Thank you for spelling out what I've been trying to tell people for the last few months.

A couple of minor points, first of all the idea that Clinton signed almost everything that Gingrich put in front of him is a bit misleading. The lion’s share of the contract with America was killed in the Senate; Clinton never got much of it to veto. I would also quarrel with your assertion that the capitol gains tax reduction was more of a giveaway for the rich then Bush’s. It all depends on your definition of rich. The capitol gains tax cut reached far into the middle class.

Those points aside I agree with your assessment regarding the lack of sustentative difference in policy between the two men. I also agree that there is a lot of irrational hatred for Bush. But in pointing out these things you are implicitly admitting that the hatred of Clinton is equally irrational. And I think you have said in the past that the Clinton hatred is as irrational as Bush hatred. So, unless I’m missing your point all this is saying is that there is a lot of irrational partisanship out there. I agree, and have said as much in the past.

But you also have to realize that it’s largely contained among those who are into politics which is, on the whole, a fairly small group. The partisan political press has a circulation that is a minor fraction of things like people magazine. Blogs are a smaller subset as well. I would venture a guess that the total regular daily readership of all blogs combined is less then the number of people who were at Woodstock (rather then those who claimed to be). Hell 50% of eligible voters don’t vote, of those that do only a small percentage of voters are even marginally informed. So it makes sense to make highly emotional, but in many cases illogical arguments, and make them as shrill and as loud as you possibly, because it works with a lot of people.

But the problem is that things that seem blatantly partisan to you might not seem all that partisan to me and vise versa. I guess it depends on who you want to set up as the final arbiter of what is and what is not partisan.

I never heard Bill Clinton claim to support the Second Amendment. Neither did Seth Waxman, his Solicitor General, who argued in Emerson that the Second Amendment is meaningless. As governor of Arkansas, he worked tirelessly to keep the concealed carry law the way it was, i.e., blanket prohibition, despite massive popular support for concealed carry reform, which the state finally soon after Clinton departed. Bush inherited essentially the same system in Texas, but signed not one but two concealed carry laws. Even their "shared" position on the AW ban isn't. Clinton twisted many arms and ended many Democrat careers just to get that law rammed through. Bush quietly states that he supports renewing the ban and would sign it if it reached his desk, but so far, has yet to lift a finger to cause this to happen. It's almost as though his goal was to have the AW die a quiet death that he can blame on someone else.

Don't even get me started on how different Bush and Clinton are on matters of foreign policy.

Rick: about half the Contract With America was internal organizational stuff that Clinton didn't have to sign, and most of it went through. Furtehrmore, the Senate did not kill "most" of it, the Senate passed most of it, and killed maybe 40% of it. Clinton then vetoed one of the items that did pass, and the Supreme Court struck down one other (the line item veto that the Republicans tried to give to Clinton). The upshot of which is that something like half the legal proposals in the Contract With America became law, and about 2/3rds of the internal reorganizational stuff became reality.

Pretty impressive for a document that only about a hundred congressional candidates signed. Indeed, I'd like to suggest that you go back to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal proposals, and ask yourself how many of HIS proposals eventually made it into law. (I think you'll find that it amounted to roughly 50%.)

Furthermore, will you now acknowledge that the lion's share of Bush's tax cuts have so far gone to the middle class? "The rich" haven't even gotten most of their cuts yet, and proportionally, their cuts were smaller than what the middle class got.

Indeed, why don't we talk about the shallowness (or simple ignorance) of people who refer to those "massive" tax cuts for "the rich," as if a 5% cut in rates for upper income earners--one they haven't gotten yet--is in any way "massive" or "extreme?" Or the stupidity of people who claim that said chimerical "massive tax cuts for the rich" can be blamed for more than a small fraction of our current budget deficit?

Xrlq: Clinton campaigned on supporting the 2nd amendment in 1992, and spent most of his Presidency saying he supported the right to keep and bear arms even though he also supported the Brady Bill and favored a ban on assault weapons.

The Brady Bills and Assault Weapons bans that, you know, Bush has done absolutely nothing to reverse and has, in fact, signaled his intention to strengthen.

Okay, he opposed concealed carry in Arkansas.

It is true that the Bush justice department has for the first time taken the position that the 2nd amendment actually does describe an individual right. The sum total result of said change in policy being....? [crickets chirping]

Dean,

Bill Clinton is a liberal, and GW Bush is a conservative...that said, neither one of them sits up late at night trying to figure out the very best ways to advance the cause of liberalism or conservatism. Hillary does vis a vis liberalism, and Tom Delay does vis a vis conservatism, but this represents the political oddity.

There are genuine differences both in style and substance between Clinton and Bush -

Clinton was the quintessential policy wonk spiced with political junkie, while GW is the quintessential leader spiced with political junkie...you could probably get Clinton to say precisely what was in a particular bill, but he'd only go into such a description if it helped him politically while on the other hand, GW couldn't quote a single passage from proposed legislation, but could ernestly (and convincingly) tell you that its for the good of all mankind that the legislation gets passed.

- on the meat of the policies, Bill Clinton largely favored the modern liberal concept of top-down, Federal government run sorts of programs while GW favors a mix of Federal aid and injunctions to encourage bottom-up reform of programs already in place.

In military affairs, we have a direct quote from Clinton that he was convinced that no major military operations would ever be required of the United States military ever again (I didn't believe it when I first read it, I read it three times on three separate occasions just to be sure I had it right - Clinton really, really said that); this made him a bit feckless in his dealings with the military and more than willing to go along with liberal social engineering (especially vis a vis women in combat roles...unimportant if it effects combat readiness because there will be no combat, right?). It also made him entirely unserious in the study of political strategy as it relates to military problems - smart and as well informed as Clinton was, he simply did not understand what the military is for, what it can do and when and how it should be used. GW is entirely old-fashioned (and thus entirely "with it" in today's world) on military affairs; certainly he's no Douglas MacArthur, but he understands fully that we need the military for precisely military purposes - to kill people and break things, because this is sometimes the only way to go.

