Various Topics on Internet News

..

While the press seems to be interested in telling how President
Clinton was banned to a couch for months subsequent to his begrudging
admission he did, in fact, have something to do with that stain on a
dress owned by "...that woman, <pause> Ms. Lewinsky", this article
manages to get down to br*** tacks.

This sort of comment would be a bitter pill for President Clinton if
he had the character to read and evaluated such information. I doubt
he does have the character or evaluate such ***essments of his
Presidency.

I suspect this ***essment will be the most common made as his time in
office fades into history.


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<posted in full>

The Shrinking Clinton
From the June 28, 2004 issue: Big book, small legacy.
by Fred Barnes
06/28/2004, Volume 009, Issue 40

A BOOK CANNOT ELEVATE a president. That's true even for a book
marketed by Dan Rather for an hour on 60 Minutes, its publication
treated like a show-stopping event by the media, its author's tour
seen as the equivalent of a high-octane political campaign, and its
importance signified by the expectation of an entire summer in which
the author will never be far from the spotlight. Bill Clinton should
not get his hopes up. Presidents are judged by their record, not their
memoirs. At best, Clinton is Calvin Coolidge without the ethics and
the self-restraint.

Clinton is not a failed president, only an insignificant one. In his
interview with Rather to plug My Life, he claims two great
accomplishments. One is "the creation of 22 million jobs." The other
is the toppling of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the Balkan
war. So Clinton takes credit, above all, for high job growth and a
positive outcome in a relatively minor foreign policy crisis. One
qualification: On jobs, while Clinton deserves credit, presidents
merely make jobs a bit easier or harder for the economy to create.
They don't create jobs themselves, except by expanding government. In
sum, Clinton's twin achievements match Coolidge's almost exactly. The
highlights of Coolidge's term were a flourishing economy and triumph
in three minor foreign ventures.

Clinton had three major successes in Congress during his eight years
in office, but it's no surprise he downplays them. They reflect his
weakness as a president. The first was p***age of the North American
Free Trade Agreement in 1993. This measure was proposed by President
Reagan, negotiated and signed by the first President Bush, and
ratified with Republican votes as congressional Democrats abandoned
Clinton in droves. The second was welfare reform that reduced the
rolls dramatically. He signed this Republican bill reluctantly in 1996
only after his political adviser, **** Morris, told him his reelection
would be jeopardized if he didn't. The third Clinton success was the
arrival of a balanced budget, again a goal Clinton had warily endorsed
but not expected to achieve so soon.

Now consider these achievements for a moment. Do they remind you of
anyone's agenda? The answer is Reagan's. All three were longstanding
aims of Reagan, not of Clinton or Democrats. Yes, Clinton campaigned
in 1992 on changing the welfare system "as we know it." But the bill
he was forced to sign cut far more deeply into welfare rolls than
Clinton wanted and was fiercely opposed by liberal Democrats. The
point is that the Clinton presidency was, in effect, an extension of
the Reagan presidency, though Clinton would be loath to admit this.
Completing the Reagan agenda was not his intention.

There are three primary methods of ***essing, then ranking, a
president. None helps Clinton. The first, most-often-applied test,
goes like this: Did the president face an unprecedented challenge, did
he respond boldly, and was he successful? Because they p***ed this
test so impressively, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin
Roosevelt are rated by historians as the top three presidents. Clinton
faced no great challenge to which he could respond boldly and
successfully. He was president during the period Charles Krauthammer
has dubbed a "holiday from history." In fact, Clinton has complained
he had no major war or crisis to confront.

The second way to judge a leader comes from the philosopher Sidney
Hook. In The Hero in History, Hook distinguishes between eventful and
event-making leaders. "The eventful man is a creature of events," Hook
wrote. The event-making man causes events. "Both the eventful man and
the event-making man appear at the forking points of history," Hook
wrote. "The event-making man . . . finds a fork in the historical
road, but he also helps, so to speak, to create it." Clinton was
clearly not an event-making president. And it's a stretch to label him
eventful. The two forks he encountered--Medicare and terrorism--he
dealt with tentatively.

