Reply With QuoteClinton was on the one hand one of the brainier presidents of the century, and on the other hand a fish-in-water born politician of the Lloyd George stamp. It's interesting to think of what he could have accomplished with a Westminster constitution.
Yeah. At the election time when he first won the presidency, I wasn't a fan of Clinton at all. I didn't think much of his presence and speech style; something about him seemed a bit sleazy and unconvincing, and Hilary seemed grasping and unpleasant. And then, you know, Arkansas: prejudice against the deep south kicking in, too.
But in retrospect Clinton seems infinitely better than Bush not just operationally in terms of his deeds as a president and in terms of the state of the nation during his presidency, but in his personal qualities as well. Clinton is so vastly superior to Bush in intellect, education, and even, considering interns and all, morally and ethically that they hardly seem to be members of the same species. I bet Clinton reads more books for pleasure in an average month than Bush has in his whole life.
Clinton was on the one hand one of the brainier presidents of the century, and on the other hand a fish-in-water born politician of the Lloyd George stamp. It's interesting to think of what he could have accomplished with a Westminster constitution.
Last debate seemed to be pretty mediocre to me, but some great lines:
romney (to santorum about earmarks): while i was fighting to save the olympics, you were fighting to save the bridge to nowhere!
Host: You have a new ad saying Santorum is a fake, why is this?
Ron Paul: Because he is a fake!
I can't say i agree with most of what he says, but you have to love Ron paul.
Apparently Obama is going to wage war on the catholic church the second he is reelected too.
Clinton is so vastly superior to Bush in intellect, education, and even, considering interns and all, morally and ethically
Clinton morally superior....:)
You may hate Bush, you may consider him an ignorant Daddy's boy who led his country into a war we didn't need, you may hate Cheney, but Clinton had the morals of a dog. Clinton while "loving" Hillary screwed everything he could for many, many years.
The guy with "superior morals" got 100,000 Iraqis and 5,000 US soldiers killed for just about nothing.
Originally Posted by Jason McCullough
But they have democracy. :)
Thank you for saying that. I'll take Clinton's morals any day of the week over Bush/Cheney's.
How short memories are...I remember when Clinton launched punitive bombing runs on Iraq just as the Lewinski scandal was reaching its peak, and far more Iraqis died under the post-Gulf War sanctions that he maintained than did in the Iraq War. I'm not defending Bush, but pretending that Clinton was better requires some serious rose coloured glasses.
Heh. That gif makes them look like they should be named Larry, Moe, and Curly.
Clinton screwed around. I'm not sure that means he has the morals of a dog in other aspects of his life. And we really don't know what went on between him and Hillary. For all we know he had her tacit approval. It wouldn't be the first marriage that functioned like that.
From what I saw of Bush, his agenda was to reward his cronies and the rich and let the rest feed on the table scraps. And he either knew the war in Iraq was predicated on a lie or he was damned ignorant.
And we remember how well Clinton did with Rwanda.
I don't recall that far more Iraqis died under the post Gulf War sanctions than in the Iraq War. Link?
Here you go.
...
Estimates of excess deaths during sanctions vary depending on the source. The estimates vary [31][38] due to differences in methodologies, and specific time-frames covered.[39] A short listing of estimates follows:
Unicef: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago."[31][40]
Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[41]
"probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20. October 2003[42]
350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[43]
Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less than] than half a million children." He claims that these estimates are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment".[44]
"Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[45] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[46]
Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[47] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[48]
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark: 1.5 million (includes sanctions, bombs and other weapons, depleted uranium poisoning).[49]
Iraqi Baathist government: 1.5 million.[29]
Iraqi Cultural Minister Hammadi: 1.7 million (includes sanctions, bombs and other weapons, depleted uranium poisoning)[50]
...
We're getting off topic. I'd still take Clinton over Cheney. Thanks for the link.
Can we not compare who's the morally superior president by bluntly using the death tolls of people in a third world country as our rhetorical yardstick? This is sick.
Bush lied, people died.
Amiright?
That war was all about oil. So where is it when we need it?
Do you guys think you're making some kind of point? 'Cause I don't get it.
Screwing interns and so on is a venial sin at worst (at best, it's a nonissue) compared to getting thousands of people killed based on a series of lies (WMDs, Al Qaeda in Iraq, etc. etc. etc.), compared to subverting the constitution (IMO), and compared to just being an all-around scumbag like Bush.