Clinton-hate, like GW-hate, is to a certain extent just part of a long American political tradition; there has always been a subset of the population actually offended by the current office-holder. Outside of this run-of-the-mill hate, there was something extra in the Clinton-hate and even more of this extra in the GW-hate.

I remember (as I'm sure you do) all the absurd stories about Bill Clinton (vis a vis Foster, etc) and we've all been regaled by the absurd stories of GW (that he paid for an abortion in Mexico, etc) - that these idiocies are believed by no small numbers of people tells us a story about the increasing polarization of the United States. We don't have as many people who smile and take it when their side loses as we used to have and we have many, many more people who are getting to the point where they will go to extremes to right a perceived wrong.

You put your finger on it when you point out that there is a species of people who just think that GW sucks on every level - of course, there were people who thought that about Clinton, too...but there is a larger hate of GW today and more widespread than the Clinton hate...and tracing it back, it seems that we can see that this hate has risen from President to President since Carter (though some can trace it back to Nixon...but it took a break during the actual Ford and Carter Administration because you have to be extra nuts to hate either of those two men).

Churchill, writing of the world in the immediate run-up to WWI, noted that "the vials of wrath were full"; I think the vials are filling again, and it might lead to quite an explosion - I don't know for sure that certain elements on the left will tolerate GW getting re-elected, just as I can't be sure that certain elements of the right would tolerate GW not getting re-elected. I worry for our country on this, and I worry for the physical safety not just of the President, but of his eventual opponent.

The hate is there, and its being fed - and its being fed right and left (though by virtue of having a conservative President, the hate is mostly fed these days by the left). People of wisdom must think of some way to cut this hatred off, to ostracise it from the land - before we get into a real pickle....perhaps even into a Civil War.

Dean,

Actually you need to look thin up. Very little of the “Contract with America” made it to law. Not all of it was passed in the house and most of it was stalled in the senate.

Some of the more ambitious proposals will never see the light of day including:

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto

A ban on welfare for minor mothers

“Looser pays law” and tort reform

Term limits

Guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting

Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase

Require committee meetings to be open to the public

Things that might get done, but are still waiting:

Repeal of the 93 SS tax hike

No U.S. troops under U.N. command

cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third

Elderly dependent care tax credit

Some things that only recently were done:

Stronger child pornography laws (some of which were struck down by SCOTUS)

Repeal of the marriage tax penalty

I could go on but the point is you’re clearly mis-informed on this issue. Precious little of the Contract with America made it into law and most of it never made it to the president’s desk. What did make it was fairly innocuous and Clinton signed it.

As for Bush’s tax cut it depends on how you want to look at it. Most of the “money” went to the middle class, the very wealthy (top 5%) as individuals got a bigger % cut as a % of their AGI, and why they wouldn’t they? After all they pay most of the income tax. They benefited almost exclusively from the dividend tax cut and since the top marginal rate is unlimited and it was reduced along with the lower marginal rates they benefited from the lower tax brackets (since they got those reductions too) and form the top rate rduction. But sinece it had no cap, the more income you reported the more you saved on the top rate. As for the dividend tax big stock holders made out like bandits (People like me who have all their stocks in mutual funds have to pay on our capital gains) So if you made 500K in salary and owned a million or so in dividend paying stocks your tax cut was way bigger then mine was as a % of AGI. This should not even be controversial. Bush simply flattened out the progressivism of the tax structure continuing the work that Reagan started. Isn’t that what conservatives want a flat income tax structure? There is really on one way to do that, arrange it so the wealthiest pay less, or make the rest of us pay more.

Let’s do some math. If I report 50k in AGI my tax gets reduced by $300 in the lower bracket and 1% in the next bracket which works out to another $300. On the other hand the a person reporting 500K in AGI gets and extra $12,000 pulse his dividend income is free and clear so that could be 100’s of thousands. Their tax cut might be 50% where as mine was about 2%. But gee whiz why are tax cuts for the rich such a bad thing? (My taxes actually went up after the first year.)

So sure the middle class got most of the money of the total tax cut package, but far less per capita as a % of AGI then those in the 300K + category. When you look at it like that it’s not even close. But wasn't that the goal, to flatten out the income tax structure?

Mark,

During the Clinton administration Right wing violence was very pronounced, Abortion bombings, the Olympic park bombing, Stand offs with the Texas separatist and Montanan freeman. You also had the ranks of right wing paramilitary groups like the Michigan militia swelling to numbers that pale to that of today and, of course, the bombing of the OK federal building. All of this was in direct response to the relentless beating of the hate Clinton drums. When a leftist group takes out a major building or kicks off a month long armed stand off get back to me.

Rick,

You know, sometimes you're pretty perceptive, and then you go and make a post like your last and you come off as very hidebound.

You're not perceiving where this is all going....for God's sake, man, they are seriously calling GW a Hitler...this is not rational political discourse, this is not within the bounds of normal political dissent...this is hate, pure and simple...and when you breed hatred, eventually someone take action upon it...

Sure, fanatic reactionaries did their part in making OKC happen - do you think the left wing fanatic reactionaries can spew the same sort of hatred from the other side and no one will ever take action upon it?

Think. It only hurts the first time you do it.

Sorry, Rick, it's you who's seriously misinformed. Horribly so, in fact. 22 items from the Contract With America were signed into law by President Clinton. Variations on several more eventually wound up being passed by later congresses.

I also repeat an earlier observation: much of the New Deal was turned down by the Congress and never passed. Some was thrown out by the Supreme Court. Some were passed with sunset provisions and faded into memory. In short, the majority of the New Deal was gone before Eisenhower was elected. Does that mean it was a legislative failure?

My wife did a fabulous job back in December of laying out just how much of the Contract With America passed into law, and that wasn't even counting the internal House reorganizational reforms that were also put into place. You should go read her discussion of the issue here. In fact she laid it out twice, in two different ways, just to make it clear to people who refused to believe the facts.

--

As for the tax cuts: no, the goal of the Bush tax cuts was not to "flatten" the code. In fact, it did not flatten the code. That would involve reducing rates at the top end but not lower down, and that's not what was done. Flattening the code may be a goal for some Republicans, but that's certainly not what the Bush did. Indeed, the middle class got the bigger rate cuts.

