The Republican misinformation machine spent hundreds of millions of their contributors and readers'/customers' dollars - not to mention tens of millions of taxpayer dollars - hunting Bill Clinton mercilessly for well over a decade.
Right. Sorry, eriposte, but Billy got what he asked for, nothing less. Robert Parry has this to say about Bill's most significant screw-up, not counting cigaring Monica.
"...As waiters poured coffee at the wedding reception and Clinton voiced his complaints about the media hostility, Stuart Sender saw his chance to ask Clinton why he hadn’t pursued leads about the Reagan-Bush secret initiatives in the Middle East.
“I had this moment to say to him, ‘What are you going to do about this? Why aren’t you going after them about Iran-Contra and Iraqgate?’” Sender said. “If the shoe were on the other foot, they’d sure be going after our side. … Why don’t you go back after them, their high crimes and misdemeanors?”
But Clinton brushed aside the suggestion.
“It was very clear that that wasn’t what he had in mind at all,” Sender said. “He said he felt that Judge Walsh had been too strident and had probably been a bit too extreme in how he had pursued Iran-Contra. Clinton didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people.
“To me what was amazingly telling was his dig at Walsh, this patrician Republican jurist who had been put in charge of this but even the Democratic President had decided that this was somewhere that he couldn’t go. He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”
Sender, like others who had been in the trenches of the national security scandals of the 1980s, thought the retreat on the investigations by Clinton and the Democrats after they won the 1992 elections was wrong for a host of reasons.
Most importantly, it allowed an incomplete, even false history to be written about the Reagan-Bush era, glossing over many of the worst mistakes...."
Posted by Julie at October 3, 2007 10:40 PMSomeone said that each president makes his predecessors look good. Clinton did that for GHB - which is why all the supposedly very satisfied public, almost chose baby Bush over Gore. (And Clinton never even got 50% of the electorate to vote for him in his two runs.)
Reagan's more popular today than he was at the end of his term in office. A few years ago GWB had approval ratings in the stratosphere. All this tells me is that most Americans know little and are easily misled.
Posted by Marie at October 3, 2007 11:34 PMnot so fast. For their money, the Republicans also got the presidency and the opportunity to trash the constitution, torture the innocent, squander our national reputation, ignore the warnings that bin Laden was determined to attack in the U.S., gain control of the Supreme Court, pass billions of taxpayer dollars along to their cronies in non-bid contracts, and entangle our military in an endless, fruitless war, and move the country perilousy under the unchecked control of a dictatorship. Pretty good ROI, even if Clinton remains popular.
Posted by Mickeleh at October 3, 2007 11:52 PMWell i think the pattern will repeat itself. The next D-president will not expose the crimes of the Bush administration. A process like that would drain too much energy from actually achieving their own policies and responding to the world affairs.
Posted by at October 3, 2007 11:55 PMJulie, this post is not about Bill's screw-ups. We all know he had his share of those.
Marie, you missed my point entirely. Reagan, GHW Bush, etc. had an enormously friendly media landscape compared to Clinton. They continue to have an enormously friendly media landscape compared to Bill Clinton. It is no surprise that in a media dominated by conservatives that they would be able to rewrite history for the people - positively when it comes to Republicans. It is precisely because the media has long been hostile to the Clintons that people's positive image of Clinton is notable. Moreover, Reagan's years are much more of a distant memory for people than Clinton's years. So, I think people are a bit smarter than you give them credit for.
Mickeleh, a lot of what happened post 9/11 had nothing to do with Bill Clinton and everything to do with a majority of Democrats basically becoming doormats of George Bush.
Posted by eriposte at October 4, 2007 07:39 AMeriposte - I think you're confounding the myth for the reality of how MSM reported on presidents. For example, the myth about Nixon was that the press hated him; ergo he didn't get a fair hearing on TV and in the newspapers. The reality is that a majority of reporters personally disliked Nixon for two reasons: 1)they were "liberal" because educated people at that time were liberal and 2) they knew the real Nixon. However, their biases didn't contaminate their reporting and they generally compensated by being generous towards Nixon. If that hadn't been the case, a msjority of Americans wouldn't have been shocked and stunned when the content of the WH recordings were released. They were shocked to hear/read that Nixon was a foul mouthed bigot.
The MSM treated Ford with kid gloves. They were much tougher on Carter. On Reagan they did the reporting but never led with all the scandals that surfaced before Iran/Contra. He was nicknamed the Teflon POTUS because the press did even try to make anything stick. For his first two years, GHB enjoyed the same type of coverage as Reagan had. Then they started to do their jobs better.