Clinton's problems involved his personal life. Benjamin Franklin for one, had a lot more women than Clinton did, but who cares? Bush's policies caused widespread devastation, great loss of life, totally blew Clinton's balanced budget, and encouraged economic calamities worldwide.
If Clinton had the morals of a dog, that's not that bad. I like dogs, even if they do follow their instincts when there are bitches around. Bush has the morals of a demon.
The sanctions are a good point, but if you're going to go for indirect deaths it's a long, long way down.
What bizarre logic. Clinton is to blame for Iraqi sanctions? The Bush family is doing pretty awesome in the Qt3 Republican caucus' arithmetic.
Bill Clinton has the vices of a proud, slippery master politician of his stamp - again, I'd make the comparison with Lloyd George. They're good men dedicating their lives to their vision of good in politics, but keep an eye on your wife and get your political promises signed in triplicate.
George Bush probably said his prayers with considerable sincerity, really wanted to inspire a wave of democracy and freedom in the Middle East, cared a lot about doing something about AIDS in Africa (leaving aside issues of the GOP and AIDS prevention...) I see how, especially an evangelical or Republican person might look at him and say "hey he was a good man." But if you're a poli sci major you have to look at things like... negligent immorality, like if you properly tally up not only the deaths from Iraq, but the costs of destroying the US economy, the cost of destroying the future of Afghanistan, in all probability, by going into Iraq, and so forth.
And that doesn't even get into Republican-style moral blind-spots like callously mocking Karla Faye Tucker; to liberals, "right wing evangelical style compassion" often seems like a very "letter and not spirit" morality where anybody outside the charmed circle of Christian love is basically written off as moral zeros.
That's kind of the point though. Neither was morally superior, both imposed policies that caused widespread suffering and death. Bush was arguably less intelligent about it, because his policies caused widespread suffering and death for Americans as well as Iraqis. Clinton's wars and foreign policy in general minimized the direct US role, which didn't do much for the people being bombed or starved but certainly reduced the impact at home.
If your yardstick for "morality" is the impact on American lives, Clinton did a better job, it's true. I just think that's rather hypocritical (and sadly typical for Democrats in particular, at least since LBJ).
Bush I, Clinton and Bush II all share blame for the tragedy of Iraq (along with Saddam Hussein, of course). Clinton was President for eight of those years though, so I'm not sure how we'd be excluding him from the mix.
Are you seriously imagining that GB Sr. or Bob Dole would have removed Iraqi sanctions or dropped the 101st Airborne into Kigali? Because it's what you're implying with that comparison. No one is contending that George W. Bush was responsible for every death on earth that any theoretical US action might have prevented.
It is, however, reasonable to judge him on the basis of a deeply foolish war (that probably lost another war America was already fighting), and perhaps slightly reasonable to try to weight that against the costs of Iraqi sanctions post-2003 to the present and future, although that gets more wildly hypothetical the further you take it, unless sanctions and Saddam were immortal.
Without gettting back into bodycount waving the war GWB "won" and the one he lost are so vast that it's really a losing argument. For all the good we all may fervently hope Iraqis realize in the future as a silver lining, there's the cost of that bungled war, and the utter ruination faced by probably whole generations of Afghans.
You're comparing a moderately successful president with a fairly average impact on the world and America with a catastrophic failure who, well-meaningly or not, did a great deal of harm in the world and to America. Even if we were inclined to agree with the "GWB prayed harder" judgement of personalities - which, PS, we aren't - it isn't like this one's a poser.
Last edited by Jason Townsend; 02-23-2012 at 12:45 PM.
Remember Congress voted for the war as well, so I guess they are all as immoral as Bush. Of course, I do happen to think most of them are immoral.
You're missing the point completely. I'm not saying that he was a worse President, I think he was actually a pretty good one overall. We're comparing morality here though, which is something else entirely. I don't believe that any of the Republicans you mention was morally superior, I just don't believe Clinton was either. Being a decent President has absolutely nothing to do with how good of a human being you are or the morality of your policies.
This is such a stupid conversation.
Bush's presidency was shaped by 9-11, and by having a man like Cheney as your VP and advisor. Cheney and Rumsfield led the rush to Iraq.
Since the great recent banning by Lord Tom this board has become almost friendly. This discussion would have had nukes dropped by now before the banning.
I am not blaming anyone for that behavior and I didn't keep score of that kind of thing, this is just something I have observed over the last several days.
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