Now you can criticize them anyway, but we shouldn't try to have it both ways. You can't claim that Clinton's cuts on the Cap Gains rate "reached deep into the middle class" and not acknowledge that Bush's cuts do exactly that, and were in fact tilted from the beginning to give the middle class bigger rate cuts, and to give them those cuts sooner.

If you want to talk about disproportional benefit, who got more raw dollars back, that's fine. But then let's play your same math out:

If last year Person A had a million dollars in capital gains, Clinton's 5% cut of the cap gains rate gave him a much bigger cut than Person B who had $50,000 in capital gains. And it gave no benefit at all to the millions whose capital gains were all to be found in their 401(k) accounts, which are not taxed at all anyway.

Clinton's cap gains tax rate did gave far more raw $$$ to the very wealthy than it gave raw $$$ to the middle class. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? Whatever. It's what happened. In terms of "tax cuts for the rich," Clinton passed out a huge one.

So, are we criticizing because the rich got too many $$ back? In that case, Clinton gave the rich lots of $$ back. Or, are we praising for giving benefits to the middle class? Then Bush's cuts reached more middle class taxpayers than Clinton's did. (If you discount the benefits of job creation that encouraging investments would bring, of course.)

Because, once again, "the rich" haven't even gotten their Bush tax cuts yet, even though the "deep massive cuts" (this is how people on the describe lopping 5 points off the top?) that were supposedly given to "the rich" still haven't been delivered.

Let's get honest about this thing: Bush's tax cuts are no more a "sop to the rich" than Clinton's. Yet the one is a villain and the other a hero. Why is that, do you think?

Oh, as for violence?

I remember the Nixon-hatred, and the Symbianese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground, not to mention the Black Panthers, all of which coincided with his Presidency, don't you? There were, literally, hundreds of bombings in the United States in the period from about 1968 to about 1973, mostly by left-wing radical groups. Not to mention quite a horrifying number of cop-killings.

Today we have a group called the Earth Liberation Front that's getting steadily more violent and dangerous. We also have riots being conducted in places by Seattle, also by left-wing extremist groups.

We also see such behaviors being excused by some as a "natural reaction" to the "right wing extremism and corparatist world" that's making people feel "powerless." Which is, of course, exactly the kind of crap ("powerless individuals marginalized by forces they can't control") that Tim McVeigh used to justify his slaughter.

During the 1990s, the most prevalent and obvious case of left-wing media bias was the tendency to look at militia groups like they were all violent and racist (they aren't all like that), and to link the violent ones with the Tim McVeighs as if they were all part of some vast Republican right-wing phenomenon. I even remember stories that compared HOME SCHOOLERS and EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS with violent fringe groups.

I also remember how the press painted Ted Kaczynski, AKA the "Unabomber," as a "right wing extremist," when in fact anyone who read his manifesto could see that he was a left wing extremist, right out of the Weather Underground and Earth Liberation Front tradition. Indeed, there's a hilarious article I can share with you that pulls quotes out of EARTH IN THE BALANCE and the Unabomber Manifesto and asks you to pick which is from which book--I have yet to meet anyone who can get more than half the answers right, and I've read both of them.

Meanwhile, the same press still has a depressing tendency to treat other left-wing terrorists from the 1970s as if they were just "misguided youthful idealists." Hell, Bernadine Dohrn is a law professor now and occasionally gets fawning interviews in the mainstream press, when she probably still belongs in jail.

Abortion clinic bombings in the 1990s: were there more than a dozen of those? And did they only happen under Clinton? I seem to remember them happening first under Reagan. Indeed, I seem to recall Reagan being blamed for them, since his Presidency "vindicated the far right" or something. So Republicans were at fault for the first abortion clinic bombings because their President "emboldened" the radicals, and then Republicans were at fault for those bombings because Clinton was President and they were mean to him? Where does this sort of thing end?

---

Now, do you want to suggest that when Republicans are in power, there will be more left-leaning terrorist incidents, and vice-versa? I can believe that. It seems inevitable--when out of power in a democratic society, those on your fringe will tend to be more wild-eyed and more desperate.

The answer is the same: to call them to account, to remind them of what is good and right in this society, and to remind them of the damage they're likely to do to their cause if they turn to violence. And to throw their asses in jail if they actually carry out their threats.

But still, to concentrate on Clinton: were there more than two dozen right-wing domestic terrorist incidents during Clinton's entire time in office? And can you honestly say that, given 8 years, we won't see similar numbers for Bush? There have already been several from domestic left-wing extremist groups in the US. There have been no civilian deaths, YET, but the man hasn't even been in office three years, and we're also in a time when law enforcement is particularly aggressive about hunting down terrorists.

Besides: would it really be fair to blame, say, Newsmax.com, or The Nation magazine, with incidents of terrorism caused by people who were sympathetic to them? If so, The Nation needs to start apologizing for the anarchists of the 1930s, the radical terrorists (i.e. "youthful idealists") of the 1960s and early 1970s, and Newsmax needs to apologize for Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

I don't know. Maybe violent people draw energy and inspiration from the far left and right fringes of political rhetoric. But I'm not comfortable with easy generalizations about that.

Mark:

Good job. I think you covered it pretty well.

I think that Clinton suffers a tad bit more, since there are more "blue" staters who despise Clinton for lying on the stand than "red" staters who despise Bush for lying about ... something. (or did I get the nomenclature backwards?)

Dean:

I've been thinking for a while that Clinton is, in a weird sort of way, an LBJ reincarnation. Basically, a classic glad-handing, log-rolling, "feel what the people want" sort of people-pleaser.

I'm reminded of an old story where LBJ (then a Lt. Commander in the Navy) was in an old B-17D Fortress that got lost over Australia. The pilot landed, out of gas, and found his bearings. Point being that the plane's crew bore personal witness to Johnson's ability to listen to the locals, immediately establish a bond, then work up some sort of level of cooperation. In fact, at least one aircrew member facetiously observed that Johnson had "locked [that part of Australia] in for Texas for sure"...

