Who was worse - The Clinton or Bush Administration - and why?

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@DR - Bush's inauguration was in Jan 2001.

There are a few other comparisons here. I'd like to say that Bush will be the Republican version of Carter (in the sense that even his own party will eventually admit he was a poor president), except that I think that would be insulting to the Carter administration.

The problem with Bush is that he gambled and lost with the Iraq war. Many people had severe reservations about Reagan spending so much in the 1980s. However, the payoff in the end was the fall of the USSR. If you're going to spend beaucoup bucks on something, you better get beaucoup results - which Reagan did. Sometimes you just have to give the devil his due. However, despite McCain's current protestations that "we have succeeded" in Iraq, I do not see how the situation there is significantly different that what it was a few months ago, when McCain said "we will succeed". I cannot see how the results of this war will ever justify the price we have paid for it.

The final legacy of a president is usually not written until years after he has left office. While I do not think history will be kind to George W. Bush, only time will tell. However, I have lived pretty much my entire adult life under the last two administrations (Clinton and Bush). I was a freshman in college when Clinton was first elected in 1992. Regardless of what place in history Bush eventually takes, I can't see how I can ever view Clinton as worse than he was.

 

Yeah yeah, you and your little details.

 

remember all of Enrons dealings & wrong doings were in the late '90s. It busted oopen after bush was in office but the crimes were taking place when that other guy was in office.

 

Enron's shennanigans certainly started during the Clinton administration, and continued into the Bush administration. Don't see how that changes anything I said in the slightest, and it doesn't in any way improve my view of Bush. Remember, I'm not suggesting that Clinton was perfect. The topic is who was worse, and IMO it is Bush. In order to get me to change my mind, you have to point out things that raise my opinion of Bush, and coming up with tangental topics that started under Clinton and continued under Bush is not a particularly convincing line of argumentation.

 

actually taluntain named the thread, i was responding to death rabbit on another thread and got moved over here. I would never try to change your mind as i don't think it is possible. In your opinion bush will always be worse & in mine clinton will always be worse.

Oh & death rabbit, if your best friend ran up & told you that government agents had just murdered your son by shooting him in the back, would you just meekly walk up to said individuals?

 

I really desperately wanted to avoid this thread, but I decided to take a shot at it by responding to the Super Ultra Mega rant.

After reading your rant, I am even more convinced that Bush is getting a raw deal as I do not believe he is responsible for a single thing you are blaming him for. Here goes

1. New Orleans- Bush did not cause a hurricaine to destroy the city. Now I am willing to agree that FEMA may not have been led by the correct people and may have even done a horrible job after the fact. This still doesn't change the facts that the "Epic" failure wasn't at the federal level. The true failure was at the city and state level. However, Kanye West and his "George Bush hates black people" rant and the media somehow have convinced everyone that the federal government and therefore the President kept the hurricaine a secret and left all the people who stayed behind to die. This has driven me crazy for years. When Boston gets hits by a blizzard or Texas suffers through a massive heat wave, everyone knows that it is the local and state governments who handle the crisis. The feds may offer money and assistance, but it is up to the locals. Somehow this keeps getting forgotten in the rush to blame Bush and the evil Republicans.

2. War spending- War spending may directly impact you by increasing the deficit. However, it is also assisting you as any economist can tell you that government spending helps the economy. I would be very surprised if this is currently impacting your day to day life.

3. Gas prices- Another fallacy. Because Bush and Cheney have been involved in oil somehow they control the international markets. Deregulation of the oil industry had and has nothing to do with the wholesale price of crude oil. This is determined by supply and demand. If anything Bush has tried to make the price go down by trying to increase the supply by lifting the restrictions on offshore oil drilling and drilling in ANWR. Of course the Democratic controlled Congress is opposed to increasing supply. Maybe they will change their mind after the election as that seems to be how they make all decisions.

4. Your 401k plan and Wachovia- Wachovia losing all that money, only effected you if you owned shares in Wachovia. If your 401k plan was invested in money markets or bonds you really haven't lost much money. If you were heavily weighted in equities you should know that the global markets have been hit pretty hard this year. Please note the word Global. It isn't like Bush and his cronies have researched your investments to find a way to sabotage them. I guarantee that they have lost a hell of a lot more in the equity market then you will ever earn in your lifetime.

5. Your son's 529 plan- Luckily he is young and you have plenty of time for the market to upswing. See #4.

6. Your house- Yeah that sucks. I know plenty of people in the same situation. However before you start blaming the President, please remember, you bought your house and chose the financing option yourself. Just because the future didn't turn out the way you wanted it isn't Bush's fault. Yes, banks were making bad loans and people are defaulting on them and causing all sorts of problems. However, one of the reasons (besides greed) that they were making bad loans was to meet the discrimination policies forced upon them. Would you care to hazard a guess as to which political party would be more likely to put such policies into place?

7. Your raise- Yeah that sucks also. Economies go up and they go down. We still have far lower unemployment then the rest of the world. This is a free country if you aren't happy with your raise you are free to contact a headhunter and get another one. By the way my raise was 4%, and I'm throwing it back as I want more and I may take my own advice and see what the market has out there.

While all of your gripes are legitimate do you really think that if Kerry or Gore had been in office the things that bothered you wouldn't have happened? The writing on the wall in the housing and mortgage market has been there for years. I'm assuming you have heard the phrase "housing bubble" long before 2008.

