Just a little revisionism...

I'm generally a fan of Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal, but I think part of his review of Bill Clinton's new book, has a ... convenient interpretation of some fairly recent history.

Bill Clinton ascended to the White House as a New Democrat, wisely repudiating what had been a quarter-century of big-government liberalism and embracing instead welfare reform, deficit reduction, spending restraint, a strong and noninflationary dollar, and free trade. One might thus expect "Back to Work" to be a sharp condemnation of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and, of course, Barack Obama for their abandonment of his centrist policies...But instead of offering Democrats a road map for a return to the center, "Back to Work" is an ode to big government.

Certainly, he claimed for himself the mantle of the "New Democrat" during the campaign, and certainly "welfare reform, deficit reduction, spending restraint, a strong and noninflationary dollar, and free trade" were all hallmarks of the period during which he was President.

But I take issue with the idea that he "ascended to the White House" on those issues. On the contrary, his first two years, with a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, was characterized by his attempt to pass the next great goal of the progressive left - National Health Care. Like Obamacare, Hillary-care was extremely unpopular with the voters, and cost the Democrats control of the Congress in the middle of the President's first term. Unlike Obamacare, Hillary-care was defeated.

The differences between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, therefore, are not, as implied by Moore, differences in policy goals. One key difference is circumstance. Clinton, after the Democrats' 1994 drubbing at the polls, did not have to defend Hillary-care any further. Obamacare is the law of the land, and Obama's chained to it. The other big difference is that Clinton was more pragmatist than ideologue, more interested in maintaining the Presidency in 1996 than in furthering his agenda. Obama is more interested in the agenda. (Clinton was also a much better politician than Obama.)

Welfare reform wasn't a Clinton policy - it was a Republican policy to which Clinton acquiesced. The "deficit reduction and spending retraint" that Moore mentions came from the Republicans in the House of Representatives. To his credit, Clinton acquiesced. His "era of Big Government is over" speech came, not during his campaign, not during his first two years in office, but in the State of the Union address that followed the voters repudiation of his first two "big government" years in office.

But the idea that Clinton's policy goals differed significantly from those of Pelosi/Reid/Obama strikes me as revisionism. It's almost a Conservative version of the media/leftist trope of looking back with affection at the reviled conservatives of the past as a means of denigrating the current conservatives. It's not necessary. Clinton was a better, more pragmatic politician than Barack Obama, but the idea that he came into the White House with a substantially less "progressive," leftist ideology, is not accurate.

Why 2012, despite Barack Obama's fevered dreams, is not like 1996

More from that John Fund piece I quoted earlier:

President Obama has apparently decided to borrow some political plays from Bill Clinton, who after his party's defeat in the 1994 mid-term elections began running ads attacking Republican plans to reform Medicare. At the same time, Mr. Clinton focused on a series of granular policy initiatives—promoting school uniforms was one memorable example—that were politically safe and popular with independent voters. Mr. Obama appears to be following the same strategy—offering little in terms of policy substance, remaining disengaged in budget negotiations and waiting for Republicans to present a target for him to shoot at.

One can understand the Obama White House leaping to this analogy, grasping at it like a drowning man clutching at a life preserver. But the differences between the two situations are different enough that the comparison doesn't really work.

1. Obamacare - Hillarycare was defeated, Obamacare passed. Bill Clinton didn't have a massive government program hanging over everyone's head, being fought over in the courts, causing costs to rise, and great difficulties for many, with benefits for few. Obamacare is a cudgel that the Republicans can, and will¹, use against Obama in 2012 that they did not have against Clinton in 1996.
2. The stimulus - Not only was the economy not terrible in 1996, it appeared to be better than it had been in 1992, that is, that "Clintonomics," however one wants to define that, was working. Obama is going to face re-election in an economy that's not only down, it will have been down significantly for his entire first term, with a massive increase to the debt that was supposed to have fixed it and in fact made it worse. (Even worse for him is that, in addition to making the economy worse, it appeared to make the economy worse. Politicians can get away with doing things that hurt the economy but appear to make it better or even things that help the economy while appearing to make it worse, but the stimulus failed on both counts.)
3. The deficit - The Federal budget deficit was a problem in 1994, and helped the Republicans get elected, but it was an addressable problem at that point. Social Security was still a net positive (shouldn't have been, but that's the way they used it) and things were close enough to in control that two years of a Republican Congress could get it headed in the right direction on a reasonable trajectory. It's an order of magnitude worse now, and the problems with entitlements are now 18 years further along and more intractable. And the public awareness of it, and concern about it, has multiplied over that stretch, as millions of people "took to the streets" at Tea Party rallies to fight against Leviathan in Washington.
4. Unemployment - Clinton took office as the Bush recovery was taking off, and it increased when the Republicans took over in 1994. When Americans went to the polls in November of 1994, the unemplyment rate was 5.4% and dropping. When they go to the polls in November of 2012, the optimistic projections are that it will be 7.7%.
5. The Congressional opposition - In 1994, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. And they let it go to their heads. Newt Gingrich is a very smart guy, but he's bombastic and easily caricatured, and mis-read the extent of the "mandate" that the Republicans had. That's not the case this time. Boehner is a low-key adult. The leadership has idea men, but no bomb-throwers. And they have the historical perspective that wasn't available to Gingrich.
6. The Presidential opposition - Bill Clinton ran against Bob Dole. Whoever gets nominated in 2012 is not going to be Bob Dole.
7. The President - This is the big one. Bill Clinton was likable², with a passionate need to be liked, warm, friendly and hands on. Barack Obama is historic, aloof, cold, distant and detached. Bill Clinton understood that, regardless of what he would have liked to do, philosophically, with the Presidency, he was going to be better liked, and re-elected, if the American people were happy with the economy and the country's situation. Barack Obama is intent on re-making the country. Clinton's reluctance to do big things abroad caused problems down the road, but he was hands on, and managed to keep big negative things from happening. Obama has allowed the narrative to take hold that he's utterly clueless about what's going on.