I'm sure Willie would have been proud. :)

In fact, I think this tends to illustrate why LBJ had trouble persuing the Vietnam War. I don't think he really understood many of the stakes. I feel that he believed, at one level or another, that all he had to do was talk the local (US) opposition into exhaustion, then shoot/talk the Vietnam opposition (VC/NVA) into exhaustion, and then he could strike a deal. You know like adults. Or politicians... :)

But I don't think that LBJ ever appreciated that Minh wasn't thinking like a politician; Ho was thinking like a patriot. And patriots have a severely different value system from politicians...

I think this segues well back into contemporary times. Bush is, I think more of a patriot than a politician. And I think that Mark nailed this point pretty well. Clinton just didn't really comprehend, at any level, the military.

BTW, Dean, I think you overlook Clinton's original plan to explicitly allow gay/lesbians admittance to the military. It was only after a (generally) negative reaction across the board that he backed off to "don't ask/don't tell" (which has been the de facto, "love that dares not speak it's name," policy for most of the 20th century).

Anyway, even a superficial examination of the armed force's attitude towards Clinton tends to "what a draft-dodging creep," while they tend to see Bush as "one of us."

Now, there are both good points and bad points to either point of view. Certainly Lincoln is -to this day- one of the most revered Presidents ever. It is also certain that he was one of the most inexperienced, militarily, that ever began a term. Compare/contrast this to FDR (who's only other exposure to the military was assistant Secretary of the Navy) or Washington (extensive experience in the French & Indian Wars). Both men were exemplary war leaders, as was Lincoln.

I just can't see Clinton in this light. He is more (as I said) an LBJ or a Garfield. This is not meant disrespectfully; certain situations require certain talents.

My analysis is that, for the current situation, a Bush "patriot" is better for America than a Clinton/LBJ "politician."

This may become clearer when I say (in this case) I see the "patriot" as a Jacksonian, while I see the "politician" as a Wilsonian.

The main problem I have with your observations, Mark (and Casey), is that in the vast scheme of things, you're describing differences of management style. These are differences that someone from another country (who wasn't a political junkie) would have trouble grasping, and that future generations will also find to be rather obscure.

Even on foreign policy, I'm not sure the differences between the two men are all that profound. America changed so much in the wake of 9/11, I don't even think it's fair to suggest Clinton and Bush were all that different on foreign policy. Let's look at the ABM treaty: Bill Clinton believed in missile defense--said he did in 1992 and never changed his stance--and when asked about the ABM treaty, said he would like to negotiate with the Russians and keep the treaty becuase he'd rather not pull out of it. Bush said exactly the same thing, only, after 9/11, became more adamant about threatening to pull out, and eventually did when Putin wouldn't play ball. But he still maintained all along that he'd rather keep that treaty--and if 9/11 hadn't vaulted national security to the top of the agenda, are we really all that sure he would have pulled out of that treaty? Or is it more likely we'd still be negotiating with the Russians over it?

Foreign adventurism? Bush showed few signs of actually removing us from current UN projects or refusing to take part in future ones in his first nine months. After 9/11 we concentrated on our own issues, but two years later and we're talking about going into places like Liberia to help the UN!

I always chuckle when people call Clinton a "super liberal" and Bush a "hard right winger." The truth is that Clinton is a centrist with a few left-of-center views and a few right-of-center views. The same is true for Bush. Both disagree on some things, but mostly in the margins. Both have different personal styles, but on public policy? Come on. When we're down to arguing whether knocking 5 points off the marginal tax rates is more of a "sop to the rich" than knocking five points off the capital gains tax rate, we are doing the political equivalent of arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Bryan over at Arguing With Signposts thinks I'm just being a gadfly by saying all this. I'm not. I'm trying to get people to pull off the partisan blinkers, step back, and ask themselves about the arguments they make and the positions they hold, from a big-picture perspective. We're so very, very serious sometimes, and we think the tiniest things have the most enormous impact. Yet who here thinks, honestly, historians will look back and say:

"The Clinton Presidency was where the 2nd amendment was nearly destroyed, until Bush saved it!"

Or, "The Bush presidency was where the US economy finally collapsed under the weight of a 5% tax cut!"

Or, "World War IV could have been averted had only Clinton declared war on Iraq, as we can all now so clearly see!"

Or..... oh, go on, keep filling in the details for yourself.

Very few Presidents make radical changes. A handful in the last century (Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are the only ones I can think of) made truly major policy changes that changed things significantly in the following decades. Others found themselves in the middle of epoch-changing events (Truman, Johnson, and Bush 43 come to mind). The rest have all been competent (or not-so-competent) administrators who have made small changes in the margins.

But really: Is that a bad thing?

Dean, remember that Clinton's constant triangulation gave birth to the green party, which threatened not him but his successor. It remains to be seen what Bush's triangulation will give birth to.

Great post as always Dean! I am starting to see your points about Clinton/Bush. Most people in the democratic party love, and will always love, Bill Clinton. Since they view his republican successor as the "opponent," they/we, will be more critical of his administration and may even resort to shallow name calling.

Likewise, there are those who love Bush simply because he is NOT Bill Clinton, but if I am reading you correctly, if you like one of the two, you should like them both. However, there is no denying that Clinton demonstrated far more charisma while Bush gives off the impression of being the man of higher character. So we're back to the whole infidelity/sex thing, which I have said all along...conservative Americans are hung up on sex and leftists are hung up on health care and helping save us from ourselves.

Love ya Dean,

Tim the Soldier

Mark,

Come on, get off yourself. They call Hillary Clinton Hitlery, Neil Boortz gets on the radio every day caller here the most dangerous woman in America and right wing pundits like Hanniety are beating the drum about Hillary getting into the race to fire up the anti-Clinton right because they are scared that the base is getting complacent. That kind of non-sense is exactly the kind of crap Dean was talking about but you obviously write off as trivial to the people who do essentially the same thing to Bush.

