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I feel that I must respectfully take your post to task for some minor exagerations, to say the least.
It is entirely true that if the country had by and large adhered to the economic policies of the Clinton administration, then the country was projected to be on track to have (more or less) eliminated the national debt within a relative handful of years - although even the most rosy of predictions placed the date for this at 2010, not 2008. This resulted in no small part from Bill Clinton's gutsy and statesmanly actions in forcing a Revenue Act through Congress in 1993 that tore a sizable chunk out of the deficit by raising additional revenue through increased taxes on the highest income brackets, and by in subsequent years blocking most of the reactionary (and budget-busting) initiatives pushed by the Republicans after they took control of Congress. This was beyond any doubt a considerable achievement. It is however very possible to over-sell it, and to misinterpret the ways in which it came about. It is not true, as you suggest, that the Act in any way "reversed" the Reagan/Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that were responsible for causing the budgetary mess that Clinton inherited from them. When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, the taxpayers in the highest income brackets were paying anywhere from 70% to 77% in their taxes. A series of moronic and reactionary tax cuts later, they were by the time that Bush I reached the presidency paying only about 28%. Bill Clinton "reversed" that development only in the sense that under his presidency the trend began to run in the opposite direction, with the top brackets paying around 38% - 39% in taxes after the Revenue legislation from his first two years was enacted. This amount was lowered slightly in 1997 as part of the compromise that Clinton reached with Republicans to finalize a balanced budget in that year, but the wealthy were still paying more under him than they had after under Reagan/Bush, but still considerably less than in the pre-Reagan years. After Bush II's tax cutting legislation in 2001 and 2003, this achievement of Clinton's was effectively reversed, the ugly deficits and debt that we are confronted with today are the result of that.
It is also incorrect to assert that Clinton achieved the passage of the 1993 Revenue Act by use of the Bully Pulpit. Certainly he did try to use it for that purpose, but he failed miserably at it. Despite a number of key policy successes Clinton was for the most part a woefully ineffective President during his first two years in office, and this was felt nowhere so much as in his ability to communicate with the public, which at this point was nothing short of abysmal. At the time that the Revenue Act passed his public approval ratings were reaching their nadir: down in the low 30s. Regardless of the merits of the RA as economic policy, it was very bad politics, which confused or angered much of the public, who percieved it at the time as a poor substitute for the middle class tax cut that Clinton had promised to enact during the 1992 campaign, and that confusion and anger contributed to the humiliation that was visited upon the Democratic Party in the 1994 midterm elections. Clinton achieved passage of his deficit reduction plan through Congress not through the Bully Pulpit, but by pressuring and persuading Democratic legislators to stand with him. He did a credible enough job at this, insofar as the plan did in fact pass through the Reconciliation Process, but only after a painful session of watering down in which every part of the bill that did not relate to deficit reduction was torn out, and much of what remained was scaled down. That Clinton was even this effective in working for the passage of his bill was the exception rather than the rule of his first two years in the Presidency, during which he bungled the handling of a number of legislative initiatives, prompting comparisons with Jimmy Carter. That Clinton ultimately did not share Carter's electoral fate can be attributed to the fact that he, to his credit, faced up to the mistakes that he had made, and in the third year of his administration pulled off an astonishing reinvention of his presidency and of his own style as President, rapidly maturing to become one of the most effective Chief Executives that this country has ever had.
To paraphrase you, in remembering the Clinton presidency we should honestly look at the ways in which he was effective, and the ways in which he was ineffective, and the reasons behind each. Unlike a number of liberals, I myself admire Bill Clinton - both as a President and as a man, despite his appalling personal weaknesses and screw-ups. I don't believe that he betrayed the left by embracing a number of policy positions that both at the tame and today we find abhorent - rather I see him as a President who governed in a time when Reagan-inspired conservatism was running rampant in this country's politics, and who recognized that both he and his party would have to adjust to the mood of the country if they were to remain in power. By remaining in power for as long as he did, he was able to blunt the worst excesses of the conservative movement, making the negative policy consequences of those years far less than they might have been otherwise, and along the way was also able to bring about some more positive policies from which the nation benefitted. He was a great president in my view because he was uniquely suited to the times in which he reigned.
