Clinton and the economy, from today's WSJ:
The Golden Age Of Bill Clinton
This editorial appeared in Little Rock's Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette on Dec. 30, 1997:
If you missed the president's press conference the other day (lucky you)
here's a slice of that endless salami: ". . . We have worked so hard to
make this country work again. And we need to be looking to the future
and our long-term challenges now. And we cannot break the connection
of progress between making the country work again and looking to the
future by doing--by basically losing our discipline and our concentration
and giving in to the easy answer. . . ."
Oh--that connection of progress. The captive
viewer tries to shake himself awake now and then,
but a presidential press conference may be the
most effective inducer of REM sleep ever devised,
with the possible exception of a half-pint of
bourbon. The eyes glaze over, the brain grows
numb, and the listener himself begins looking to the
future to make the country work again to do the
right thing to cross that bridge to the 21st Century
to not stop thinking about tomorrow and believing
in a place called hope. . . . Hey, wake up! It's next
week.
On second thought, it really isn't fair to describe the president's rhetorical
style as so much wurst. It's much lighter, like a fluffy souffl‚ that keeps
rising and rising and rising . . . till it's all air.
Anybody who came to now and then during this press conference and
hypnotic trance, and actually paid attention to a phrase or two, might note
some odd claims and assumptions floating here and there in that soporific
sea. For example: ". . . make the country work again."
Does that mean the country wasn't working before we worked so hard to
make it work again? Was it broken? When was it broken? When did we
work so hard to fix it? How did we fix it? And who, exactly, is we? And is
anybody really listening who doesn't have to, and, please God, let it be
over soon.
If the president was referring to the economy, then the statisticians who
keep up with this sort of thing have noted that the current recovery began
in the fourth quarter of 1991--more than a year before The Age of Clinton
dawned.
Even before that, America wasn't exactly broken. After the great Reagan
Boom of the '80s, aka the Decade of Greed in clintonspeak, the country
was experiencing one of the milder recessions on record--which in the
annals of Clintoniana ranked alongside the Great Depression. In the
clintonoids' version of history, the American economy was the worst in half
a century till Bill and the FOBs came to our rescue. Visionaries all, they
used the great resources of government to do for the people what the
people couldn't do for themselves. Our Leaders understood that it wasn't
a matter of letting the country and the free market work; the country had
to be made to work by enlightened rulers who knew which levers to push,
which cords to pull, and exactly which new programs to propose from
behind that curtain in the magical kingdom of Oz.
You--poor, deluded soul--may think that prosperity has something to do
with the unconstrained industry of a free people. Reactionary rubbish. The
country would have sat on its collective duff, or at least frittered its time
away doing its own, unproductive business, if Our Leaders hadn't
provided wisdom, direction, labor and one national dialogue after another.
As the president said, we "worked so hard" to make everything work
better. Surely that wasn't a royal we, or an editorial we, but a new
construction--the presidential we.
The administration's record of accomplishment is apparent for all to see.
There was the $20-billion Stimulus Package that Mr. Clinton offered in
1993 . . . but that brilliant idea was rejected by Congress even when his
own party controlled it. Then there was Hillarycare--but it never came to a
vote. Then there were all those Investments in Our Children's Future. You
remember: The massive appropriations in that first budget the president
submitted to Congress after the Republican landslide of '94. That budget,
by its own reckoning, called for annual deficits of more than $200 billion
as far as the eye could see.
Bill Clinton fought tooth and toenail against all those heartless cuts in his
budget that the Republicans made. He refused for more than nine months
to submit a balanced budget of his own because he wanted to protect the
country from the draconian sacrifices that a balanced budget would
require. He vetoed one version of welfare reform, then signed another
under protest only after painting a stark picture of the horrors it would
cause. He fought especially hard against all those irresponsible Republican
tax cuts now fueling the economy.
But if you doubt that Bill Clinton and his hard-working administration don't
deserve the credit for this wave of prosperity, just look at the results. After
his proposals for government-approved health care, the country's
health-care system is adjusting to the economic realities, if on its own. And
after his opposition to a balanced budget, welfare reform, and tax cuts,
look at what's happened: The budget is being balanced, welfare is being
reformed, tax cuts have been made and still more are being proposed--if
not by Bill Clinton at the moment.
Yes, this president's dynamic leadership has paid off--if not quite the way
he envisioned. He's made the country work again. And his vision of foreign
affairs, in which everything is working out beautifully, is equally realistic.
Yep, good thing we've all had Bill Clinton to crack the whip over us.
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