You know on my blog, if any one ever bothers to read it [grin] I never call the president names, we don’t call him a Nazi, Hell I don’t even call him shrub simply because I think it’s beneath the dignity of the office. But to even suggest that the level of vitriol on the right is less then the vitriol of the left is prima facie evidence of your partisanship. For Crying out loud man you make Nixon look like a New Dealer (that’s a joke BTW).

Dean,

Not only am I aware of the left wing violence you mention (actually you left out a few, remember the MOVE in Philadelphia? That was the rights “Waco”) and your right, I have made that point on a number of occasions [you really should drop by the blog more often]. I have suggested on a number of occasions that domestic political violence is perpetrated by the faction that is currently out of power, and I have predicted that as the right maintains political power you’re going to see more left wing violence. But the things you mentioned were 25 and 35 years ago. But I thought we were talking about Clinton vs. Bush hatred so if you want to open up the discussion to history I guess we could go back to the Whiskey rebellion.

You point is valid though in times of political upheaval there is violence among the opposition on that score I concede the point. But so far there to compare the lever of violence over the last 15 years of the right over that of the left is silly. The Unabomber represented no movement himself in fact he was a recluse that had little contact with anyone. Unlike people like Eric Robert Rudolph who was a members of the army of god who are currently very vocal supporters of the guy who was executed in Florida for killing the abortion doctor. As for violence against abortion clinics you said, “only about a dozen” ? Listen to yourself Dean, one was too many. Also there were bombings against gay bars and there were a number of incidences where anthrax was sent to abortion clinics (some fake and in at least two cases it was real). Three violent standoffs (four if you count Waco and I don’t because that operation was started under Bush I.) Violence against gays the highest profile case was Matthew Shepard and the dragging case of the black guy in Texas. And this is only the stories that made national news; there were scores of other incidents that never really got much press. So if you really want to claim that the level of violence between the right and the left in the 90’s was even in the same league go ahead, but I never want to hear anyone on this website bitch about moral equivalency.

As for the Contract with America again we are talking about different things. Buy your own count only 60% of the contract made it to Clinton’s desk and he signed most of it which I acknowledged. Your 60% figure is a bit subjective because almost none of the proposals made it out of committee in the for passed by the house so when you say that 60% made it to Clinton’s desk it did son in a greatly revised form, and everything I mentioned never made it at all and things like unfunded mandates are back like never before.

As for taxes the simple fact is 5% of 500K is more $ as a percentage of AGI then 10% of the lower tax bracket which works out to $600 for a couple filing jointly. Of 30K in AGI that’s less then .02% difference in someone’s tax bill. Compare that to some one who gets 50,000 in dividends tax free. Look we could argue about this all night the fact is that it will take a couple of years to figure it our for sure and it might just turn out that your right, nut the fact is to talk about it in any definitive sense is disingenuous because there are too many variables, like I said my taxes went up between 2001 and 2002 even thought my AGI went down slightly and I am in that borderline rich bracket (which is a bit of a joke in and of itself.)

Anyway good discussion the bottom line is I agree with the thesis of your post even if we have had a jolly goods time disagreeing about the details.

Tim:

Likewise, there are those who love Bush simply because he is NOT Bill Clinton, but if I am reading you correctly, if you like one of the two, you should like them both. However, there is no denying that Clinton demonstrated far more charisma while Bush gives off the impression of being the man of higher character.

Yeah, you are reading that right. Your assessment is correct. Clinton was more smooth and Bush comes off as having more dignity.

So we're back to the whole infidelity/sex thing, which I have said all along...conservative Americans are hung up on sex and leftists are hung up on health care and helping save us from ourselves.

Yes and no. The sex thing goes to Clinton's character. It was the lying Under Oath in Court that have conservative panties in a bunch.

I agree that the impeachment of Clinton was right BUT I also agree that the Aquittal in the Senate was also right. Why? Because while Clinton did commit the crime of perjury in front of a Grand Jury...HE NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN FORCED THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I found it incomprehensible that the Supreme Court ALLOWED a sitting president to be sued. Many of us Conservatives were very angry about that decision - not because we loved Clinton but because it was seriously ridiculous and set a bad precedent.

Also, a week before the decision the very conservative National Review stated that they hoped that the Supreme Court would not allow the case forward and when they did they said that it was a bad decision that would have horrible consequences. They were right.

None of that excuses the fact that Clinton chose to lie when under the gun. But, IMHO, said gun shouldn't have been there till he was out of office.

Now Leftists are making us think that they are trying to save us from ourselves.Perhaps they really believe that. But in reality, they are trying to make us believe that we are too stupid to do for ourselves. They are only trying to punish the successful, and keeping the poor(unsuccessful)in need. If you give everything to those that have nothing - you succeed in taking away their drive and initiative to attain it for themselves. I think that extreme leftists have political Munchausen by proxy.

There are significant differences in foreign policy - which is one of the biggest reasons I was never enamored with Bill.

Clinton purused a very Wilsonian, internationalist, multilateral foreign policy while Bush tends more towards anything that's not Wilsonian. Furthermore, Clinton got into the "legacy" years of his presidency towards the end, when he couldn't resist hopping on the scene is some godforsaken hellhole and starting noises about negotiating a settlement.

Granted, both did go to great pains to put an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but I tend to regard that as a special case, for a variety of reasons.

But for more compare/contrast stuff, you get the difference in approaches to Iraq, Osama and North Korea.

Because I tend to follow foreign affairs quite closely, the differences in style, vision and behavior of the two gentlemen seems reasonably large in my eyes.

There is a huge difference between the two men: Bush is concerned with actions and with their real-world consequences, whereas Clinton lives largely in a universe comprised entirely of words. This fundamental difference of character is more important than any specific differences or similarities on particular policies.

Great Debate! David, you nailed it best. Clinton was devoted to "Perception is Reality" and spent way to much effort spinning reality instead of improving reality. What a waste of enormous political talent.

I agree with Dean that policy wise, the two men were not that far apart. I always thought it ironic that Conservatives hated Clinton so much when they could not have asked for a more moderate/conservative Democratic President. Likewise now with Bush and the dems.