As for your points about President Obama, they too are incorrect. There is no need at all for us to "pressure" him to take these positions - he already embraces them, and has for years now, even before he became President. That he has not been able to bring about all the policy process that we desire is attributable not to any particular failings on his part, but rather to the simple political realities with which he has had to deal: Congressional majorities in his first two years that were no bigger (and arguably even more conservative) than those Clinton had in his first two years and an opposition from the Republicans that was even more fanatical and absolute. There was always going to be a limit to how much he could squeeze out of Congress, and accordingly he had to prioritize. Returning tax rates for the wealthy to the level they were at in the Clinton years was just one of multiple legislative initiatives that Obama pushed for on multiple occaisons but which were rejected by Congress - along with comprehensive Immigration Reform, major environmental policy legislation, and shutting down Guantanomo Bay. On not one but several seperate occaisons, Obama all but pleaded Congress to pass legislation that would make the current tax rates for the middle class permanent, which would have allowed him to let the Bush tax cuts expire and thereby automatically return rates to the Clinton years. Congress however, failed to act, as they did on each of the other noted issues, and many others besides. Pressure and blame would be far better at Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid than Barack Obama, although even they can only be credited with a limited level of influence over their caucuses.
It is worth noting that even if tax rates had been returned to their Clinton-era level, that would by itself not have been enough to bring us back into "primary balance" by next year, as you claim it would, although it would have helped. The Bush tax cuts are responsible for a large part of our current deficit, but by no means all of it - the huge swathe of revenue wiped out by the economic crisis, coupled with the increased strains it placed upon government budgets at the federal, state, and local levels is just as responsible. Costly wars in the middle east, bailout and stimulus programs, programs like Bush's Medicare Part D that were never paid for, the mounting costs of various social programs, and a host of other factors have all contributed to ensuring that it would take far, far more than simply returning tax rates to the levels that Bill Clinton achieved in order to balance our budget.
As it was, President Obama proved to be a far more effective Chief Executive in his first two years in office than any other President in recent years, certainly outstripping Clinton considerably, and managed to compile a record as a Presidential lawmaker that is considerably lower than that of FDR, but still manages to sit somewhere between Lyndon Johnson and Woodrow Wilson, and that is no mean feat, requiring balls and brains of a genuinely historic nature. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, he took an ineffective bank-bailout program left by his predecesor and turned it not only into a success, but a profitable investment; backed it up with a set of laws bringing about the most powerful economic regulations since the New Deal, from the CARD Act to Wall Street Reform; orchestrated a series of pieces of stimulus legislation that altogether adds up to about one and a half trillion dollars in stimulus spending, which included massive investments in infrastructure, education, shoring up social programs, clean energy, and medical research, bailing out state and local governments that were on the verge of bankruptcy, and the largest program of tax cuts and incentives for the middle class and small businesses in American history (going some way towards correcting a major injustice dating back to the Reagan years, whereby Republicans have sought to balance out their tax cuts for the wealthy by shifting the burden onto the middle class); succeeded in passing a healthcare reform bill that will bring this country closer to universal coverage than it has ever been before, and manages to institute positive reforms (Patients Bill of Rights) and cut billions of dollars off the deficit at the same time; repealed DADT; and overhauled and bulked up the regulatory powers of a number of key federal agencies (eg. the Food and Drug Administration). And that's just the biggest accomplishments (for sake of space, numerous others have to go unmentioned)of his domestic presidency in those years - in his foreign policy he's managed to eliminate the bulk of America's military presence in Iraq, with the same scheduled to happen in Afghanistan over the next couple of years; succeeded in getting the New START treaty ratified; has thus far managed to navigate America's foreign policy interests through the ongoing social upheaval in the Middle East with no small success (though it remains to be seen whether the intervention in Libya will prove to be a "success" story); hit the proverbial "reset button" on relations between America and much of the world, to the point where we can enjoy a modicum of the international respect we commanded in the pre-Bush years; and has achieved a number of trade agreements that gratifyingly lacked most of the problems that dogged such agreements in the Bush (and Clinton) years.
It is on the whole a formidable record, and I would contend that far from being in any way, shape, or form a "disappointment", we were extremely lucky that President Obama managed to get even this much done - it would have been much easier for him to achieve far less than even a little more. Yes, he made mistakes - his PR strategy could have done with some considerable reworking, for one - but he made far fewer mistakes than others (eg. Clinton) have made in the past, and fewer than almost anyone else that I know of might have done if they had exchanged positions with him. The loss of the House to the Republicans has ensured that the next year and a half are highly unlikely to be productive, but IMO prospects remain hopeful that the President and the Democrats in Congress will be able to hold the line to the point that only minimal damage is inflicted upon the country by the GOP, and the bulk of the gains made by the 111th Congress will remain intact. Everything hangs on the 2012 election results - if Obama is reeelected and we can hang onto the Senate + win back the House (a real possibility) then progress might again be resumed. Still, in evaluating Barack Obama's performance as President thus far, my judgement would be that he has proved to be more effective as Chief Executive than any man occupying the office since Richard Nixon - and I have no doubt at all as to who most people would prefer to have as President if offered a choice between Obama and Nixon.
This post is somewhat off-topic, to say the least, but hopefully it will contribute somewhat to the discussion.
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