Opinion of Bill Clinton

[President Johnson]

Freedom fighter on balance, even though with severe moral shortcomings.

A new poll after Obama surprisingly is underwater. I expect Bubba to crater here.

[OSR stands with Israel]

As a President: FF and imo the best Dem President since Truman and I have him actually better than most Republican Presidents since then as well with only Eisenhower, Reagan and HW being better than him .

As a person: Obvious HP and probably the 3rd worst person to be President in the modern era other than Nixon and Trump


Since this is an Individual Politics Board, I voted more on how I viewed him as a President.

[Goldwater]

Politically FF, HP as a person.

[Pericles]

Bad President and a bad person.

[For Trump, everything. For immigrants, the law]

Bad president, abysmal human being.

[TML]

The only good thing I can say about him is that he had good campaigning skills (he even recognized how terrible his wife’s 2016 presidential campaign was). Otherwise, his governance was an important factor in the decline of Democratic support in many areas around the country, and it is also not surprising that he is ranked near the bottom in C-SPAN’s presidential rankings in terms of “moral authority” (whereas people like Carter and Obama were both ranked in the upper tier in that category).

[All Along The Watchtower]

Rapist scum.

And in the case of an office like that of President of the United States, you really cannot separate the personal qualities of the individual occupying it from the office itself. This is arguably even more the case in our modern era of a powerful Presidency and the 24-hour media environment.

Take a look at each American President going back the past several decades and you’ll begin to notice just how much of the way they operate as Presidents matches up with their personalities.

[vitoNova]

Bubba and Bathhouse Barry were the only 2 good presidents of my lifetime. 

[dw93]

Good President on balance, bad person on balance.

[MarkD]

As I told a coworker back in 1999-2000, the difference between Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton is that Carter was a good human being but a bad president, whereas Clinton was a bad human being but a good president (in general, not taking into account his choices for the Supreme Court).

[CheapDollarEra?]

The only good thing I can say about him is that he had good campaigning skills (he even recognized how terrible his wife’s 2016 presidential campaign was). Otherwise, his governance was an important factor in the decline of Democratic support in many areas around the country, and it is also not surprising that he is ranked near the bottom in C-SPAN’s presidential rankings in terms of “moral authority” (whereas people like Carter and Obama were both ranked in the upper tier in that category).

Can you explain that?
It's true that his relative support of free trade hurt the party in some areas, but it's not like other democrats would have easily avoided the party loses in upper appalachia and the yellow dog areas.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

FF

[The '90s' Last Champion]

Good president, bad person

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

He was clearly a Beijing operative in the 1996 election and then pushed hard to get China admitted to the WTO.

[Blow by blow, the passion dies]

Lean HP

[CheapDollarEra?]

He was clearly a Beijing operative in the 1996 election and then pushed hard to get China admitted to the WTO.

Didn't people (or, at least, economists) back then believe the 'end of history' nonsense?

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

A much better person than George W Bush. Probably a better person than Ronald Reagan as well, but that's hard to say because he was so much more complicated than Reagan.

That anybody can seriously believe that Clinton is a worse person than W. Bush I think is evidence of the power of the genuine elites: the wealthy people (the 'haves and have mores') to whom George W Bush belonged to and fought for.

The dean of the Washington Press corps at the time, David Broder, seriously argued that Clinton lying about sex was worse than George W Bush lying to lead the U.S into an unnecessary war of choice. This is also further evidence of the right wing lean of the mainstream media and how it both believes and advances the propaganda and assumptions that protect the interests in the U.S of the wealthy elite.

Of course the worst thing about George W Bush is that he was so unethical that he lied the nation into war, but he also allowed his administration to punish a CIA officer by having her outed, used his position in the elite to greatly further his wealth and privilege, and called anybody who disagreed with him 'unpatriotic.'

In short, George W Bush is about as horrible as a person can be short of being either a psychopath or a malignant narcissist like Donald Trump.

[Beet]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

[Beet]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

I disagree with those on the left who are heavily influenced by the popular book the Jakarta Method and then use that to extrapolate that George Soros did nothing wrong in 1997. They are entirely two different questions. Hatred of what Suharto did to get into power in 1966 was one thing. Recognition of the broad economic benefits of Indonesia's economic boom for the following thirty years and the benefits for its people is something else. The failure of the latter is a good example of the 'white left', leftism from a narrow Western viewpoint.

