AMERICA'S MOST OVERRATED PRESIDENT by Tim Siggia

AMERICA'S MOST OVERRATED PRESIDENT

By Tim Siggia

April 02, 2007

The talk of Mediaville these days seems to be the fact that, in a move that comes as a surprise to nobody, Hubby Bubba, a.k.a. Bill Clinton, has come aboard to actively campaign for Her Royal Most Imperial Majesty, a.k.a. Hillary RODHAM Clinton -- and now, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all their brethren in the broadcast media stand waiting with bated breath for the Hillary campaign to soar. After all, with The Greatest American President Who Ever Lived now ready to weave his political magic to his wife's benefit, the Democratic nomination ought to be sewed up for Hillary. How could it possibly happen otherwise?

Though it has now been more than six years since the Rock Star President actually held the office, his every move has been dutifully recorded, photographed and videotaped at every possible occasion, no doubt abetted by Clinton's press agent, whoever that might be. Nearly every former president previous to this one has had the decency to keep a low profile once his presidency was over, but low profiles never have been Bill Clinton's style. Rather, with an agility worthy of a gymnast, Clinton somehow manages to get himself poised in front of every camera and camcorder running anywhere, and has been doing so ever since he and his Queen tried to ransack the White House upon their departure in 2001.

Not all Democrats agree, of course, that Clinton is the Greatest American President Who Ever Lived. Some will concede that he is merely the greatest to hold the office since their beloved Saint Franklin of New Deal fame. He is, after all, the only Democratic president since FDR to serve two complete terms. Even Yours Truly will not argue that point. History, after all, is neither Democratic nor Republican, it is simply history. The Clinton mystique, however, goes far beyond mere tenure. Under his stewardship, the economy soared, the homeless somehow disappeared from the streets (only to immediately resurface upon the inauguration of George W. Bush), and the news media, the entertainment industry, and of course the Democratic Party joined together in chorus singing perpetual praises of the fast-talking, woman-chasing, saxophone-playing president. From the mills of Tinsel Town came a mad flurry of movies of a genre previously unknown to the viewing public: president movies. There was Independence Day, Air Force One, The American President, and so on. At least one producer, in an unusually candid moment, admitted that he hoped his audience would transfer their feeling of awe for his character president to the real one in the White House. Bill Clinton will undoubtedly be remembered by future generations as the most aggressively marketed president in American history.

He is also, beyond all doubt, the most overrated.

Perhaps no one in history had a more realistic view of the presidency than did General William Tecumseh Sherman, whom some were considering drafting for president in the years that followed the Civil War. "Cump" Sherman flatly wanted no part of it. "If nominated I will not accept, if elected I will not serve," he said. He further quipped that if given a choice between four years in a penitentiary and four years in the White House, he would opt for the penitentiary. Were he alive today, and asked his opinion of the "greatness" of Bill Clinton, he would no doubt say the same thing he once said of war: "His glory is all moonshine." Clinton's supposed accomplishments deserve, at the very least, a bit of skeptical scrutiny.

First of all, the most obvious piece of baggage Clinton brought with him to the White House should be addressed. That is the matter of his draft dodging during the Vietnam War. To say that he turned and ran when called to serve would not be exactly the case. More accurate would be to say that he squirmed and slithered away. When ordered to report for induction, Clinton promptly withdrew himself for eligibility by enrolling in the ROTC program. While a member of ROTC, he never attended a single drill, nor did he put on a uniform. Seeing the proverbial walls closing in on him, Clinton appealed to his draft board, stating, in terms that would later come to be known as "Clintonian," that it was possible for a man to "love his country, but loathe the military." This was, without a doubt, one of the few times in his life that "Slick Willie" actually told the truth -- though even in this instance, he told only half of it. In the meantime, he applied for, and got, a Rhodes Scholarship, and fled to England, where he later led demonstrations against his own country. In short, he took the coward's way out.

While these activities hardly endeared Clinton to veterans, he was cheered by the counterculture -- including luminaries in the news media and the entertainment industry, most of whom were overtly hostile to the military, traditional patriotism, and conventional morality. In Bill Clinton they saw one of their own, and having him in the White House amounted to a perpetual thumbing of the nose to those of more conservative mindsets. That a man who actively shirked his military obligation was now commander-in-chief of the same armed forces he himself had refused to serve in must have been a source of rich satisfaction to people who, like Clinton, had spent a lifetime loathing the military.

