[link|http://www.ourfuture.org/readarticle.asp?ID=625|It's all about him]

Excerpt:

n his last State of the Union address, on Thursday night, President Bill Clinton will celebrate the nation's prosperity and outline an ambitious agenda for his last year--but his eye will be on history. Even in the springtime of his presidency, Clinton was absorbed by his potential rank in history. He reportedly complained to his political guru, Dick Morris, that history had dealt him a bad hand. Without a great war or depression to fight, he couldn't rank with the greatest presidents. But he had high hopes to make the second tier, beside Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

The conventional wisdom on Clinton's legacy is already congealing. He'll be credited for presiding over the longest economic expansion in the county's history--and stained with the follies that led to his impeachment. But historians are likely to focus on questions that get little attention today. The president may end up being treated far more harshly because of how he played the hand that history dealt him. He was elected at a momentous moment of great national challenge and opportunity that the nation, beguiled by prosperity and bemused by partisan posturing, has largely squandered.


I say:

The irony here shouldn't need pointing out, but I'll err on the side of caution. (Obviously the author of the cited article manmanges to miss it somehow.) His fans are giving him credit for the economy, but he's saying he wished the economy had been worse, and implies that it wasn't up to him. It was up to history.

So we should all give history the credit for that great economy, and not Clinton? It's pretty clear from his words that he never had our best interests at heart. If he'd had his way, we'd have had a world war and economic disaster on *his* watch. It finally happened, but too late for his purposes.

Maybe if it hadn't been for that impeachment nonsense, he could have brought it about sooner. Looks like the Repo men messed up his timing.