DJ Duk

September 17, 2008

I never would have imagined

A strange thing happened to me today. Something I never really thought could happen. I found myself missing Bill Clinton.

I think if I had the choice I'd vote for old Bill over any of the candidates we have today. I'm sure this seems like an odd statement since I popup a space on the political spectrum to the right of Attila the Hun, but the more I think about him, the more I realize Bill Clinton had a lot to offer.

First off Clinton was a fundamentally weak president. Quick, what did Bill Clinton do while he was in office? Now, what else did he do aside from an intern?

Fundamentally he did nothing. If you ask Mr. Bailey, who will stand in for a man on the street interview here at DJduk, I imagine he couldn't tell you too much of what the Clinton presidency was about. A short list: The intern thing, he wanted to do something with health care but he didn't, he bombed a place somewhere for some reason once. Normally I'd use this as a mockery of Bailey, but in this case that really is about all Clinton did. He did nothing.

Thomas Paine said "The Government is best which governs least." To my mind that makes the ideal situation one in which leaders are elected who will exercise restraint, remain out of most things but be available to take decisive action in the right circumstances. That would be ideal. Unfortunately the number of presidents in the history of the United States that did that can be counted on one hand.

The interesting thing about that idea is that it’s generally accepted by both parties. There's a pretty fair consensus among the American people, everywhere but Massachusetts anyway, that less government is a good thing. Today the primary differences between the parties are based around the priority given to "remain out of most things," versus "take decisive action in the right circumstances."

Republicans, until G.W. Bush, favored a hands off approach. Something along the lines of "better to do nothing than to do the right thing." That generally remains the case in the Bush presidency except in respect to the response to terrorism.

Democrats tend to pick the other side. “Even if we don’t do the right thing we’ve got to do something.” They’d rather have somebody take decisive action, in the right circumstances if possible but always in the right circumstance even if it means acting in the wrong from time to time.

Neither of these very general approaches is meant to completely cover the entire logos behind the political spectrum, just to point up one of the core value differences. It’s easy to point out counter examples, Republicans tend to follow the act now right or wrong stance in the face of national security challenges as an example. While that value difference is not an absolute predictor of political preference it does serve as a tool to understand how the political parties develop their platforms.

Which brings us to the current election. Both McCain and Obama have reputations as reformers. I’ll leave out commentary on whether those reputations are deserved for the moment, but both are promising change. And both of them seem to be embracing change for change’s sake. This runs exactly contrary to the typical Republican preference to do less with government.

Which brings us back to Bill Clinton. In 8 years in the Whitehouse Bill Clinton did nothing of substance. While he may have missed some opportunities to do some good things the fact remains he missed more opportunities, or was prevented by Congress, from doing a huge number of ‘wrong’ things. Clinton’s one and only driving conviction was that being President was fun and he wanted to do more of it. The way he did that was functionally to do less of everything. Even in his first to years with a compliant Congress his accomplishments were zero. Compared to McCain and Obama that sounds like a little bit of paradise.

Posted by DjDuk at September 17, 2008 01:37 PM | TrackBack