Indonesia was not running a trade deficit in 1997. It had a small surplus, so as far as international trade, it was not being particularly irresponsible. It had a corrupt economy, but then so did many other countries, including the U.S. in the run-up to the GFC, and the Fed did not impose 15% interest rates that the IMF imposed on Indonesia. Rather, the Fed lowered interest rates in 2009. The severity of the crisis permanently severed important economic momentum in the country and ensured that it would never again see the growth that it was in the decades prior.

These are not short-term impacts, but permanent impacts.

The contagion particularly was bad. Besides spreading the crisis to more countries, it required developing countries to depreciate their currencies and plough dollars earned from large trade surpluses back into the already developed U.S. economy, as opposed to investing in their own economies, where it was more needed. This has multiple negative effects. One, it massively increased the U.S. trade deficit starting in the late 1990's. This contributed to huge job loss in the U.S. starting with the early 2000s recession. Second, it deprived developing countries of needed domestic investment, keeping the poor (on net) poorer. Third, it artificially lowered American interest rates and sparked a borrowing boom that was mostly concentrated in the housing sector. Combined with financial deregulation, capital's "chase for yield" in the Western world built up the imbalances that caused the GFC.

Other than these three negative impacts, in 1998, China used capital controls to successfully defend the Hong Kong dollar from speculators. This was a seminal event as China was suddenly thrust into the role of the stable and responsible regional actor. An Indonesian acquaintance years ago told me that when he was young, Indonesians looked down on China as poor, but by the time he grew up, China was doing better than Indonesia. Investment and growth fled Japan, Taiwan, and ASEAN and went into China. This puffed up the CCP and contributed to the bad situation we are in now with China. If the investment boom in China had instead been directed towards ASEAN in the 1990s, then China could still be a regional laggard and would be less of a threat today.

The fifth underappreciated negative impact is that the crisis spread to Russia in 1998 via lower oil prices. The Russian economy had seen its first year of growth in 1997 after Boris Yeltsin's re-election and was on the path to recovery, but the collapse of oil prices to as low as $8 a barrel undermined it. In 1999 Russia went through multiple Prime Ministers before Yeltsin finally appointed Vladimir Putin, who promptly did the Moscow apartment bombings. The crisis destroyed the final opportunity, in retrospect, to rescue democratic, post-Cold War Russia.

It is naive and not true that the I.M.F. did not act on Washington's bidding throughout the crisis. Clinton and his officials led the Western response and the West provides the bulk of the I.M.F. budget.

So in short, this is probably the most consequential but overlooked of Clinton's blunders which had effects lasting to today and into the indefinite future.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

I disagree with those on the left who are heavily influenced by the popular book the Jakarta Method and then use that to extrapolate that George Soros did nothing wrong in 1997. They are entirely two different questions. Hatred of what Suharto did to get into power in 1966 was one thing. Recognition of the broad economic benefits of Indonesia's economic boom for the following thirty years and the benefits for its people is something else. The failure of the latter is a good example of the 'white left', leftism from a narrow Western viewpoint.

The Indonesian economy was beginning to fall under the weight of the increasing corruption from around 1990 on. It was that to which George Soros legally and ethically bet against the Indonesian currency.

There was really no way to know the long term consequences of the Asian financial crisis before the fact and what would have happened if the Asian financial crisis had not occurred and Suharto and his cronies remained in power in Indonesia is an unknowable counter-factual.

[Beet]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

I disagree with those on the left who are heavily influenced by the popular book the Jakarta Method and then use that to extrapolate that George Soros did nothing wrong in 1997. They are entirely two different questions. Hatred of what Suharto did to get into power in 1966 was one thing. Recognition of the broad economic benefits of Indonesia's economic boom for the following thirty years and the benefits for its people is something else. The failure of the latter is a good example of the 'white left', leftism from a narrow Western viewpoint.

The Indonesian economy was beginning to fall under the weight of the increasing corruption from around 1990 on. It was that to which George Soros legally and ethically bet against the Indonesian currency.

There was really no way to know the long term consequences of the Asian financial crisis before the fact and what would have happened if the Asian financial crisis had not occurred and Suharto and his cronies remained in power in Indonesia is an unknowable counter-factual.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the Indonesian economy and whether a billionaire destroying a regional economy of several hundred million people for profit is ethical.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

I disagree with those on the left who are heavily influenced by the popular book the Jakarta Method and then use that to extrapolate that George Soros did nothing wrong in 1997. They are entirely two different questions. Hatred of what Suharto did to get into power in 1966 was one thing. Recognition of the broad economic benefits of Indonesia's economic boom for the following thirty years and the benefits for its people is something else. The failure of the latter is a good example of the 'white left', leftism from a narrow Western viewpoint.