The MSM had a love/hate relationship with Clinton. They were tough on his personal failings which includes bad executive appointments. The other change at that time was the rise of the strictly partisan and rightwing media sector. It was far from dominant but very noisy. But again, their beef was mostly personal and not about the functioning of the Executive Branch and policy proposals. To this day, few Americans appreciate
the destructiveness of a long list of legislative changes that were enacted during his tenure - most with his full support. (They've even forgotten the promise that their cable TV bills would go down with the Tele-Com act.) At no time in US history would the media have failed to report on the Monica story. But they did not fail to report on the GOP crazies that pushed for his impeachment (and many of those guys were defeated in their next election).
Read the story in the latest issue of Vanity Fair on Gore and the Clintons. What emerges is the same thing that I observed at the time. The same love/hate for Clinton for the public that the MSM fostered. Far from being astute, a majority of Democrats, IND and some GOP swallowed the MSM storyline. Competant POTUS but do you like his personal sexual morality?
In 2000 the MSM bifurcated that love/hate. GWB got the love and Gore got the hate. They did nothing to stop the conflation of Clinton-Monica with the DEM Party and Gore. Just as they did nothing to stop GWB conflating 9/11 with Saddam. It didn't change much by 2004 but Kerry didn't get as much of the hate. They still try to hide what a complete boob GWB is but that job is so difficult that they don't work as hard at that now. So, they give their love to Clinton because compared to GWB, he looks good.
Posted by Marie at October 4, 2007 09:13 AMand even a third of Republicans also gave him positive marks.
I know some of those Republicans. When Clinton took office they were less than thrilled to say the least. When he left in 2001, they were not only singing his praises but also admitted they were wrong about him. Quite a few also like democrats could have cared less about the Lewinsky scandal (I remember a survey at that time done in Henry Hyde's supermajority Republican district. Overwhelmingly they told Henry to knock it off).
eriposte: You probably have already seen the poll numbers which show that if Hillary wins, the Big Dog will be a positive force. I think they are somewhere in the mid seventies or higher.
America overwhelmingly likes Bill Clinton and has for the past ten years. Why is that so hard for the MSM to understand?
Posted by Daryl at October 4, 2007 09:22 AMAmerica overwhelmingly likes Bill Clinton and has for the past ten years. Why is that so hard for the MSM to understand?
Sensationalism.
If it bleeds, it leads!
Read bleeds both literally and figuratively.
Posted by snark at October 4, 2007 09:58 AMThey continue to have an enormously friendly media landscape compared to Bill Clinton.
This should go without saying. And I'm with you, eriposte - let them fill the airwaves with non-stop screeching about the Clintons. People will just tune out like they did with Whitewater and blue dresses and nothing will get thru at all. I follow politics and I'm already sick of the noise.
Posted by iamcoyote at October 4, 2007 10:20 AMAnd yet, AlGore could only get 50% of the vote. Why didn't Clinton's positives turn into Al Gore votes? Just wondering.
Posted by peter at October 4, 2007 10:46 AMIf legislation had been proposed mandating compromise as the supreme virtue of the US, BC would have compromised on making it so. If sex with interns was offered as a perk, BC would have offered a compromise to reduce the perk, at the beginning.
That was always the most frustrating part of BC to me: I could never find a principle he'd stand on or fight for. He was an executive who governed like a legislator, rarely offering a vision where we should go and leading the country there. In contrast to Bush, that's preferable, as Bush has been extreme in his expansion of presidential powers.
There is no doubt the attacks on him helped because I found myself compelled to defend him from the relentless stupidity, even while maintaining an enormous dislike for the man.
However, the strength of his current popularity was not built on the attacks on him. It was the Roaring 90s economy, fuelled by the Tech Revolution, that folks long for, the best economy since 55-65 at least, when real wages soared. And Clinton did not create it. He largely avoided interfering with its advance.
Any president fortunate to have governed during that period would have reaped similar popularity. And folks are willing to elect Hilary in the belief she can restore that magic. Which isn't going to happen.
Clinton, to me, could best be compared to Eisenhower, a moderate Republican who achieved a little, but could have achieved far more. It was not just the relentless attacks that limited him. It was his constant compromising that kept turning horses into camels, such as Don't ask, don't tell, and welfare reform and NAFTA and the Rwandan genocide.
You are correct that the campaign against him helped cement his popularity, but without the economic revolution that last came around with the Industrial Revolution, his numbers would not be nearly so high.
Kevin - Completely agree. Except for You are correct that the campaign against him helped cement his popularity... It didn't cement anything. People were capable of disliking him for his personal behavior and approving of him for what they perceived to be his performance as POTUS. Without the favorable economic climate, few would have overlooked his personal failings. People will only use that sort of thing as a substitute for complex issues/policies that they don't understand when they are personally hurt by those policies.
Posted by Marie at October 4, 2007 12:46 PMpants-pissing peter: And yet, Bush could not get a majority of the vote. Why didn't Clinton's negatives turn into Bush votes? Just wondering.
smarter trolls please
Posted by Gay Veteran at October 5, 2007 11:55 AM