It's easy to understand why the White House would look to the 1996 election as a model for their 2012 re-election campaign. But it's also easy to see that that's a model that is unlikely - extremely unlikely - to work...






¹ - This is the single biggest obstacle to a Romney presidency. And I'm a guy who likes Mitt, and thinks he may be just what we need in this situation. But if he doesn't completely disown Romneycare, "it was an experiment in the state, it was an attempt to do something, it failed miserably at the state level and is even worse at a national level," he'll never get out of the primaries.

² - Not by everyone. I can't stand him. But by enough. And he certainly qualifies for the label "likable."

Standing headline

Howie Carr likes to talk about "standing heads," a newspaper term (presumably, in this day and age of digital layout, now obsolete) which refers to "a special label for any regularly appearing section, page or story".

Time's got one on their website...

Oops. Another Clinton Story Turns Out To Be Not So True

Could John Edwards be right about something?

Maybe there are really two Americas, but I don't agree with the way that he defines them. I've located some notes from an America that's very different than mine...

The Democrats in Seattle's 43rd district meet:

There was some time to kill as multiple tallies of the delegates and alternates were done, and when the time-killer of taking audience questions had run its course and the idea of teling jokes had been nixed, someone suggested doing the Pledge of Allegiance to pass the time...At the mere mention of doing the pledge there were groans and boos. Then, when the district chair put the idea of doing the Pledge of Allegiance up to a vote, it was overwhelmingly voted down. One might more accurately say the idea of pledging allegiance to the flag (of which there was only one in the room, by the way, on some delegate’s hat) was shouted down.

But don't even think of questioning their Patriotism!

Table-pounding partisans

As we approach the presidential election, there will be arguments for each candidate. More importantly, from my point of view, there will be arguments against each candidate. Many of them will be made by well-meaning partisans, and they will be legitimate arguments to vote against a candidate.

And they will be completely disingenuous.

One of the things that I've resisted doing is criticizing Barack Obama for, in Ronald Reagan's words, "youth and inexperience." Clearly, he has nowhere near the track record or experience that one would like to see in the President of the United States. He's been in the US Senate for less than one full term and he's never held any kind of executive position. Any arguments that he's too inexperienced and callow to be elected are legitimate.

But if I were to make them, it would be a lie. It would be to imply that, if only he weren't so young and inexperienced, I might vote for him. And the fact is, based on his entire career, the people he's chosen to align himself with and his voting record, there are no realistic circumstances under which I would ever vote for him. The old saw about trial lawyers goes something like "if the law's on your side, pound on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; and if neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound on the table." Criticism from me about Obama's youth and experience would be the equivalent of pounding on the table.

It's a legitimate argument, but it's so far down the list of legitimate arguments, that it really is irrelevant to my decision. And if the situations were reversed, it would not prevent me from voting for a candidate with whom I otherwise agreed. Which is why it would be disingenuous.

It's kind of like the NFL tie-breakers. If you go far enough down the list, you get to things like net points in division games. It's relevant, but the NFL is unlikely to ever actually make a decision based on it, because there are more important things that will separate the teams before you get to it. Obama's youth, his past drug "experimentation," McCain's temper, the Keating five, Hillary's "misstatements" about her trip to Bosnia - all interesting, all legitimate and all so far down the list as to be essentially irrelevant in making a decision.

And there will be a lot more of it over the next eight months. There will be criticism of John McCain's temper by people who would vote for Hillary Clinton, concern about McCain's age from those who would support Walter Mondale in a race against Mitt Romney and accusations of racism or sexism made against people who would happily vote for Condoleeza Rice made by those who wouldn't consider it.

