reagan beats Bush pere and fils hands-down. I'll leave it to some of the Gipper's more ardent admirers to determine whether that's really a compliment, though, or a classic case of damning with faint praise.
Bill Clinton was a charismatic man, a competent administrator, a moral void, and in league with the presidents between Jackson and Lincoln as a great deferrer of inevitable questions of American identity and mission. He gets due credit for fortuitous timing -- amazing what the business cycle and emerging transformative technologies can do -- and, paradoxically, for having so little core principle as to easily tack with the political winds after November '94.
A moral void? Let's see, now. Bill Clinton was part of a generation of Southern pols that had an opportunity to switch parties without penalty as it became clear that the political future of the region, and perhaps even the nation, was spelled GOP. We can all name several who chose to do precisely that. Clinton didn't. In fact, he stood some pretty unpopular progressive ground in the 1980s, in Arkansas and beyond. That doesn't sound like the behavior of a "moral void" to me. Unless, of course, you believe that public morality doesn't count -- in which case, we can pull out the Reagan family scrapbook and start our discussion of his public life with the loving portrait of wise and responsible parenting limned therein.
And what are we to make of the charge that Clinton benefited from "fortuitous timing?" Well, he did, actually. On the other hand, that argument sounds a little silly coming from a blogger who, just a few sentences later, credits Ronald Reagan with winning the Cold War. Could Reagan have "won" the Cold War if he'd been elected in 1960? Or 1970? Of course not. The issue isn't the hands these presidents were dealt, but how well they played them. And, by that standard, Clinton did just fine, thank you very much.
As to the question of Clinton's supposed lack of "core principle[s]," I'd challenge anyone out there to find a single bill -- just one, folks -- that Clinton signed after the Republican takeover in 1994 that's fundamentally at odds with the ideas outlined in his 1992 presidential announcement speech, or his quite detailed campaign book, Putting People First. As my old Irish grandfather used to say, if you can do that, I'll kiss your a** at high noon in the middle of Central Park -- and give you fifteen minutes to gather a crowd first.
Some good conservative governance happened on Clinton's watch (free trade, welfare reform, and balanced budgets among them), and that ought not go unacknowledged. On the other hand, we can't forget feckless feel-good foreign policy, health care "reform," and yes, impeachment; the latter of which, whatever roots it had in an obsessive witch-hunt, would never have occurred absent Clinton's own gross iniquity. Is this part of the Clinton legacy? Absolutely. Is it directly reflective upon Clinton himself? Without question. Was the second presidential impeachment in over two centuries of American independence inherently the signal event of that president's tenure in office? Of course.
Feckless feel-good foreign policy? Compared to what? Allowing several hundred marines to die in a Beirut-based photo op before declaring, Rosanne Rosannadanna-like, "Never mind." Or deploying thousands of troops to Somalia with the primary mission of getting hungry people off America's TV screens? As someone -- Kevin Drum, I think -- said recently, in a somewhat different context, "Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle."
Health care reform? Clinton blew it, and he'd tell you that himself. Still, I have to say that it felt pretty damned good to have a president who actually cared about the fact that forty million Americans don't have health insurance. And, frankly, I'm looking forward to the day when I can feel that way again.
As to Tac's suggestion that the Lewinsky mess involved "gross iniquity," rather than, say, monumental middle-aged foolishness, I honestly don't have much of a response. I guess either you're with us, or you're with the moralists.
Yglesias and those Democrats weary of being reminded of the Republican archetype they and theirs so wrongly opposed in the crisis years may dislike it. But truth will out: The historical memory of Ronald Reagan reduces to winning the Cold War. The historical memory of Bill Clinton reduces to tawdry disgrace. If this is the Democratic counterpoint to the pro-conservative nostalgia of the past few weeks -- and let's be honest, this is the best they have to offer -- then I, for one, can only respond thus:
Bring it on.
Yes, indeed, my friend -- do bring it on.
Eight years of economic expansion that reached the bottom as well as the top. Eight years of strong alliances and a safe, secure America. Eight years in which our greatest national problem was the wayward presidential member.
I'd take that again in a heart beat. And so would the vast majority of the hundred million or so people who are going to show up this November and decide who's to govern this country for the next four years.
So, please, don't bring it on slowly, Tacitus, and don't bring it on so carelessly next time. Bring it with all you've got, and bring it now. We're ready. And a better future is just an election away.
UPDATE: Okay, I've settled down now. Sorry about the unusually long post. (That atypically earnest prose at the end there could use a little work, too, actually.) Next time I'll try to exercise a little more restraint.
CORRECTION: So I'm reading this typically witty billmon post over at the Whiskey Bar, when all of a sudden I realize that I may have just had my first senior moment at the not-so-tender age of thirty-eight: Of course it was Emily Litella, and not Rosanne Rosannadanna, who famously said, "Never mind."
Never mind, indeed.
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