Bill Clinton: Classic or Dud?

Judged against Dubya, he's a half-step behind FDR.

How on earth would you know that?

For wasting so many years of his presidency on scandal management, because he couldn't keep his penis in his pants, DUD.

For marring a strong 8 year span of Democratic presidency by not keeping his penis in his pants, DUD.

For fueling the 'culture wars', DUD.

What a waste of talent (his and anyone who worked for him).

I think we did not have them in the UK.

Cockburn:

The Clintons have always excited passions disproportionate to their very modest talents as creative politicians. Looking back across the Nineties at the frenzied Republican onslaughts on the couple, one can only wag one's head in bemusement at the Right's hysteria. Why did they consume so much energy in savaging a pair who had learned conclusively from their earlier upsets in Arkansas that you don't get ahead by offending the powerful, starting with the timber and chicken barons who controlled that backward and impoverished state?

To be fair on Bill and Hillary, beyond some ritual freshets of campaign rhetoric in primary season they have never advertised themselves as anything other than reliable guardians of the basic Business Round Table agenda that defines the programmatic vision of 99.9 per cent of all American politicians....

No one has yet written particularly well about the Clintons, probably because the appropriate tone--Mencken's comic savagery--was devalued by Bill's assailants on the right. Obsessed by Bush, the liberals cannot see Clinton for the light-weight scoundrel he was and have reinvented his terms in the White House as a golden age, whose possible sequel under the aegis of President Hillary Clinton they eagerly await.

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn09292007.html

had to check the date on that

Alex Cockburn doesn't like the clintons, part 235

Cockpunch

the Clintons WERE tailor-made for Mencken though.

timber and chicken barons

I know what career I want to get into. "I am a very prestigious chicken and timber baron. Carriage driver, take me to the Clintons' so they can polish my shoes."

the last time i read mencken's obit of william jennings bryan i sort of wished mencken had lived in a different era so he could've written the exact same thing - only about someone else. bryan was really a great man compared to the shitheads we get these days.

Dud: "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."

Everything else pretty classic.

oh, just classic. from an irish/european perspective, the question looks a little silly.

Dud: "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."

But wasn't this said in the context of Tim McVeigh & the Turner Diaries and Newt wanting to drown Social Security in a bathtub? After all, if you hate the Constitution but love "The Country" then you are at least a dipshit nationalist and probably a proponent of the Unitary Executive--an American Fascist.

The quote works if by "government" he means "system of government" rather than "current administration"

http://www.gopunditgo.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/clintonrage.jpg

"AH KNOW WHAT I SAID. Y'ALL ARE JUST SITTIN' THERE SMIRKIN"

But that was Chris Wallace, whose father obv. did not whip enough.

COCKBURN: POLITICIANS CORRUPT

especially the ones Good Dems come over

Good Dems = people for whom it is more important to wrest control away from the current administration than to look smart

Everything sure is gonna change forever on 1.20.09, YUP YUP

Lots of shit still being wrong = everything stays exactly the same, yup yup yup

"My dislike for him stemmed from his discrediting of something precious to me: the alliance between the anti-war and civil rights movements of which he’d been a vestigial member in the 1960s, and which was my formative politics. The way he cashed that in, lied about whether he was a draft-dodger; the way he smarmily pretended to be more in favour of civil rights than he had been at the time, the way he cheapened everything. He was nothing but a cynical, self-seeking, ambitious thug, and the realisation that this would be the closest that my class of ’68 would get to the top job gave me a terrible sickening feeling."

Ah, Hitch.

It's the only thing in that interview which didn't chilll me to the bone.

what interview

prospect mag interview

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10157

well that was depressing

i'm not sure what that even *was*

^^^ reminiscent

no way is clinton the smartest pres since jefferson

main similarity is they both banged the hired help

not sure what qualifies Jefferson as "smartest" to be honest.

He had some novel political ideas he cribbed from Montesquieu and the Greeks, was the ideal generalist, was our best president-as-writer until Lincoln, and served great wine at dinner. That's enough.

where are the shades?

main similarity is they both banged the hired help

Sally Hemmings did not receive an annual merit raise.

the development vs the use

i tend to think Roosevelt would've used it as well

the actual Progressive movement gave us eugenics and prohibition. nukes seem very progressive in that sense

there's a lot of debate over how much perot affected the outcome of that election but i think it's fair to assume bush wouldn't have done as badly (at least) without him in the race.

I think there's consensus, though, that Clinton would have won with or without Perot. If you throw Perot's 19,743,821 votes back into the mix, Clinton would have only needed a little over 35% of them to win the popular vote.

Which doesn't, admittedly, take into account: 1) the electoral college, 2) how Perot affected the debates (quite a lot, at least one of them), and 3) the fact that Perot hated Bush and zeroed in on him the whole way.

But I assume Clinton would have won a plurality of Perot's votes--who were mostly, as I remember it, people angry at Bush for breaking his tax pledge and various other things--making at least the first point moot.

Perot's spoiler effect was essentially nil - he ended up drawing support evenly from each candidate.

Everyone would have used nukes

Not long after Clinton unpacked his things in Chappaqua, his successor was presiding over a sputtering economy, increased poverty, and yawning deficits.

I feel like there was an important historical event that's being elided there... can't quite put my finger on it....

For whatever it's worth, in 1996 when Perot's votes dropped from 19% to 8% - the Republican vote went from 37% to 40%, Clinton's vote went from 43% to 49%.

^^^ exactly

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ross-perot-myth/

maybe he'll end up in prison. that'd be p cool.

A friend and I were talking about the convention yesterday: going to take a wild guess that WJC is kept well hidden from view this year.

and what of Lucretia?

there might be a video tribute to Epstein and Weinstein if Biden's the nominee, ya never know

The woman from the bombastic Blood, Sweat & Tears song? I don't know.

Bombastic Rodham

Don't forget the time his spouse met personally with Putin at his private compound before taking $500,000 for a speech to Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Oh, wait, that was the Clintons. https://t.co/NMwY76eJF5

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 23, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/YsfBoQf.png

I see how this is generated -
https://www.kapwing.com/explore/bill-clinton-album-challenge-meme-template

- but where does it originate? Did he pose with actual LPs originally - when, and what were they?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bill-clinton-swag

According to this the original is a photoshop to begin with (from an onion piece from 1999!) so no, he never posed with any records

In the onion article they are all Joan Jett lps

The image definitely has that janky onion photoshop feel

Yes. In fact I originally thought it was fake - thanks for confirmation.