I want to try to avoid doing that, as much as possible. But there will be a lot of it. And it's important to understand, when you're listening to a partisan, that a lot of the criticisms are nothing but table-pounding...

I cannot disagree

The Baseball Crank's been looking at the Democratic primary, and has come to a conclusion: "This Democratic race really can't go on long enough, can it?" Nope, it can't. Nor could it happen to a more appropriate group...

Update: An idle thought - to really be fair to both women and blacks, shouldn't we let both Hillary and Barack run on the ballot in November rather than eliminating one of them in August?

Monday morning odds and ends...

• Dan Shaughnessy had a piece in the Globe yesterday arguing that the various Red Sox debacles (1978, 1986, 2003) were bigger disasters than Super Bowl XLII. The wounds are still too fresh for me to go into this fully, which I expect I'll do some day (probably in therapy) but let me briefly address Dan's point.
  
  Hogwash.
  
  There has never been a "collapse"/"choke"/"disaster"/"disappointment" to match it. Certainly not in Boston pro sports. Never. Not no way, not no how. Not when the stakes are considered. No comparison.



• An absolutely fantastic win for the Celtics yesterday, beating San Antonio without their starting power forward, starting center and backup center. I'd been looking forward to San Antonio as a measuring stick game, which it wasn't - there were too many important pieces missing on both sides - but it was a great win for the team anyway.



• Does Nancy Pelosi even realize how foolish she sounds?



• Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to put together a brief essay on Lewis' The Abolition Of Man and the apparently rapidly approaching end of Western Civilization in Great Britain. Here's a comment from The Way (which is the second of the three essays which makes up The Abolition of Man.):
  

  The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.
  

  C.S. Lewis

  
  Lewis was a brilliant man, a great writer, a deep thinker, and something of a prophet...



• I'm torn on the Clinton campaign. There's part of me that thinks that the sooner she's gone, the better. The rest of me is pretty sure that McCain can beat her in November, while Obama is a) likely to be just as bad a President and b) far likelier to win. I think that the best case, for Republicans and people concerned about National security, is for Hillary to win at the convention on the basis of superdelegates, alienating the members of the Obama cult of personality.
  
  I certainly could be wrong (and I usually am) but that would, I think, make for quite an entertaining spectacle, and a fatally wounded candidate.



• Chris Lynch thinks that Curt Schilling's done. I wouldn't be surprised if he is, I wouldn't be surprised if made 10-12 starts after the All Star Game. If we've seen him for the last time, well, we saw great things from him.
  
  My concern is not that it leaves a big hole in the rotation, because I don't believe it does. But it leaves something of a hole, as I'm certain that they want to limit the innings of both Buccholz and Lester this year, and with Schilling gone, that will require more management. They remain, in my opinion, the best team in baseball, with or without him.

Monday morning

Odds and ends, just to confirm that I'm still here...

• I'll have some football stuff this week. I don't want to give it all away, but I'll say this - on paper, this may (I haven't finished my research yet) be the biggest mismatch in Super Bowl history. I'm not going to be predicting the biggest blowout in Super Bowl history, but my pick won't surprise people. And a couple of the previous results that people are pointing to as support for the Giants don't make the point the way that people think they do.



• I think it's fairly clear that the Republican nomination contest is a two-man race at this point. Mike Huckabee is not going to be the nominee, neither is Rudy Giuliani. We're going to see Mitt Romney or John McCain. Mitt's my guy, and I think that he wins Florida tomorrow and becomes the clear front-runner.



• I also think that I've been wrong on the short-term tactical stuff every step of the way so far.



• Whether or not someone should feel guilty about taking pleasure in other's misforune, the schadenfreude of the left discovering that Bill Clinton is not truthful or dignified has certainly been amusing. And it's entertaining to watch the logical contortions necessary as people like Jonathan Chait go through the process of deciding that "Bill Clinton is a lying, egotistical, low-class practitioner of race-baiting and the politics of personal destruction, but there really was a vast right-wing conspiracy that was wrong when they said that Bill Clinton was a lying, egotistical, low-class practitioner of race-baiting and the politics of personal destruction."

Can't attack Hillary? Attack Bill!

Well, this idea is incredibly appealing:

it's a McCain-Feingold idea. George Bush is not a candidate for any federal office. This means that "Americans United for Change" can spend infinite money trashing him, and they don't even have to report their donors to the FEC. What's more, there is inevitably going to be a certain, erm, latitude concerning what constitutes criticism of Bush and what constitutes criticism of Republican policies in general...In spite of the way former President Clinton is comporting himself, Bill Clinton is not a candidate for any federal office...

Why didn't I think of that?

Rich Lowry reveals the secret to prescient punditry:

Here are the two steps: 1) think of trashy charges that can be made against Obama, and 2) predict the Clintons will make them.

Tryphorgettin

LOL funny...

"Now I don't even remember what a bimbo eruption is..."

Ugh

This is ... disturbing.