Rick, your comments about "right wing" violence, abortion clinic bombings and the growth of the militia movement and your attempts to link that to political opposition to Clinton are not merely an example of your misrepresentation of the actual events and history ( the real momentum of the militia movement was the late '80's through the early '90's- likewise the violent anti-abortion movement ) but despicable work on your part. Truly despicable.

Tim: I wouldn't say anyone has to "like" Bush if they love Clinton or vice-versa. I would say that extremes of emotions and rhetoric over either man just gets silly, and we'd all have better mental health if we'd just step back and look at the actual policy differences rather than all this shrieking over tiny issues on the margin. The difference between the two men is mostly one of style, and a few specific issues on which, frankly, neither is all that extreme.

I actually think Bush is very charismatic to some people, and repellant to others. I find him charming and I like him. Clinton I always felt was too slick and glib and too willing to say anything to please his audience--and no, that's not a slam, because I thought that the very first time I saw him, and I still thought he would be a better President than George H.W. Bush was.

In many ways, he was, but he had some personality flaws that were also a problem. Interestingly, they were some of the same personality flaws that FDR had.

As for wanting to "save people from themselves"--there are people all over the right who want to do the same thing, but in different areas.

Politics is always in flux I guess you could say...

Rick,

Nice try at backpeddling....but this still damns you:

"During the Clinton administration Right wing violence was very pronounced, Abortion bombings, the Olympic park bombing, Stand offs with the Texas separatist and Montanan freeman. You also had the ranks of right wing paramilitary groups like the Michigan militia swelling to numbers that pale to that of today and, of course, the bombing of the OK federal building. All of this was in direct response to the relentless beating of the hate Clinton drums. When a leftist group takes out a major building or kicks off a month long armed stand off get back to me."

You can't get around the fact that you consider the right to be in general a violence-inspiring entity. You also can't get around the fact that you are talking out of both sides of your mouth...right wing vitriol caused violence, but you see sure that left wing vitriol wont cause any such thing...

All I'm saying is that the well of American political life is being ever more poisoned and until the purveyors of such thoughts, of whatever political strip, are denounced firmly and prosecuted sternly, it will just get worse.

Dean,

Points taken - and the 9/11 effect is massive; we cannot really contemplate things pre-9/11 properly because we are all affected by that overwhelming event.

Given, however, what we have seen of late in certain political quarters, I do hold that any Democratic officeholder post-9/11 would have been more easily deterred from gritting his teeth and carrying out the necessary war policies. Can you really imagine Clinton giving Bush's speech of last week after three months of relentlessly negative coverage and declining poll numbers? If you can, then you watched a very different Clinton for 8 years than I did....

To balance things a bit, Presidents from 1979 until 1991 were given a choice repeatedly between war or shame - they uniformly choose shame, and got war, too. The lesson of 9/11 (which was the same lesson we got oh, so many times in the late, unlamented 20th century) is that when evil first rears its head, thats the time to step on it...the cost, however high, of a war immediately with evil perceived will always be less than the cost of the war you'll still get one day when your back is to the wall...

I don't know that Rick's backpeddling so much as trying to clarify his position.

But I will address one point he made: I think one abortion clinic bombing is too many, I simply point out that domestic terrorism has always been with us, that if you calculate the RATE of such events under Clinton's 8 years, I'm not at all convinced that the RATE was any much worse than it's ever been.

We'll have to look at the whole of Bush's presidency, or at least a full 4 year term, to see what pans out on that--and even then, we'll have to ask ourselves if the increased aggression with which the FBI and the Secret Service et. al. chase after terrorists will have an impact on what the RATE of successful domestic terrorism is on his watch.

Terrorism is terrorism, and I'm not sure that "people who agreed with some of the terrorists' issues were particularly mean to the President" as being any kind of reliable marker.

The anti-Bush vitriol is as nasty and as widespread as anything I ever saw under Clinton. From what I can see, anyway, and I thought a lot of anti-Clinton vitriol was way, way too much. How to objectively measure these things? I don't know, but I do know that the rate of domestic terrorist incidents is probably not a reliable measure, even if it has changed, because there are too many other variables in play.

Dean,

Lets just say my loathing of Clinton never extended itself to, say, denigrating a US military action taken by the Clinton Administration.

I know that some people of the right did so, and they were condemned for so doing - personally, I see the vitriol as being much worse than anything directed at Clinton...or, to put it more accurately, the vitriol is more widely believed than it was about Clinton.

Lets face the fact that the Right had an 8 year hernia with Clinton - but it was assauged by at least capturing the Congress and a majority of the States.....the Left's current hernia is not allayed by any success anywhere. This is what worries me...and, of course, their intransigence just makes it even less likely that they'll enjoy any success in the near term.

How this will play out remains to be seen, but hateful people who feel that they can't win by normal means do have a habit of going to exceptional extremes.

Dean, et al.,

I think there are two factors that affect this analysis that aren't getting enough attention. First is the composition of Congress during Clinton's and Bush's respective Presidencies--and I'd point out that Clinton's policy preferences were more liberal in his first two years (Hillary's health care fiasco, anyone?) than in his last six. Frankly, I don't think Clinton wanted to push fights that he stood a good chance of losing, like promoting liberal legislation in the face of a Republican Congress. Not that there is anything wrong with that political calculation, but I think that Bush + Republican Congress vs. Clinton + Republican Congress puts the two Presidents in substantially different positions that must have some effect on their courses of action. To be frank, I think Clinton was less of an ideologically committed liberal than he was a somewhat left-leaning President who would only back legislation that the majority (as he saw it) would approve of. On the other hand, I think Bush is a conservative/moderate who is much more willing to risk politically to advance the goals he says he believes in.

Secondly, most of the vitriol that is poured out on Bush's head is directly connected to policies he has pushed as President. Sure, there is name-calling as well, but the real issues brought up are almost always political in nature. The same can NOT be said for Clinton. The majority of the barbs aimed in Clinton's direction are due to abuse-of-power issues (yeah, I'm talking about Monica) or perjury. This is stuff that was not generally related to his official policy positions or signed legislation. I am not making a judgement call here as to whether either TYPE of criticism is more valid than the other, but I am pointing out that they are different in type, and the distinction may be significant.

