Love 'em or loathe 'em, the advent of the Clintons in 1992 was a cultural phenomenon. The first Boomer president and his go-getting, career-oriented wife signaled generational change as profound as when JFK wowed the world with his inaugural address in 1961.
Trouble is, where did they go from there? The meandering tropes of the Clinton administration left little in the way of a permanent legacy. Health care reform was a flop, abetted by Hillary's pushy persona and addiction to labrynthine structures. Newt Gingrich controlled the domestic agenda from 1994 on. Despite the fiasco of the government shutdown, the GOP cut taxes, enacted welfare reform and restrained spending. The stock market boom of the late 1990's filled the government coffers with tax revenue. The Clintons were basically bystanders.
The major event of Clintons' second term was l'affaire Monica. His behavior violated every tenet of the feminism that both professed so loudly. Her behavior in circling the wagons around the White House instead of insisting on lancing the boil with a quick admission of the relationship left Bill Clinton utterly dependent on the left. So instead of reforming the Democrats and immunizing them from their loony fringes, the Clintons left their party more polarized and ideologically extreme than ever.
The President controls the conduct of foreign affairs and national security. The dithering and indecisiveness of Bill Clinton in meeting the growing threat of Bin Laden and his ilk are indisputable. He let Jimmy Carter get his way on Korea, and never found the wherewithal to confront Saddam Hussein's increasingly outrageous violations of the protocols that ended the first Gulf war. While Kossovo was a successful intervention, it was too late and marred by errors glossed over by the MSM, such as bombing the Chinese embassy. (!)
The Democratic Party establishment procured Hillary a Senate seat with the same aplomb that the Whigs and Tories of Old England used to distribute seats in Parliament. She accomplished little of note there other than to vote for the Iraq war, a vote she began to waffle on as soon as the polls went south.
So here we are again. Hillary will turn 61 the year of the inauguration. Bill's entry on the national scene occurred nearly 20 years ago with the 1988 Democratic convention. We are not exactly dealing with fresh faces here!
Hillary claims she has transcended the errors of the past and has learned from her past experiences.
So have we. I don't believe the voting public will want either a rerun or a sequel.
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