Clinton’s reign comes to an end
‘Slick Willie’ era marked by political successes, struggles

Come Saturday, little George W. will be sworn in, officially ending the Slick Willie era.

Whether you love or hate Bill Clinton, you have to admit Washington will be a lot less interesting with him gone.

For eight years Slick Willie managed to survive scandal after scandal, maddening his enemies and earning the title of most politically gifted politician of our time by pundits.

And indeed he is.

His mastery of politics is quite amazing. Despite a disastrous first two years in office, the Republican takeover of 1994, and an age of deep partisanship, Clinton managed to leave the country in a better place than he found it.

When Clinton ran for president in 1992, the economy was mired in a deep recession, had soaring deficits, soaring crime and the welfare rolls were swelling. Clinton promised to solve these problems.

He did that and then some. And it took some tough decisions to do it.

One of the biggest criticisms of Clinton from both the left and right is that he had a tendency to do whatever his pollsters told him to do. That certainly was not the case in 1993, when he barely got his highly unpopular budget passed.

Its combination of tax increases and caps on domestic spending was supposed to cut the deficit in half. Republicans slammed it, claiming that it would push the economy into a recession. It passed by a single vote in the House of Representatives, and Vice President Al Gore had to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Not a single republican voted for it. They wanted no credit for what they predicted to be an upcoming disaster.

Clinton’s first budget laid the ground work for the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and the growing surpluses we have today. As a result of that budget, $600 billion of the national debt has been paid off.

It also allowed for our booming economy. By reducing the deficit and following a tight fiscal policy, Clinton allowed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the freedom to slash interest rates and spur the economy (Jonathan Chait of The New Republic wrote a rather insightful column on Clinton’s economic policy that I suggest checking out).

Although it is impossible to give all of the credit to Clinton (much of it is owed to the technology boom and the Internet) the economy certainly would not have been as prolific as it is without him.

Clinton also faced a tough choice with welfare reform.

The republicans were trying to bait Clinton into a trap by sending him a draconian Welfare Reform Act that the democrats did not want Clinton to sign. After vetoing the first two bills sent to him, Clinton had two options: either veto the third (which his staff deplored) and lose the 1996 election, only to see his Republican successor sign an even worse bill, or sign it and try and fix what is wrong with it in his second term. Clinton chose the latter.

Today welfare rolls have been cut in half.

The Clinton record is terribly good. He presided over the strongest economy the world has ever seen. Crime is the lowest it has been in decades, the environment is better, we are now paying down the debt instead of adding to it, and more people are attending college than ever before.

Clinton’s expansion of Federal Pell Grants, work-study and student loans benefits nearly everyone on this campus. Many students, including myself, would not have been able to afford college without them.

He stood up to an over-zealous republican congress and thwarted their backwater agenda. The social safety net, although not as strong as it once was, still remains intact. Clinton managed to work with the Republicans to get NAFTA, welfare reform and a balanced budget.

Slick Willie rejected the old Democrat solution to all of life’s problems: big, huge government programs. The one time he did propose one (see: Universal Health Care), it failed to pass in congress and dramatically drained him of political capital. Clinton’s centrist leanings almost got him kicked out of his own party.

The biggest criticism from the left on Clinton’s record is the gripe that the poor have only gotten poorer while the rich have gotten richer. Lefty Ralph Nader based part of his campaign on it, basically calling Clinton a closet Republican and the Democratic Leadership Council (which Clinton helped form) “right-wing.” That simply isn’t true.

Since 1993, the poorest one-fifth has seen their after-tax wages grow faster than the top one-fifth. Bashing Clinton because he didn’t begin a new war on poverty (like Bill Bradley did in the primaries) isn’t fair. Newt Gingrich and the right-wingers in congress never would have allowed it.

Slick Willie did have his failures.

The biggest obviously being his inability to keep it zipped up.

Health care is still a disaster and the trade deficit is higher than ever. Clinton operated without a consistent foreign policy (although he did have quite a bit of success in the arena of foreign affairs), and we don’t have an energy policy either (Clinton’s begging of OPEC to increase oil production was wimpish).

Clinton’s enforcement of an anti-trust law was reminiscent of the Reagan administration (that is not a compliment for all you Reagan lovers out there). Merger-mania is still sweeping the country. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 only contributed to this. We are quickly approaching a time when all of the media outlets in the country will be owned by a privileged few. Nothing is more dangerous to democracy (and my career) than that.

Perhaps his greatest failure was his inability to transfer all of his political talent into a slew of legislation. Part of that wasn’t his fault, since the Republicans controlled Congress for all but two years of his time in office. But it was largely his faultRepublicans gained control. All that political talent that both liberals and conservatives praise him for went to waste because Clinton couldn’t control his urges.

Clinton’s legacy will be debated by historian’s for years to come. Despite his great record, Clinton disgraced the office with the Monica Lewinsky affair and added to the deep partisan divide we have today.

Slick Willie was a good president who could have been great, and that will be his lasting mark on history.

Brandon Ortiz is a freshman news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth.
He can be reached at (b.p.ortiz@student.tcu.edu).

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