Unedited notes on Clinton (Use with caution!  There are errors here!!!)  

CLINTON (AND CONCLUDING REMARKS)

    So what did give Clinton the 1992 election?

    If you asked the Clinton campaign, no doubt they would have said "economics."  Banner: it's the economy stupid.  But this is absurd: highest GNP in history--certainly better than the Carter administration!

    No--what won Bill Clinton the election was his incredible skill at figuring out exactly what people want to here and then saying just that.  Reads the polls, figures out what concerns people, and then tells them what they want to hear: "middle class tax cut" "lower deficit" "reform welfare" "reduce crime." Anyone could do that? Not a chance.      
      
 "Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize
 that?"- Sen. Bob Kerry, D-Nebraska.

    Well, Clinton pulled of the great upset, beating the man all the other Democrats thought was unbeatable.  But not surprisingly, Clinton's first months as president were disastrous.  His inexperience, coupled with the fact that he really didn't know what he wanted to do, and made worse by his hyper-sensitivity to the winds of public opinion caused him to drift from fiasco to fiasco:

    Foreign policy: Obvious at the time: (Somalia: troops in in response to t.v. coverage/out in response to t.v. coverage).  Bosnia: no U.S. involvement until too late to do any good: then sent over and kept in barracks so they won't get killed!  Less obvious (more dangerous) through away the splendid chance the Gulf war victory had created to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East. Seemed to be doing his best to throw away our Cold War victory too, crippling our military, giving away our military secrets to the Chinese, and allowing Russia to drift into crony capitalism rather than a true free market so that his businessmen friends (like brother-in-law Hugh Rodham) could make millions off the deal.
 
    Clinton's appointees were incompetent/corrupt/unstable.  Clinton's people totally mishandled the Waco affair.  Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general, whose job it is at least in part to try to fight against drug abuse, advocated a study of the legalization of drugs--and we soon found out that her son was a cocaine dealer: went to prison for 10 years.  (She can't even keep her own son off drugs, why should we listen to her?).  Anyway, she was pressured to resign after maintaining that kids should be taught to masturbate.  Ron Brown, commerce secretary, was about to be indicted for corrupt business deals when he was killed in a plain crash.  Web Hubbell (Hillary's Rose Law Firm Partner) and an assistant attorney general (really more important than Janet Reno) had to resign when it became apparent he was going to be indicted for fraud.  Vince Foster, another Rose Law firm partner, apparently committed suicide: Clinton staff ransacked his office and removed papers that would probably have incriminated the Clinton's in Whitewater crookedness.  The papers later mysteriously turned up--with Hillary's fingerprints all over them.

    Further, the Clintons, especially Hillary turned out to be the kind of people who use power ruthlessly.  Hillary ordered the firings of White House travel staff (legal enough) but turned them out at a moments notice.  To try to justify the firings, the Clinton's then used the vast resources at their disposal to try to discredit and ruin one of the fired staff members--Billy Dale.

    And how did they do this?  Well, they went to the FBI and got Dale's FBI file.   Later, when congress began investigating how they got this particular file, it turned out that Clinton staffers had obtained more FBI files.  How many?  300, they said.  Then 400.  Then in turned out they had over 900 files (but nobody really looked at them and they were all there by mistake.)  Only they happened to be files of prominent Republicans and people the Clinton's might have wanted to destroy politically.  (Charles Colson: Nixon administration had gone to jail for possession of a single improperly obtained FBI file!).

    But the Clintons were doing such marvelous things for the nation, right?  Well, maybe from a certain perspective.  Clinton called for integrating gays into the military, and ultimately instituted the "don't ask don't tell policy."  He lifted the ban on fetal tissue research.  He pushed through congress the largest tax increase in American history--and there was certainly no middle class tax cut.  

    But Clinton failed to deliver on the big issues.  He had made vague promises of health care reform, and, once elected, really did put a lot of effort into that one area:  Hillary's probably illegal task force came up with a recommendation that would have given us the worst of both worlds: all the disadvantages of socialized medicine with none of the benefits.  Fortunately, even a democratic congress saw that that dog wouldn't hunt.

