Bill's gone but the debate rages on
They may have a new President, but Americans are still trying to come to terms with their feelings about the one who has just left. We found 10 prominent Americans generally felt cheated by the Clinton legacy.
Damaged the presidency
- Alistair Cooke, journalist and broadcaster:
Clinton is a total mystery in some ways. He's such a rogue yet he's so intelligent. He's on top of issues, I think, better than any president I can remember since Lyndon Johnson. My goodness, we're going to miss him.
It's quite wrong to see him as entertainment. Tell me somebody in the House of Commons who's as good, as articulate, who's got a grasp of so many issues in such detail. I think that he has damaged the presidency but this is not an isolated thing. An ordered society is collapsing all around us and it's not he who has made this happen.
The consequence of the Clinton experience will be a choice, I suppose, between having only monks and certifiably faithful husbands and wives running for the presidency. Or, as seems to be more likely, we will fall into accepting the attitude described by Edward Gibbon in the first volume of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when he said "the people became either indifferent or insensitive to the debauches of the emperor provided that he paved the roads and remitted taxes". I think that's very apt.
Broke the heart of a nation - Dick Morris, ran Clinton's 1996 election campaign:
By day, he solved every problem America faced when he took office. By night, he enmeshed himself in such scandal as to drown it all out.
By day, he transformed a huge budget deficit into a surplus that will pay off our entire national debt in a decade. By night, he hired detectives to dig up dirt on women, troopers who had guarded him, and political opponents.
By day, he reduced poverty in the US by almost 20 per cent. By night, he lowered even further faith in government integrity.
By day, he cut smoking, controlled guns, cut crime, catalysed the peace initiative in Ireland, stopped Milosevic in Kosovo and the Balkans, restored democracy in Haiti and brought North Korea in from the cold. By night, he broke the heart of the nation by proving himself to be a flawed man in a job for which he lacked the maturity.
A borderline criminal
- Lucianne Goldberg, book agent and friend of Linda Tripp:
He is totally unqualified, undisciplined, a borderline criminal. He has done far more damage than people realise. I feel ecstatic that he's going.
There are those of us - and we are legion - who just can't wait to see the back of these people. We had hoped they would be going out in orange jumpsuits, handcuffed.
Yes, we'll still have Hillary. Hillary will run for president if she possibly can, you betcha. I think the deal has always been eight years for him, eight years for her. Why in the world would any woman with self-respect stay with a husband that did to her what he did unless there were a larger goal?
Lived by lies
- Camille Paglia, writer and academic:
As a Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton twice and gradually became bitterly disillusioned, I can only say that the Clinton legacy is wormwood and ashes.
Clinton took office in a blaze of idealism as the first president of my post-war baby boom generation. But he governed like a schizophrenic hack, turning diplomacy into photo opportunities.
He divided this nation, abused the military, lived by lies, and pandered to the poor while sucking up to the rich and famous. He coasted on a prosperity he did not create, and he cheapened the office he held. After Clinton, public service has become just another cynical branch of show business.
Failed to give direction
- Steve Forbes, magazine publisher and Republican presidential contender:
For all the theatre, Clinton's was a failed presidency. He failed to reform America's horrific tax code, Medicare, social security and troubled schools. He degraded the justice department as no president has done before him. He failed to provide a coherent direction for post-cold war foreign policy.
Opportunistic photo ops, not principle, was his diplomatic guide stone. Ironically the 1994 Republican surge saved his presidency, curbing spending, cutting taxes and forcing Clinton to sign a historic welfare reform bill. Wisely, he left GOP-appointed Greenspan in place and alone. The economy boomed.
All about nothing
- Robert Reich, former US secretary of labour:
I think historians looking at the Clinton presidency will sum it up in three ways. The first paragraph will be a wonderful economy. The second paragraph will be skilled politician; kept the Republicans at bay when they ran Congress. And the third paragraph will be scandals, particularly Monica Lewinsky.
In 1992-93, he was in the process of reinventing progressive politics. Rather than Thatcherite social Darwinism, he saw that the goal must be to move forward into the new economy and bring as many people along as possible. But by the time 1996 rolled around, his campaign was about nothing. It was about Dick Morris's ideas about school uniforms and V-chips [a device for vetting television programs for children] - no real substance. He certainly repositioned the Democrats but it's unclear whether he really did it or the Republicans did.
I don't know that there's anything progressive about what Clintonism has become.
A terrible missed chance
- Studs Terkel, historian, critic and broadcaster:
Forget about all the Monica bullshit. That's not important. What's important is that Clinton had a great chance to be progressive.
The country was ready but the word didn't come.
He listened to that pimp Dick Morris. He moved the party sharply to the right, and now we have to recover from it. A terrible, terrible missed chance.
The country has never been more ready for universal health insurance. Every family in the country is worried stiff about it. It doesn't matter how right wing they are, they're all worried.
Let the good times roll
- Arianna Huffington, author:
Over two terms, he let the good times roll, tailoring his priorities to the polls and hoarding his political capital as if he thinks it's redeemable for something when he leaves office.
Now, in the sobering light of the morning after, he's taking stock.
It's as if while packing up the Oval Office he discovered a trove of his idealistic campaign speeches. Unfortunately, there seems to be a massive disconnect between the crises he bemoans and his role in allowing or even promoting them. He's much better at sounding like a great president than being one.
Brilliant but flawed
- Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner:
He could have done so much more. He could have signed the international landmine ban treaty. He has repeatedly said it was one of the bitterest disappointments of his presidency that he couldn't. I'm not sure why he bought the military argument.
I think he was a brilliant man but Shakespeareanly flawed. When I won the peace prize, I said the same things I have always said: that the US could have and should have signed the treaty, that the commander-in-chief should be a commander-in-chief.
A complicated picture - Hugh Price, president, National Urban League:
Clinton's legacy for the African American community is complicated. The extraordinary economic growth has certainly reached into our community, where poverty has begun declining.
But as far as the criminal justice system is concerned, he was very late in doing anything about the issues of racial profiling, police abuse, and the differential treatment of blacks and whites in implementing drug policy.
As a "New Democrat" it would have been easy for him to walk away from the principles of affirmative action. Yet he stuck by that.
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