The recession was over in March of '91, and the North Vietnamese admitted that they had suckered Clinton and continued to pursue their nuclear program all along. He benefited from the end of the Cold War; waited until the factions in Bosnia had practically achieved their objectives, only to insert "peacekeepers" to preserve the ethnically cleansed enclaves; practically precipitated the second Intifada by leaning on the Israelis to make concessions, which emboldened the Palestinians to agitate for more; and failed to deal adequately with terrorism, despite the warning of the first attack on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, the major cities, and most states, were run by Republicans, which had a lot to do with the crime rate, not to mention the Republican Congress, which introduced welfare reform, kept the military from falling apart, and forced spending restraint to pursue the goal of deficit reduction.
Nevertheless, Clinton left with the stock- market in free- fall, and the beginnings of a recession; with an economic record not markedly better than Reagan's, even though Reagan had to deal with a recession; with the revelation that many corporations cooked the books during the '90s; and with a terrorist organization having, for a couple of years, been freely working towards the attacks of 9-11, emboldened, very likely, by Clinton's relative lack of vigor in responding to earlier outrages.
Clinton was not all bad, as long as he stuck to Republican planks, like the ratification of GATT and NAFTA. And there may be debates about lines of causality and presidential responsibility. But it is no good to misrepresent the actual record....... |
