By Atlas: Bill Clinton. God does Atlas seem to love to hate him.
I agree with this. People on Atlas seem to not understand the context of the times Bill was governing in. Obama seems to get much more of a pass for his attempts at Rockefeller Republicanism (grand bargain) than Bill Clinton, and Obama governed in a much more liberal time than Clinton.
America in the 1990s was almost as Conservative as it was in the '80's and the 2000's. After Bill's first two years in Office, which were very liberal by the standards of that time, and still left of Center by today's, were overwhelmingly rejected (wrongfully IMHO, despite a rocky start) at the ballot box in 1994, his only options were to tag toward the center or get a Republican President with Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House in 1996 and if that were to happen, it may have very well been worse than George W. Bush's blunder of a Presidency.
While Bill Clinton did pass bad legislation with a GOP Congress that he could've prevented, such as Glass Steagal Repeal, the Telecommunications Act, and Deregulating Derivative Swaps, the rest of the criticized legislation of his term wasn't avoidable. The public, even leaders in the Black Community, wanted a Crime Bill in 1994 because inner city crime was through the roof in the 80's and early 90's due to the Crack epidemic, and as flawed as it is, they got it. They wanted Welfare Reform, and while Bill vetoed it many times before signing it, they unfortunately got a bad piece of reform. Most of the public wanted DOMA or a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage, and they got DOMA. NAFTA was a done deal before he took office and would've happened whether he won in 1992 or not. Good things also came out Clinton's two terms as well, such as the Family Medical Leave Law, the Brady Bill, the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, CHIP, DADT, while I'm happy it was repealed in 2010, was seen as a step at the time, and he stopped Newt Gingrich from cutting Medicare, Education, and Environmental Spending.