As for Clinton's accomplishments, they were, for the most part, other people's accomplishments. His promises were characteristically empty, beginning with the middle-class tax cut he promised to enact if elected. That never materialized, nor did anything else that could even remotely be called a tax cut. Rather than keep his word, Clinton instead imposed the largest tax increase in history, to the joy of the Democratic Congress in power at the time. He also promised to end "welfare as we know it." This he in fact did, but only under duress. For, as a result of the Co-President's attempt to railroad an abomination of a socialized medicine program upon an unwilling nation, the Congress had turned from Democratic to Republican. Twice the new Congress had sent up welfare-reform bills, and twice Clinton vetoed them. So on the third try, when Clinton was brought kicking and screaming to the table, he finally signed -- then turned around and claimed the measure as his own. When Republicans, under House Speaker Newt Gingrich, offered up a program they called the Contract With America, Clinton and his fellow Democrats derided it as the "Contract On America". Then, in his first State of the Union message after the 1994 elections, he co-opted the Contract With America almost in entirety, claiming it all as his own initiative.

"It's the economy, stupid," was a Clinton slogan, and America did prosper on Clinton's watch. What Clinton and his apologists conveniently fail to mention, however, is that Clinton inherited an economy that had already bottomed out and was on the upswing. Plus it was the Republican Congress, not Clinton, that balanced the budget. To know this is simply to be aware of government and how it operates. Presidents do not balance budgets, the Congress does that. Clinton, in fact, repeatedly demonstrated his own ignorance by constantly contradicting himself on the timeframe in which the budget could be balanced, citing five years, ten years, twelve years, etc. Also, had Clinton had his way, the budget would have been busted early into his second administration. It was a typical Clinton pattern: he fought the Congress on their accomplishments, then claimed credit for those same accomplishments once they had been accomplished.

Perhaps no Clinton trait simultaneously so endeared him to his worshipers and disgusted his critics as his total lack of any moral standard whatsoever. His reasoning was pure Macchiavellianism: right is whatever you can pull and get away with, and wrong is getting caught -- and you can make a wrong situation right if you can lie your way out of it. He lied under oath to the American people about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern less than half his age, was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice, and was acquitted by the Senate for reasons more political than judicial. He made it clear that he would do anything for money, including compromise national security. His responses to attacks on our service people, and an attempt to bomb the World Trade Center in New York, were timid and lacking in resolve.

Clinton's statesmanship was not simply poor, it was nonexistent. But he was, and is, a master politician. His tongue is his one great gift. Though his charisma is for the most part lost on conservatives, he nonetheless has the ability to spellbind and mesmerize with his oratory, and before he gets through he can have the average listener convinced that up is down, left is right, black is white, and wrong is right. And it is to this very attribute that Her Hillaryness now looks to capture the presidency for her, as it did for him -- twice. Though it must be noted that in neither 1992 nor 1996 did Clinton ever garner a majority of votes, only a plurality in both. Had H. Ross Perot not been a candidate in both those races, history today might be written differently.

Clinton's apologists even today are working feverishly to manufacture a legacy for their hero that will give him a legitimate claim to greatness. Such a legacy will, however, never be found. Greatness emerges when men do great things. It emerges when men rise to confront challenges. Clinton did no great things, he merely took credit for them. He did not confront challenges, he shrank from them. Even his "first" claim -- that of being the first black president -- is a lie. Clinton is obviously white, not black. And despite the efforts of Clinton's propagandists to rewrite history in his favor, the truth nearly always prevails in the end. When the Clinton story is told by Clinton and his minions, the facts simply do not match the rhetoric.

The 2008 elections will determine once and for all whether or not there will be another Clinton presidency. The sad truth is, however, that even if Hillary is defeated, whether in primary or in the national election, it will not be the last we ever see of these two. Like rotten fruit in a barrel of water, they will continue to resurface again and again. No matter how richly they may deserve it, demagogues and demigods are seldom consigned to obscurity.