WP, pg1: Bill Clinton's Legacy; How Former President Is Viewed Could Affect Vote

[DeepModem Mom]

Bill Clinton's Legacy
How Former President Is Viewed Could Affect Vote
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 3, 2008; A01

....As Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama clash on multiple political fronts heading into Super Tuesday, William Jefferson Clinton's record as president has emerged as a key battleground. How Democrats define his legacy could determine which presidential candidate they choose: Hillary Clinton, to extend it, or Obama, to make a clean break from it.

Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama on the campaign trail -- and the generally negative reaction they provoked -- have helped focus attention on the former president and seem to have created misgivings about his possible return to Washington. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 55 percent of Americans view the former commander in chief favorably, unchanged from a year ago. But just 50 percent said they would be comfortable with him back in the White House, down from 60 percent in September.

The Clinton camp has presented the former president's eight-year tenure as a modern-day era of good feelings when the United States stood tall in the world and took care of its people at home. Aides have played on nostalgia for a simpler time, before the World Trade Center fell, before U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, before the economy reeled toward recession, before President Bush.

At the same time, they have banked on the hope that most Americans, or at least most Democrats, have forgotten or forgiven what Bill Clinton's chief of staff Leon E. Panetta calls "the dark side" of his presidency, the scandals and partisan battles that consumed so much of the 1990s. And they have pushed back against those, including Obama, who question the legacy. But Panetta, who supports Hillary Clinton and says he believes her husband deserves credit for policy achievements, said confronting the full record of the Clinton years will be unavoidable. "Whether they like it or not, it is going to be part of the debate. Obviously, if Hillary gets the nomination . . . there's no question the Republicans are going to make that part of the debate."

Obama has approached the Clinton years somewhat gingerly, using euphemisms about not wanting to return to the battles of the 1990s and suggesting that Ronald Reagan was a more transformative figure than the 42nd president. That plays into the views of many liberals, who have long harbored ambivalent feelings toward Clinton for what they regard as his having squandered a unique historical moment by pandering to the right or indulging his personal appetites....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/02/AR2008020202521_pf.html

[dkf]

1. "No more drama, we want Obama."

True dat.

[enfield collector]

2. I have some republican work colleagues who are positively giddy

over the swiftboating that Hillary is going to get if our nominee. there's no doubt she has a lot of baggage with her, my wife won't vote for her because of her apparant lack of spine in dealing with the lewinski issue. she thinks any sane woman would have told him to pack his shit and get out.

[ursi]

3. exactly why I have been against another Clinton in the White House for more than a year

"That plays into the views of many liberals, who have long harbored ambivalent feelings toward Clinton for what they regard as his having squandered a unique historical moment by pandering to the right or indulging his personal appetites...."