What happened to President Bill Clinton?

It's hard to tell.

Clinton has to have a poll done to find out what he really thinks.

 

How can President Clinton "run for UN Ambassador" during a Republican administration?

 

Yes, I hate it when that happens.

The Republican controlled Congress enthusiastically participated in that paring down. Cheney himself helped choose which states and districts would have their bases shut down.

President-elect Bush was enthusiastic about it himself: "...And, finally, we must work to change our military to meet the threats of a new century. Effective military power is increasingly defined not by size or mass but by mobility and swiftness. Influence is measure in information. Safety is gained in stealth." (linkie) The first nine months in office Bush & Rumsfeld worked to privatize the military as much as possible - especially outsourcing the support functions (food, laundry, etc). The idea was that since modern wars are swift strikes (they were during the Reagan, Bush I & Clinton years), the expensive of hiring outsiders to do those would be more than offset by all the downtime when their services would not be needed. Another plan that didn't go as expected...

Was he asked about those "agendas"? Is he in a position to affect them? He is a shrewd, charasmatic politician.

President Clinton successfully cooperated with the other heads of state to bring terrorists to justice. Killing the royal families of the Arab Emirates to take out bin Laden would have been a horendous move. Osama bin Laden is very difficult to get. Bush, despite scouring the countryside with our military, the Afghani army and a coalition of international troops, has missed Osama for nearly five years now.

What about face? In their briefing memos to the incoming president, Clinton's team stressed that terrorism was the greatest threat facing the US. What did Bush say his top priority was? Education.

He may very well. I'm sure he regrets being unable to negoiate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

It wasn't 3000 Americans, you know; it was almost 3000 people from countries all over the world, a great many of whom were Moslems themselves. Mr. Daisy's cousin's husband was late to work that day (child care problems); he would have been a casualty.

Clinton is professionally likeable - it is one of the things he does best.

 

That's not logic of any kind. I suppose you mean something by that, but for the life of me, I can't make it out.

[quoe=EG]How was that exercise supposed to make sense?[/quote]That was your exercise, not mine, so you explain it.

He had taken it seriously enough not to kill them as they were not terrorists, but heads of state who had cooperated with the US.

You're wrong - a lot of them were Moslem (not Arabic), more than you're aware of - the World Trade Center had a lot of international and naturalized workers and visitors (as does NYC as a whole). We all want the terrorists eliminated, but not at the expense of thousands of innocents. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Again, you lost me...I do want them eliminated.

I define an American as a citizen of America.

 

Joseph said it:

Pure politics. As the "first black president," African nations will vote for him. Can you imagine the gleeful meetings between him and Hillary as they plot world strategy?

(However, he has offices in Harlem, and they've asked him to move out, since the price of property there has doubled since he moved in. The "first black president" is taking his lumps there.)

 

Let's see... Tax increases. Wildly unpopular, until they actually produced results. Clinton went forward with them, anyway.

Health care initiative. So unpopular, even a democrat Congress wouldn't pass it.

Intervention in the Balkans. Republicans were wailing about the "invincible Serbs" and the horrible casualties we would face in "another Vietnam." The public strongly opposed the intervention. Clinton went in anyway, and only when he succeeded, did the American people back him.

Reforming welfare. The democrats were dead set against it. Clintion put together a majority of moderate democrats and responsible republicans to make it a reality.

The notion that Clinton follows the polls is laughable. His behavior has been quite the opposite.

 

Clinton was the most poll driven President in modern history. Even the liberal shill, Media Matters, admits it:

"Following his election, Bush's aides and supporters continued to highlight what they claimed was a clear distinction between Bush and President Clinton, whose reliance on polling data was well documented. "


http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0204.green.html

EXCERPT

It's not hard to understand the appeal of this tactic. Ever since the Clinton administration's well-noted excesses---calling on pollsters to help determine vacation spots and family pets---polling has become a kind of shorthand for everything people dislike about Washington politics.

SNIP

But in fact, the Bush administration is a frequent consumer of polls, though it takes extraordinary measures to appear that it isn't. This administration, unlike Clinton's, rarely uses poll results to ply reporters or congressional leaders for support.

SNIP

Bill Clinton, of course, polled like no other president. In addition to polling more often and in greater detail than his predecessors, he put unprecedented faith in his pollsters, elevating them to the status of senior advisers. His tendency to obsess over polls disconcerted even those closest to him, and his over-reliance on polls led to some devastating errors, such as following a Morris poll showing that voters wouldn't accept a candid acknowledgment of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

 

It's all in the spin.

Media Matters isn't Washington Monthly.

 

(neocon spin to try to prove Clinton didn't ignore polls when necessary)

The bottom line remains;

Clinton frequently took highly unpopular actions, because he thought they were right. (see above)

Every president uses polls constantly. Clinton had the backbone to go against them, when it was necessary.

For which we should be grateful.

 

No, Media Matters is a liberal shill.

Even they comfirm Clinton's reliance on polls.

It could be you misread. The only real question is, why?

 

As you saw in the Leiberman campaign, liberals aren't too happy with Clinton for a number of things.

1. Democratic Study Group - Stated goal to bring the party to the right.

2. Welfare reform

3. Use of military force

4. "Everything is negotiable" philosophy. Pragmatism is hated by liberals almost as much as by conservatives.

So it's not surprising that liberals might attack him. They tolerated him when he was president, because he was better than the alternatives, in their view.

 

There was nothing about Clintons tax increases that produced any results but negative. What saved his bottom was the onslaught of the .com businesses. That is what set the economy so high in the 90s.As soon as the .coms began to slow down we immediately hit recession which is what President Bush inherited.

If you take more money out of peoples pockets then they cannot spend it. The largest portion of the money funneled throught the government for programs is spent on admin costs.

If people have more of their own money to spend then more products and services can be purchased. And more taxes are collected. That is what makes our economy good. If you inhibit that then in our capitalist economy it slows down growth. All the admin costs of our government is what makes it such a poor money handler. Our schools never have enough money because of admin costs. On average every classroom in America gets 10000.00 per student each year. And it supposedly isnt near enough. The private sector could handle it much better.

Economics 101. As well as common sense

 

Other than the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history, while at the same time, reducing the deificit every year. Not bad at all.

Rev, the dot.coms didn't do anything at all for the economy. They were a tiny fraction of the economy. They were actually as much of a drag on the economy as the Reagan debt, for the same reason.

Actually, the dot.com crash was much earlier.

Right. So when the debt soared under Reagan and Daddy Bush, the eoncomy suffered, because the federal government was competing with businesses for investment money. That made start-ups and growth difficult to impossible. What Clinton did, was bring federal outlays closer to income. That freed up a large chunk of money for businesses, which quickly took advantage of cheaper money, and that lead to hiring, and more people with money in their pockets, which led to spending, and so on. This is why even conservative economists praised Clinton.

See above. And learn. Clinton wasn't lucky, and Reagan and the Bushes weren't unlucky.