    But Bill Clinton did have one great accomplishment to his credit.  He did something the Nixon hadn't been able to do.  Something Bush hadn't been able to do.  Something even Reagan hadn't been able to do.  Do you know what Bill Clinton did?  He managed to help Republicans take over both houses of Congress (something they had not done since 1954).  Clinton was so unpopular, that in 1994 the American people showed their displeasure by turning out the democratic rascals in droves.  And not just at the national level.  State governorships, and state legistures (many of which had been in democratic hands for decades) went Republican.  And in the wake of this tremendous rebuke, many democrats that had won switched parties.  Senator Shelby of Alabama, Ben Knight Horse Campbell of Colorado and dozens of others switched to the Republican party.

    And after bringing this disaster on the democrats, Bill Clinton was finished as a politician--at least he should have been.

    But almost immediately he began his plans to win re-election.  Behind the scenes, he and Al Gore began raising tremendous amounts of money, much of it in the form of illegal contributions.    
This would later buy the T.V. time that allowed Clinton to blacken Dole and the Republicans enough to help him win again.  And then there was the old strategy of dealing with scandal: smear your accusers: Paula Jones is trailer trash, Ken Starr is on a Republican witch hunt (and besides he once worked for the tobacco companies), Gary Aldrich is a liar and all these people are "only in it for the money."

    When 1996 rolled around, Clinton got a bit of help from the Republicans.  The 10 Republican candidates bashed each other around so much that, when Dole finally emerged the winner, he was a battered and tarnished candidate.

    But that's not what allowed Clinton to pull his second great presidential upset.  What won the 1996 election for him was a bit of public relations magic that I would never have believed possible.  With the help of Dick Morris, Clinton dramatically changed his public persona.  He disassociated self from liberals in administration, kept Hillary in the background, and went back to being a "New Democrat."  He admitted that he had raised taxes too much.  And, on issue after issue, he himself switched over to the Republican side, taking all their popular issues for himself and claiming credit for what was actually achieved by a Republican congress.

    And he got away with it, once again earning his knickname as the “comeback kid.”

    But Clinton’s problems weren’t over.  What to do with a second term?  The news magazines speculated over and over again on the Clinton legacy: what would it be?  Clinton himself didn’t know what the legacy would be, but he very much wanted to have one.  Well, he got his legacy, but not quite the one he wanted.

    In August 1997, special prosecutor Ken Starr was about to give up what was called the Whitewater investigation, an investigation of all sorts of scandals surrounding Clinton. Starr had had some initial successes when the probe began in 1994, uncovering all sorts of corruption in Arkansas and sending (among others) Clinton’s successor Jim Guy Tucker to jail.  But Clinton’s stonewalling worked. Susan McDougal went to jail for contempt rather than testify. Webb Hubbel (who was about to turn states evidence) clammed up when Clinton friends got him lucrative consulting contracts—just as he was about to go to jail. Jim McDougal, the one who could probably have fingered Clinton, died under mysterious circumstances in prison. Hillary developed amnesia claiming she couldn’t remember working on a case for which she had billed the Rose law firm for more than 50 hours. And Starr, a decent and honest man, found himself the target of some of the most vicious slanders imaginable.  In August 1997 Starr was about to give up and take a job at Pepperdine, but he was talked into sticking around a bit longer.

    And then—the legacy.   The Lewinsky case.  Early in Clinton’s presidency, a woman named Paula Jones found herself depicted as one of Clinton’s bimbos.  Fearing the affect on her marriage, she had asked Clinton for an honest account of what had happened between them and an admission that the inappropriate behavior had been all on his side.  Clinton refused, and eventually Clinton’s enemies decided to back Paula Jones in a lawsuit against Clinton.

    The lawsuit alleged the Clinton’s impositions on Jones were part of a consistent pattern, and, as a result, Clinton and many of his suspected sexual partners/victims were asked for testimony.  

    In early 1998, Starr was tipped off.  There was proof positive that Clinton and at least one of the women (Monica Lewinsky) had perjured themselves.
    Clinton played his usual game.

“I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, ML. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time -- never. These allegations are false."

    Hillary went into attack mode, blaming all the problems on a vast right wing conspiracy.

