“I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

[Emit]

From Greenspan's new book as quoted by Russert during last week's interview on Meet the Press. Did anyone else catch that?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20941413/page/4/

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on some interviews that you’ve given this week as you’ve been touring, talking about your book, “The Age of Turbulence.” You said this: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Republican?

MR. GREENSPAN: I’m sure he doesn’t like that joke, but if you look at his record compared to what I think appropriate policy ought to be, he’s for free trade, he’s for globalization, he was for welfare reform, fiscal restraint and—true enough, he’s not a Republican. I’m sorry, President Clinton, I didn’t mean to say that. But I must say, I had to follow an awful lot of your particular guidelines and found them very compatible with my own.

[Lasher]

1. Today's Republican party has been taken over by extremists.

Happened back under Saint Ronnie. And that's pretty much what Greenspan is saying. They are not actually conservatives. They are fiscal liberals.

[liberaldemocrat7]

2. Fiscal liberals with the wrong priorities ie corporatistes.

The Republicans really do not care about fiscal restraint. They use it as a big noise operation to win political points for elections and also to squeeze social programs between increase in defense spending and holding to an inadequate tax program.

Fiscal restraint only applies to Democrats in Republicans view, just like Republicans do with states rights and term limits. Republicans do not really believe in states rights or term limits but use them to derail Democrats from power to do well and when Republicans get in these Republicans want to bring us back to the confederacy of the 1860's. Yes the Republicans appear stuck in the Sixties, the 1860's and yes I have a bumper sticker reading that. Hehe.

[Lasher]

4. Yep.

Today's political animosity is the fault of the extremist Reagan Republicans, who continue to wage war against Democrats. A quick look back at Ike can provide some perspective concerning just how far our nation has been dragged to the right by these fascists.

http://blueworksbetter.com/EisenhowerFlamingLiberal

[lapfog_1]

3. It's a bit more than that.

They are strict free traders and slightly anti-union. They are pro globalization without much regard for disparities between standards of living.

Greenspan loved the economic policies of Bill Clinton.

[BootinUp]

8. I disagree.

If by they you mean the Clintons. Both Bill and Hillary cannot be called ideologues or even strict in economic policy. Their method is to adjust policy based on current conditions. Its like you are saying they would propose to do NAFTA exactly as before knowing where it needs to be changed, and knowing there is less support for it. You ignore the fact that many free trade policies of the late 80's or 90's where a direct result of how the country decided to go, there was a majority in favor of it, otherwise Perot would have been President. The final version of NAFTA included changes that Clinton sought to protect workers and help those that would need it from changes caused by increased trade.

P.S. I don't really expect to persuade you, I don't think you have an open mind on the issue.

[lapfog_1]

12. Well, it would help if you didn't make such statements like

"there was a majority in favor of it, otherwise Perot would have been President" in regards to NAFTA.

Perot wasn't going to be President for a whole lot of reasons. I was anti-NAFTA and was most decidedly NOT pro Perot. Not to mention that he wasn't a main party candidate.

Here is Ms. Clinton interviewed by Time (Feb 1, 2007):

CLINTON: But it was inherited. NAFTA was inherited by the Clinton Administration. I believe in the general principles it represented, but what we have learned is that we have to drive a tougher bargain. Our market is the market that everybody wants to be in. We should quit giving it away so willy-nilly. I believe we need tougher enforcement of the trade agreements we already have. You look at the trade enforcement record between the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration brought more trade enforcement actions in one year than the Bush Administration brought in six years.

For me, trade is who we are. We're traders. We want to be involved in the global economy, but not be played for suckers.

As we look at trade today, I don't think we can look at trade separate and apart from how we fix health care. I don't think we can look at it separate and apart from how we incentivize and pay for education, so we keep trying to improve the skills of our workforce. And I think that the budget deficit has mortgaged our future and the holders of the mortgages are governments like the government of China, so then it makes it even more difficult for us to get tough when it comes to trade. So we've kind of walked into this vicious cycle and we need to break it.

------------------------------------------------------

Again, it's the old canard of "gee, if we only could educate people, then we can have a work force with more skills and compete in the global market". The problem is NOT education or skills. It is simply the cost of living and salaries that must be paid to maintain that standard of living. If it was merely the cost of "stuff" (goods largely imported from China now), perhaps we could all stand to make $10/hour or less and then our workforce could compete on the global stage with 600 million Chinese and another 300 million Indians. Maybe. But you can't live even a lower middle class lifestyle on $10/hour. And those Chinese don't make $10/hour or even $1/hour. There are more people in China and India with IQs above 130 than there are PEOPLE in the US. And they are receiving good educations too. And they will work for $10/hour or (in India) $15 to $20 an hour. Smart people with very good educations. And a good standard of living at $30K to $40K a year in India or China... better than most people who make $120K a year here enjoy... highly educated people. So how do we fix this? Simply saying "we need a better educated workforce" is not an answer.

