Robert Scheer: Bill Clinton’s Legacy of Denial

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Bill Clinton’s Legacy of Denial

Posted on Jun 21, 2011
By Robert Scheer


Does Bill Clinton still not grasp that the current economic crisis is in large measure his legacy? Obviously that’s the case, or he wouldn’t have had the temerity to write a 14-point memo for Newsweek on how to fix the economy that never once refers to the home mortgage collapse and other manifestations of Wall Street greed that he enabled as president.

Endorsing the Republican agenda of financial industry deregulation, reversing New Deal safeguards, President Clinton pursued policies that in the long run created more damage to the American economy than any other president since Herbert Hoover, whose tenure is linked to the Great Depression. Now, in his Newsweek piece, Clinton has the effrontery to once again revive his 1992 campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid,” as the article’s title without any sense of irony, let alone accountability. But that has always been the man’s special gift—to rise above, and indeed benefit from, the messes he created.

His list of safe nostrums—painting tar-surface roofs white and seeking more efficient solar and battery production—to be featured at his lavishly funded Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago next week is vintage Clinton hype. All of those solutions are of the win/win sort that he loved to ballyhoo as president; who in his or her right mind would be against green job creation? But that hardly speaks to a crisis in which, as was reported Tuesday, the housing meltdown continues unabated as the toxic mortgages sold and packaged by the leading banks and investment houses clog the real estate market, destroying consumer confidence and hobbling job creation.

Conceding that the bailed-out banks are sitting on $2 trillion that they won’t lend, Clinton offers not a word about mortgage relief for swindled homeowners. With an all-time high of 44 million Americans living below the poverty line, Clinton once again brags of his success in ending the federal welfare program. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/clinton_in_deep_denial_20110621/

[xchrom]

1. indeed. nt

[Citizen Worker]

2. Bill Clinton is no friend of the working class. His allegiance is and always has been to the

moneyed class.

[groovedaddy]

3. I'm not sure he was always that way. Some say he was progressive in his first term as governor of

Arkansas. He lost his re-election bid and that's when he decided to "go corporate." He was re-elected after reassuring Tyson, Wal-Mart, etc. that he would no longer be a threat to them.

[izquierdista]

4. When the Repubs can't win, they still win

After the elections of 1980, '84, and '88, it was hard for the Repubs to keep shoveling their crap that doesn't work*. Enter a pushover Democrat who will clean up the worst of their excesses by enacting just enough of a tax raise to balance the budget by the end of his term. This same pushover will provide only token resistance to their schemes to gut welfare and banking regulation. Why hell, he might even take credit for it, since the scary Repubs would have been much worse. No, the Repubs may not have won the Presidency in '92 and '96, but they got more points on their issue scoreboard than the progressives did.

Fast forward to 2008 and exactly the same thing is happening. From the Health Insurance Industry Expansion bill to All Teachers Left High and Dry, to War is Good for American Business, the Repubs are still winning on the issue scoreboard.

*For the average working man, that is. For the top 1%, it works great.

[Jefferson23]

5. It is what it is, that he avoids that is not surprising. n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. This is going to be painful, but necessary.

I really pray the man has a moment of illumination where he realizes that maybe, just maybe, all that stress he was put through by the right made him turn right just a wee too much in order to appease his critics.

[Frances]

7. Oh, great

divide the Dems!

How stupid do the Repubs think we are?

This article just wants to take the focus off Reagan's legacy. and Bush I and Bush II and all the "ancestors" of Bachman and Palin and ....

[marmar]

8. "This article just wants to take the focus off Reagan's legacy."

You clearly don't know Robert Scheer very well.