    “When the truth comes out this, like all the other allegations that have been levelled against us over the years, will fade away and all the good work my husband has done will stand.”

    Well, the truth never really did come out completely, but enough of it did to make Bill Clinton the second president ever to be impeached.  Clinton’s defenders claimed it was “only about sex,” but the charges were serious.  Perjury.  Obstruction of justice. Suborning of perjury.

    Had the whole truth come out, Clinton might not only have been impeached but convicted.  The house managers who presented the case against Clinton said that a trip to the evidence room and a look at some of the material not made public would convince anyone that Clinton had to go.  What was the evidence?  Maybe the evidence connected with Clinton’s rape of Juanita Broaddrick.  Maybe something even worse.

    In any case, Clinton escaped.  50-50 on the obstruction of justice, 45-55 on the perjury.

    Clinton was never formally charged with his real obstruction of justice—things like the bombing a Sudanese aspirin factory right after he finally had to admit his earlier lies about Lewinsky or the bombing of Kosovo which began the week Clinton would have been impeached.  No business being there: violation both of the Nato treaty, of U.S. law (remember the War powers act?)  And if that wasn’t bad enough, fought the war entirely from the air, bombing from 15,000 ft. up.  Why?  Because for political reasons Clinton couldn’t afford American boys coming home in body bags.  No accident that we constantly hitting wrong targets: Chinese embassy, Serbian civilians, the Albanians we were supposed to be protecting.

    And even this wasn’t the end of the Clinton scandals.  Just before he left office, Clinton issued 176 pardons for his friends and cronies, drug dealers, swindlers, and corporate criminals. Mark Rich donated 1.5 million to the Clinton library and got his pardon. A terrible example of corruption and abuse of power.

    And yet despite such things, and despite the fact that people’s thought less of Clinton as an individual than they had of Nixon, Clinton’s approval ratings remained high.

    Why? How?

    Well, my kids once asked me how a man like Bill Clinton could ever be elected president of the United States.  

    Unfortunately, the answer is easy enough.  People get the leaders they deserve.  Who a nation chooses for it's leaders tells you exactly what that nation values at what it is.  And we deserve Bill Clinton.  Bill Clinton was the first president from my generation, and he is exactly what my generation deserved.  Why?  Because, in many ways, Bill Clinton is us.  We are Bubba.  Just look at us:

    Back and forth on issue after issue: for intervention in places like Somalia one minute, against it the next.  For tax cuts one minute, against them the next.  For welfare reform one minute, against it the next.  For government solutions to our problems one minute/against them the next.  That's Bill Clinton.  That's us.

    Wanting to see a return to traditional family values one minute, wanting to see an end to the divorce epidemic, and to teenage pregnancy, and to venereal disease--and the next minute cheating on our wives and ignoring traditional sexual standards completely.  That's Bill Clinton.  That's us.

    One minute wanting to find something in our lives beyond materialism beyond the never-ending quest for stuff, stuff, and more stuff, hating the greed we see around us--and the next minute turning money into our god and giving ourselves entirely over to covetousness.

    That's Bill Clinton.  That's us.
    My generation is often called the Baby Boomers.  Our old nickname is more appropriate: the “Me” generation.  We’re the most narcissistic generation in history, and it’s no wonder we produced the most narcissitic president.  We’re the Bubba generation, and most of us haven’t the courage to be anything other than Bubbas.

    My advice to you: don’t be Bubba.  

    How can we help it?  You guys have messed everything up.

    Well, there’s still hope.

    At the beginning of this class, I noted that Lincoln called America, the "last, best hope of the world."  If that we're so, the world would be in a sorry state.  But fortunately, the true "last, best hope of the world" is something else entirely.  And it is to that something else, the true, last, best hope of the world that Americans have always turned in time of crisis.  It is that great hope that got us through the Revolution, through the Civil War, through the Depression and through World War II.  And if we as individuals and as a nation will look to something beyond America, if we will look once again to that one great hope, the true last, great hope of the world , then our country will once again be what our founders hoped it would be, a city on a hill, and a light to the world.

    Good luck on your final. And God bless America.