And it's also disingenuous for her to say that Bill "inherited" NAFTA. It didn't go into effect until 2 years into his first term... if he thought it needed fixing, he had time when he entered office.

And yes, I'm aware that NAFTA doesn't cover India and China... however it was indicative of the "free trade" mania that swept the power elites (Bush's ownership society... or as he calls them "his base") from the 1980s onward. And, yes, I think that the Clintons and many other "mainstream" Democrats are part of the "power elites" (some because of their belief that free trade is good for foreign relations - the Kissinger doctrine of "if they trade with us they won't start a war with us", others because they believe that the third world will be brought to the standards of the "first world" nations - and not vice versa - and that will help end poverty, and other simply because they like the donations to their campaign funds from large multi-national corporations).

In our "race to the bottom" (find the lowest paid people in the world so you can make the cheapest goods and thereby achieve the double goal of increased market share and increased profits) there really IS a bottom. I don't think even the power elites and global corporations have thought out what happens WHEN we really hit bottom. Eventually, the consumer class looking for bargains won't be able to buy even the cheapest stuff (they won't be able to afford it). Corporate profits (built on large volume) will evaporate, and then they will have to lay off all those workers in China and India (after they laid off all the Americans well before that). And then the "owners" will wonder what happened to those wonderful fat dividends and stock valuations. And don't count on the Chinese or Indians to become the "new" American consumers. At least not significantly enough to keep the plates spinning on the sticks.

[Sherman A1]

5. I have to agree.

The current Republican party is pretty much a bunch of free spending wackos in my opinion. They claim they want smaller government, but seems to be that they want to spend us into the ground and expand every program they can to watch us everywhere. The on thing they don't want to expand is anything that might just help the people.

[Swamp Rat]

6. oops!

Now we have a dictater.

[sofa king]

7. It's nice to know Greenspan reads DU.

Because he obviously stole my material.

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. I knew I saw that somewhere before.

[Emit]

16. lol! n/t

[Enrique]

9. if Clinton was a republican president

then it proves that republican presidents can be pretty good ones.

[mattclearing]

11. So you know he had to have been a Democrat, then. n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Taxes. You forgot about the taxes, Greenspan. What a putz.

[Captain Hilts]

14. He had to work with a Republican majority in Congress. nt

[Robbien]

17. And Bush is working with a GOP one. The Veto pen is super glued in his hand.

Clinton didn't know the meaning of veto.

[Joe Chi Minh]

24. Because he let people down after they'd voted him in again. In such

circumstances, people will vote against their own best interests, rather than condone the fact of their being deceived.

[populistdriven]

15. GreenSpan REFUSES to admit the GOP has had NO fiscal restraint since Nixon

Democrats have always had fiscal restraint, it is the Repukes who abandoned it

[leftchick]

18. just like his wife

a faux dem. :eyes:

[bvar22]

19. Hillary is the more conservative member of their marriage.

She has never strayed far from her "Goldwater Girl" roots.

[leftchick]

20. I can't argue with that

every picture tells a story. Her's is a bad one I do not care to repeat.

[blm]

21. Disagree - I think Bill had his own RW leanings. Who advised Tony Blair from 2001-2006?

Who protected Poppy Bush's secrecy and privilege throughout the 90s?


http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

[NotGivingUp]

22. I hate to agree with anything asshole greenspan says, but it's true...and Hillary would be the same.

I will not vote for her.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

23. bullshit. because when they do have ACTUAL republicans in the white house

they ruin the economy.

reagan and bush are good examples

[BlooInBloo]

25. Yup - and they can do it because Democrats won't fight for their own...

... due to ideological purity rules.

[provis99]

26. Ok, but how was Clinton any different than Raygun?

Methinks Clinton was actually worse, because people were on guard for any right wing voodoo economics that came from the Raygunomics crowd. Clinton was more like a stealth Republican; he could get Republican policies passed without alarming voters, because he was a member of the Democratic Party, and somehow, people thought that magically meant you wouldn't adopt Republican policies. Well Clinton not only did, he enacted policies like welfare reform that even Republicans were afraid to try.

When had the Republicans ever criticized Clinton's social or economic policies? The only thing I remember them criticizing is that he couldn't keep his pants on in the Oval Office, and that he bombed countries, Wag the Dog fashion, to distract from the Lewinsky affair.

Just because Bill Clinton was a Democrat doesn't mean he advocated any Democratic ideas.