The Real Clinton Legacy

[Freddie Stubbs]

Perhaps inevitably, most of the public discussion of President Bill Clinton's autobiography, My Life, has revolved around its treatment of the Lewinsky scandal, the impeachment crisis, and the "culture wars" of the 1990s. Some critics are clearly annoyed by the many pages Clinton devotes to his pre-presidential record in Arkansas, and others give short shrift to his meditations on the national Democratic Party's weaknesses that supplied the backdrop to his 1992 campaign. Those who don't actually read the book may not be aware of how clearly Clinton understood his role as a party reformer, and the role of the New Democrat movement as an international prototype for the renewal of the progressive political tradition at a crucial moment in history.

To help address the skewed perceptions of My Life and the Clinton legacy as a whole, the DLC and The Washington Monthly convened a discussion last week entitled "My Politics," aimed at exploring the political and policy implications of Clinton's career, and the future of Clintonism as a political tradition.

DLC president Bruce Reed kicked off the event by presenting our view that Clinton "was the great modernizer of the Democratic Party, who saved liberalism from itself." Washington Monthly editor Paul Glastris, who moderated the discussion, argued that My Life is a much better book than its critics allow, and that "its estimation will rise over time in the opinion of elites." Glastris, who as a reporter took a close look at Clinton's record as governor, said the sections of the book on Arkansas clearly illustrate three aspects of Clinton's overall career: "He knew how to advance himself politically; his policies were innovative, and they worked; and change creates a lot of enemies."

Los Angeles Times political reporter Ron Brownstein reinforced Reed's argument that Clinton's crucial accomplishment was to revive a Democratic Party that was in serious trouble at the close of the 1980s. "Clinton understood what was wrong with the Democratic Party better than anybody I have ever met," he said.

more: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252733

[IrateCitizen]

1. Reed, From and friends are fulfilling their own demise...

... by embracing the politics of stale ideas that propelled the rise of "New Democrats" in the 1980's and 1990's.

I am currently reading The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith. Although it was written in 1958, it actually provides many harbingers to the society we have become today.

On page 154, JKG says the following, which sums up the point I made above:
Few things are so immutable as the addiction of political groups to the ideas by which they have once won office.

This tenet can be aptly applied to the NDN/DLC now. Rather than look for new ideas, they have settled into the belief that the Clinton victories on 1992 and 1996 have affirmed all they proposed as being absolute truths. As such, they have begun to look solely to the past and not at all to the future, along with the tendency inherent in such courses to address imaginary problems because the real ones interfere with their static and backward ideology.

Such was also the problem with old-school liberalism, which concerned itself entirely with increasing production for the purposes of eliminating unemployment during the 1930's, but was unable to adjust this worldview following the post-WWII boom, which resulted in conservative elements being able to equally seize this focus on production for production's sake, and helped to eventually undermine liberalism due to its stale ideas and unchanging focus in the face of new realities. Focus on production for the purpose of eliminating unemployment became just focus on production, even if it meant simply increasing the output of the already-employed WITHOUT reducing unemployment. By today's standards, this is an all-too-familiar refrain.

JKG even proposed that adopting a new paradigm that focused first on satisfying the greater public needs would most likely, in the long run, serve to increase production itself. However, neither traditional liberalism nor the "New Democrat" movement were able to let go of their unflinching focus on production, which could only result in their ideas being co-opted, twisted, and proposed by conservatives -- along with an increasing notion that there is little difference between the parties themselves.

Clinton accomplished some good things while in office, and we'd be much better off today with him as opposed to the current squatter at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. However, his ultimate legacy resides in the inability or unwillingness to challenge these false realities inherent in conventional wisdom, the end result being the continued slide toward market fundamentalism and an inability on the part of American society as a whole to adequately address the real and growing problems we face -- inequality, militarism, rampant consumerism, willful ignorance, and so on.

[cprise]

2. Clinton carried the Democrats on his personality

But he and the DLC waged war on the poor along with the Republicans, and opened the fourth estate up to the incest, monopoly and abuse that landed us with a monolithic Right-wing government.