Parting shot: 2002 showed that Bush has fairly substantial coattails, while 1994, 1996, and 1998 generally show that Clinton did not. If Clinton and Bush were all that similar, why is this difference so striking?

Well Sam, those are some good points you raise. You make them very well. But let me raise some counterpoints:

1) Clinton rode into office spouting some very conservative and moderate rhetoric on a great many issues. He claimed to support the 2nd amendment, and even had photo ops showing him out duck hunting. He claimed only to want moderate things like waiting periods and to be skittish about national registration. He was strongly pro free trade. He talked about how he wanted to "end welfare as we know it" because of the culture of dependency it created. He was for work requirements and other things to try to get people off of welfare. He wanted to make abortion "safe, legal, AND RARE." He told his left wing audience, time after time, that he would support programs to help people get training, but said that this was a new world, free trade would help things, but that Americans needed to be more competitive. Government could help, but people as individuals would have to do the heavy lifting, would have to educate themselves and get jobs and work on moving up the ladder on their own drive and initiative, go to school and get degrees and special training, work hard, etc. He said he wanted a strong defense and to modernize the military--which, in fact, he tooks some real steps to doing.

Gays in the military he was very in favor of, but, even though his own party had majorities in the House and Senate during his first two years, he did not try to push the issue, and was quick to compromise on "don't ask don't tell." Because it was clear that enough Democrats opposed him, and in retrospect, it's clear that he wasn't enough of an ideologue to want to invest enormous energy into anything more pervasive.

2) Even that famous health care fiasco was, arguably, more of a matter of arrogance than a real attempt to nationalize the whole health care system. I remember the whole thing very well--Hillary was assembling a TASK FORCE to discuss ALL THE OPTIONS. Single payer was on the table, but other things were on the table too. The whole task force got shot down because people on the Right said she wanted to nationalize the system, and also, because she was a NOT an elected member of the cabinet (i.e. not the President or Vice President) and did not have a right to keep the task force membership private, but tried to keep it private anyway.

It is not AT ALL clear to me that, had that task force gone through, the Clinton administration would really have gone with Single Payer. They might well have wound up with some more moderate reforms that even conservatives could get along with. Alas, the whole thing was handled so badly, with such bad timing, what might have even been something that conservatives would have LIKED didn't have a chance to get out of the womb.

-=-=-

I'd also like to point out that LOTS of conservatives had ALL KINDS of reservations about George W. Bush, reservations that are even now coming out. The man's party's in charge of both houses of Congress, yet he seems totally unwilling to flex his muscles on any issue except defense and taxes to do anything to make conservatives very happy. Veto threats are very rare, and actual vetos so far nonexistant.

He's pushed from the beginning for massive increases in Federal education spending, despite the fact that conservatives generally believe that these education bills are not going to do anything to improve education.

He's done nothing to try to curb spending in other areas. He's compromised on tarriffs when he didn't have to. On foreign policy he's hawkish, but not on board with the most hawkish among them, not willing to pull out of the UN and still willing to help the UN in projects like Liberia.

Flattening the tax code? Feh. His tax reforms make it MORE progressive, not less. Cracking down on China? Nope, just expanding trade relations with it.

Most conservatives who looked at his record were never all that hot on Bush, except that they thought he was a better choice than Gore, and could probably win. In office, Bush has never been all that right-wing, except on a small handful of issues.

I'm shocked Rick didn't try to paint the 93 attack on the WTC as domestic right-wing violence.

The biggest power a President has is the power to determine the topic of conversation.

This does not guarantee that the President will get his agenda passed, and our system almost always requires some level of compromise - even in times of crisis. So any actual left right shift is incremental.

But for the party out of power, the inability to set the agenda is maddening. But that is all Presidential Power is - a power to set the agenda. Not a power to implement the agenda - at least not in the making of laws.

Now, if we're talking about the Federal Bureaucracy, and the ability to change regulations, then the Executive holding office does have broad powers. But even these are dampened due to institutional inertia, and are subject to reversal once the office holder changes.

I think this is great. It is why, despite the loud crying from the extreme wings of each party, and general grumbling in the moderate wings, the USA has never allowed a tyrant to take office.

The closest the USA ever came to actually giving dictatorial sytle powers to a President was with Lincoln, and that was only because the southern states abdicated their seats and abandoned their opposition role. Go read some of the articles about Lincoln's power grabbing during the Civil War and how the Northern newspapers were horrified by it.

Fortunately, the Civil War ended, and the balance of power was restored. Also, Lincoln was personally committed to the type of government he spoke of in the Gettysburg Address. So even in our time of greatest Executive power, the mood and culture of the country resisted the temptation to fall into despotism.

This is just fine with me, and those on the fringes complain because they are UNABLE to impose their strict ideologies on the population as a whole. I say let them complain as long as we don't let them have power.

Dean,

I appreciate the point that Clinton could not be accurately described as a leftist, and Bush is not a right-winger. However, I still think that delving into the differences between the two men would be far more instructive as to understanding either of them. What about my other points regarding the official vs. unofficial conduct distinction or the difference in coattails? I think these are effects, not causes, but they stem from deeper differences that are important. Anyway, I'm not too sure how much more discussion this point will get, as this post will probably slip off into the archives soon, but here's my response anyway.

Dean,

Of course, we also haven't seen GW with more than a one seat advantage in the Senate as of yet - also, unlike other President's, GW hasn't had to face the incredible intransigence we've seen from the Democratic Senate minority...this is fueled, of course, by the view at least in the left wing of the Democratic Party that GW is entirely illegitimate and thus unworthy of any consideration. What will happen when, as I expect, the GOP majority expands by 5 to 7 seats (and just perhaps by 9) next year might be a bit of an eye-opener for you.