The Indonesian economy was beginning to fall under the weight of the increasing corruption from around 1990 on. It was that to which George Soros legally and ethically bet against the Indonesian currency.

There was really no way to know the long term consequences of the Asian financial crisis before the fact and what would have happened if the Asian financial crisis had not occurred and Suharto and his cronies remained in power in Indonesia is an unknowable counter-factual.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the Indonesian economy and whether a billionaire destroying a regional economy of several hundred million people for profit is ethical.

I think the people to blame for destroying a reginal economy are the dictators and their corruption, and not the person who speculated against them for profit.

Or, in the more recent case of the U.K, the Prime Minister and her failed economic theories.

I can understand the discomfort at the power of bond markets and financial speculators because they aren't elected and because they can have their own agendas, but it's also the case that they tend to not be ideologically motivated and they provide an important function in holding government economic policies at least somewhat in line in limiting corruption and in limiting racking up too large debts (the U.S as the world currency reserve/petrodollar is obviously an exception.)

[Beet]

He legacy looked better at the time than it does now. His terrible, callous job handling the Asian financial crisis is probably the most overlooked disaster that happened under his watch.

If you're referring to the IMF handling of the Asian financial crisis, I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not entirely up to the U.S President to determine how the IMF handles these things, and the IMF's 'once size fits all' austerity approach was its standard policy at that time. Certainly people like Joseph Stiglitz criticized this and noted the contradiction of President's Clinton preferred policies for dealing with the American 'financial crisis' versus the IMF/President Clinton in dealing with the Asian financial crisis.

If you're referring to the financial crisis happening at all though, I completely disagree. While the 'contagion' was unfortunate, it was short lived and the financial crisis was based upon how open financial markets/foreign exchange trading are supposed to work. Suharto in Indonesia was a vicious and corrupt dictator who was bleeding his nation dry, and currency speculators like George Soros noticed this and bet against the Indonesian currency.

I certainly wouldn't argue that financial speculators are guided by morality, but they can see a badly run corrupt economy and they are the only people in a position to easily cause the overthrow of a dictator from office, even if that isn't their intent. I further note, for instance, that when U.K Prime Minister Liz Truss was quickly dumped for trying to implement banana economy ideas when currency speculators crashed the Pound, that the consensus was that the speculators were acting rationally.

Part of the problem, and I'm not saying this is your problem, is that those on the further left tend to be very simplistic in their thinking:
1.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers propping up 'third world' dictators: bad
2.(Imperialist American) wealthy financiers not/no longer propping up 'third world dictators: also bad.

I disagree with those on the left who are heavily influenced by the popular book the Jakarta Method and then use that to extrapolate that George Soros did nothing wrong in 1997. They are entirely two different questions. Hatred of what Suharto did to get into power in 1966 was one thing. Recognition of the broad economic benefits of Indonesia's economic boom for the following thirty years and the benefits for its people is something else. The failure of the latter is a good example of the 'white left', leftism from a narrow Western viewpoint.

The Indonesian economy was beginning to fall under the weight of the increasing corruption from around 1990 on. It was that to which George Soros legally and ethically bet against the Indonesian currency.

There was really no way to know the long term consequences of the Asian financial crisis before the fact and what would have happened if the Asian financial crisis had not occurred and Suharto and his cronies remained in power in Indonesia is an unknowable counter-factual.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the Indonesian economy and whether a billionaire destroying a regional economy of several hundred million people for profit is ethical.

I think the people to blame for destroying a reginal economy are the dictators and their corruption, and not the person who speculated against them for profit.

Or, in the more recent case of the U.K, the Prime Minister and her failed economic theories.

I can understand the discomfort at the power of bond markets and financial speculators because they aren't elected and because they can have their own agendas, but it's also the case that they tend to not be ideologically motivated and they provide an important function in holding government economic policies at least somewhat in line in limiting corruption and in limiting racking up too large debts (the U.S as the world currency reserve/petrodollar is obviously an exception.)

I think you can dislike dictators and also recognize that financial speculators doing things that hurt millions of people for their own personal gain can be unethnical even if they aren't ideologically motivated. A lot of unethical things are done for money or pure profit. A bank robber is not ideologically motivated. Is bank robbery ethical then? Greed is the source of many unethical actions.

Further, plenty of corrupt governments coexist with financial speculators and speculators drive corruption and build up bubbles whenever it suits them. You really have to look at the specific case, and in a case where a speculator's actions result in the loss of fruits of legitimate labor, physical destruction (via economic-induced rioting), and worse long-term outcomes for the country and the world, then it is clearly harmful and thus unethical.

[President Johnson]

So far, he's doing better than Obama, lmao.