The third method comes from Fred I. Greenstein, a political scientist
at Princeton widely admired for his writings on the presidency. In The
Presidential Difference, he proposes six measures for appraising the
"leadership style" of presidents: public communication, organizational
capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional
intelligence. Clinton is strong on communication, political skill, and
cognitive style (absorbing and using information). On the other three,
he falls short. His White House and his personal decision-making style
were chaotic. Despite the talk of a "third way" in public policy, he
was hardly a visionary. And he stumbled badly on emotional
intelligence, which Greenstein describes as "the president's ability
to manage his emotions and turn them to constructive purposes, rather
than being dominated by them, and allowing them to diminish his
leadership." To Greenstein, emotional intelligence is the most
important trait of a president. Clinton, he says, "provided a
reminder that in the absence of emotional intelligence, the presidency
is a defective instrument of democratic governance."

When Clinton encountered two forks in the road, on terrorism and
Medicare, he balked. Given the cir***stances, that was understandable.
But hesitation is not an act of bold leadership. On terrorism, he
p***ed on the opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden as he
flew from Sudan to Afghanistan. True, that occurred at a time, before
the 9/11 attacks, when the enormity of the threat posed by bin Laden
was not yet known. On Medicare, Clinton backed away from a chance to
restructure the program and save it for decades to come. But he was
beset by impeachment and chose to side with his liberal backers who
opposed Medicare reform and were crucial to his staying in office.
Thus the decision made political sense. By balking, however, he
reinforced the verdict that no book can erase. Clinton was a president
of little consequence.


Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/241yvyww.asp?pg=2>
or
<http://snipurl.com/76zs>

--
cg

.. ..perczyns..

>"Clinton was a president of little consequence."

Amen, and there's also this: http://tinyurl.com/37dks ...

..

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 23:17:08 GMT, Al Superczynski
<modeleral@deadspam.com> wrote:

>
>>"Clinton was a president of little consequence."
>
> Amen, and there's also this: http://tinyurl.com/37dks ...

Thanks Al. I am surprised to find the following in the NY Times;

"In many ways, the book ["My Life"] is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's
presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities;
high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and ****tered
concentration."

--
cg

..

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 23:17:08 GMT, Al Superczynski
<modeleral@deadspam.com> wrote:

>
>>"Clinton was a president of little consequence."
>
> Amen, and there's also this: http://tinyurl.com/37dks ...

Here is a little side note which might be of some interest;

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<posted in full>

Clinton loses his cool in Dimbleby grilling
By Nicholas Pyke
20 June 2004


Bill Clinton loses his famously genial temper in a BBC interview this
week when David Dimbleby directs repeated questions about his affair
with Monica Lewinsky.

The former US president, known for his perma-smile and unshakeable
good spirits, becomes visibly rattled when the BBC interviewer
persists in asking him whether his public contrition over the affair
is genuine.

Mr Clinton agreed to take part in the 50-minute interview for the
Panorama programme to publicise his autobiography, My Life. It will be
broadcast on Tuesday evening.

It is thought to be the first time that he has lost his temper in
public on the issue of his liaison with Ms Lewinsky. At first he
responds to Mr Dimbleby's questions by mounting an attack on media
intrusion. But then his ire is turned on the interviewer.

A BBC spokesman said, "There are some memorable moments. It's quite a
thorough interview. The former president has quite a lot to say and
the interviewer is quite tough. It's good television."

Mr Clinton, who left office in 2001, is on a marathon tour to promote
his book, which comes out this week. It has been given a record first
print run of 1.5 million copies.

Publishers Alfred A Knopf paid the former president an advance in
excess of $10m (£5.4m) for the autobiography, billed as a candid look
at his eight years in office.

In a recent interview with CBS television, he apologised for the
Lewinsky affair saying, "I made a terrible moral error. I did
something for the worst possible reason - just because I could."

Taken from;
<http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=533383>

--
cg

.. ..perczyns..

>A BBC spokesman said, "There are some memorable moments. It's quite a
>thorough interview. The former president has quite a lot to say and
>the interviewer is quite tough. It's good television."

I hope somebody posts it online. I'd love to see it.