GW is in a different way as masterful a politician as Clinton was...Clinton got his way via charm and glib talk, GW gets his by political machinations which eventually make the other side do what he wants them to do (sometimes to get something done with them, sometimes to just make them look like fools so that he can get something done on his own). Once GW has a Senate majority which cannot be tossed aside by the mere defection of two GOPers (ie, McCain and Chafee), then he'll likely flex a lot more political muscle. Then we'll see that GW is a conservative - but still not an ideological warrior.

Dean,

Oh, almost forgot, Clinton would have been a lot more liberal had he not faced a GOP Congress for the last 6 years of his Presidency...his unwillingness to clash directly on every issue pissed off his leftist supporters as much as GW's unwillingness to do this pisses off his rightist supporters...but politics is the art of the possible and both Clinton and Bush are consumate politicians.

Sam,

Outside of Hillarycare (and regardless of merit, there was something quintessentially Democratic in an attempt to put a lawyer in charge of making health care more efficient), Clinton took no bold domestic moves - because he couldn't. But he was attacked relentlessly on policy...perhaps you didn't read enough of it, but Clinton was accused of being the Manchurian Candidate who was selling America out for the highest political donation. The vitriol against Clinton was directly related to policy, until Monica and then it was about what a piece of garbage he was.

For GW, he has been relentlessly attacked on policy since day one, of course. But, like Clinton, its not just that his most ardent opponents think him wrong to, say, withdraw from ABM...they are convinced that he withdrew from it only in order to provide a boondoggle for the military industrial complex which placed him in power by stealing an election.

On and on it goes like that - the recent comparisons of Bush to Hitler are not just odd political theater...you see, the people who first put this idea out were convinced that GW Bush is the long-term heir of Hitler who was, in their minds, financed in his rise to power by GW's grandfather. I'm not kidding about this, by the way - its what they really believe.

Mark,

Yes, but the Hillarycare debacle occurred during Clinton's first two years, when achieving liberal policies was presumed to be easy because of the Democratic control of the House and Senate. After that, bold liberal moves weren't within the "art of the mostly probable," which is how I think Clinton saw the policy game. He wasn't ever interested in risking failure...hence no more major liberal policy pushes, particularly after the Gingrich revolution of 1994.

I do remember criticism of Clinton with regard to the Chinese, campaign contributions, and American technology. What I do not remember, though, was Bush=Hitler levels of insanity involved in those accusations. Thing is, Clinton had some pretty shady dealings when it came to campaign contributions, and I'd be inclined to ascribe it to translating what he could get away with in Arkansas to the big time of Washington, D.C.

Also, Clinton got jabs for his personal conduct during his campaign in 1992 (Gennifer Flowers?) and while those died down for a bit after he was elected, they came back with Paula Jones, et al. Clinton was living under the cloud of his predations for most of his Presidency, and they did pull most of the flak that was aimed at him. In fact, I think that a big chunk of the policy criticism has come about after Clinton left office, with regard to the failures of his efforts vis a vis Israel/Palestine, Iraq, North Korea, and Osama bin Laden.

I'm not inclined to write off the wackos that wave Bush=Hitler signs. They are dangerous and should be watched to make sure their fantasy ideology doesn't move beyond activity that is protected by the First Amendment. Stay within the First Amendment and you can say whatever you like, even if it's crazy. But this level of insane wackiness is unprecedented in its breadth, and I think that is what's most alarming. None of the insane, baseless accusations leveled at Clinton had anywhere near this level of support.

Anyway...back to the topic at hand....

There is a good reason why there are so many supporters of the correlation being made between Bush and Hitler. It is because these "policies" that you discuss, as though they're relevent to the normal, quotidienne lives of most of the population, are really quite meaningless to most of us.

What is important to the greatest majority of Americans (those that really don't have to worry very much about tax cuts on capital gains), is that they are poorer than they can ever remember being. Not only that, but all of the safety nets that used to assist during hard times are slowly being yanked away.

I never had to pay for my own school books until college - can you imagine? Now, families with less are asked to shoulder that responsibility, plus much more.

A couple of years ago, the average citizen (who can't afford expensive lawyers) could feel somewhat comforted in the fact that the constitution protected them from false persecution and unreasonable search and seizure. Now, in the guise of "National Security (the same words Hitler used to launch his policies) the "Patriot Act" (chilling words to many) has left anyone and everyone (except, of course most corrupt corporate executives) open to unwarranted search and seizure. Yay.

Clinton passed several measures protecting our natural resources - Bush has passed several measures, and "rearranged" several government postions, to deplete them as fast as possible (for a chilling simile, read "The Lorax").

Clinton had very good relationships with most countries around the world - they laughed at him, but they liked him. At first, the world laughed at Bush. He showed them, didn't he?

Do I need to go on?

That old saying about the military having to have a bake sale to pay for weapons holds true, and I think some of you, in your endless quest for quippy rhetoric, are totally missing out on the reality that so many Americans (the vast majority of Americans) experience every day.

Everyone's reality is essentially their own, and to say that my reality is your reality is just ridiculus. We all have our own strengths, skills, experiences and creativity - that is what creates reality. It is not one person saying, "This is reality" and expecting everyone to comply to their perception. And the person that believes in that grave misperception (that there is only one perception) is going to have a rude awakening some day.

Nobody in this discourse has really addressed the fact that the whole country is going to go mentally insane (and according to some of you, already has) because they have nowhere to go to "get away from it all" if George Bush has his way. Our open spaces are all we have left for valuable natural resources. What does tourism bring in to this county every year? Bush has opened so many of our most valuable natural resources to destruction - by directly counteracting preservationist environmental policies. This, I think more than anything, will give Bush opposition the strength to overcome him.

Not possible you say? Hmmm, have you ever thought of the fact that people who enjoy the outdoors are not around to answer the phone? Those "surveys" completely leave people like them, people like me, out.

But, people like me do vote. We may not watch a lot of television. We may not spend a lot of money for things we don't need. But we do vote.

And we are concerned. That concern has made us take action. And the action we take is discourse. Sometimes discourse on the similarities between Bush and Hitler. Because they are there. And you'd have to be "crazy" not to see them.

One more thing - God created nature. It is an agreesive act against God to destroy that which He has created.