As to a concrete thing that Bush has done in which he receives 100% of the credit and or blame is Iraq and Afghanistan. I know many people feel the war was a mistake. I'm nowhere near ready to make such a declaration. I am still hopeful that both nations will become functional peaceful democracies. If this happens how could this possible be a bad thing. The word "traitor" is really appropriate in my mind for the people who would rather not see such a future all for the benefit of discrediting Bush and furthering their own political agendas

EDIT: Thank you for the positive reps. If you don't mind PMing me, I would like to thank you personally.

[Warning pending. -Tal]

Second Edit: I would also like to thank the person leaving negative rep that was real courageous of you.

 

THe point isn't who started the thread (not that I claimed that you did). You still haven't offered examples of how things are better under Bush. I have provided examples of how I was better off financially under Clinton.

Now onton Snook:

First of all, I said I would have an obvious gripe IF I lived in New Orleans, and that I didn't. So this was not on my list of things that was troubling me. It was done comparitively to show that I was not *****ing about some of the more common things. However, I never said Bush was responsible for the hurricane, only that his response in the aftermath was deplorable. Yes, planning must be done at the local level, but when disaster strikes and the president declares a federal state of emergency in New Orleans, you'd expect... I don't know... some federal aid? Thousands fled NO ahead of the hurricane, and the locals were sandbagging like crazy. After the city flooded they needed supplies. How the heck were the locals supposed to do that?

Are you kidding? Government spending assists the economy when it is spent here in the states! The only Americans making money off all the money being spent in Iraq are the major contractors like Haliburton and Blackwater USA. I suppose whoever makes bullets for the assault rifles our troops use are also doing OK. But to suggest that the average American is benefitting from the money we're spending is absurd. By increasing the national debt, you lower the value of the dollar, which means you can buy less with a dollar on the national markets, which makes the price of imports (like oil) go up, which decreases my disposable income, which impacts my life. So be surprised.

This is almost too absurd to respond to. Let's assume that we can make as many offshore drilling platforms, pumps in ANWR, pipelines and oil refineries as we want magically appear, and that it won't take 8-10 years to get this stuff up and running. Even if we were doing all that we could, this would only supply us with 3% more oil than we currently have, and we'd still be importing about 2/3 of the oil we need. This increased supply, however modest, would send a ripple through the global oil market. Based on the increase supply, economists calculate that if we were pumping everywhere and anywhere, as much as we could, we could decrease the price of a barrel of oil by a couple of dollars. That would save the average American about a nickle per gallon.

*As an aside, most economists will tell you that speculation, and not traditional supply and demand economics are the driving factor in today's high prices. India and China are buying more oil than ever before, but the US is still far and away the biggest oil consumer in the world.

Where did I say that Bush was making a concerted effort to cost me money? If you want to make a counterarguement, please start with my arguement instead of building a strawman (by the way this is now the THIRD time you have misrepresented my arguement in this thread). The economy is in the tank, and I cannot help but think that half a trillion dollars that we spent in the last 5 years in Iraq (in which we have seen precious little return on our investment) has had something to do with it. We spend billions on a war that is draining our national coffers and you can honestly say this hasn't negatively impacted the economy? You actually have the hubris to suggest I'm being shortsighted and spending all this money may actually HELP me?

Ditto.

Introducing... Arguement Misrepresentation #4! Nowhere did I say that Bush forced me into financing the house in this way, and nowhere did I say that it's Bush's fault that the future didn't turn out the way I planned. Geez Snook, how much straw do you have?

The policies you reference were in place years before Bush took office. The housing boom that took place in 2002 and 2003 was due mostly to the fed's near-constant cutting of federal interest rates that allowed people to borrow more than they ever were allowed to borrow before. (This was done to stave off what appeared to be a possible recession following 9/11. Whether the recession fears were real or imagined, or if this interest cutting actually made it seem not all that bad, I cannot say. But I digress...)

However, remember that it wasn't that long ago that a typical 30-year mortgage carried with it an interest rate near 10%. Since most of what you are paying in the early years of a mortgage is interest, cutting interest rates in half, or in some cases reducing it by 2/3 has a huge impact on payments. People borrowed far more than they were ever allowed to borrow before (and yes it is their fault that they cannot make the payments after the interest rates reset). For my part, I'm not in danger of losing my house - I can make the payments with the higher interest. Yes, I heard of the housing bubble, and I expected that at some point house prices would drop. However, this has been the biggest drop in prices since well... since they've been keeping track of that statistic. There is no historical precedent that would have indicated it would have been this bad.

In the middle of a recession? Oh yes, brilliant plan there. Don't get me wrong, while I may not be happy with my raise, as the sole income provider for the family, a small raise is certainly better than no job.

Well, it took nearly your entire message, but you finally brought up a good point. This statement clearly was implicit in my comments - that things would have been better if someone other than Bush were president. I cannot know that things wouldn't have turned out the same with a different prez. However, there is the small matter of the Iraq War, which I truly believe would not have happened if Gore were president in 2003. The whole "half a trillion dollars with no ROI" still bugs me, and I cannot shake the feeling this doesn't have something to do with our current economic hardships.

I'm sorry if a lot of what I have written comes off as smug, sarcastic, patronizing, or whatever other adjective that you want to attach to it. I have yet to see anyone - you, martaug, or anyone else who picked Bush - put forth an arguement of "my life was better under Bush because of X". At least that would be informative. Martaug is right in that it probably isn't possible to change my mind - my real life experience will not change because of words. However, the only arguements put forth are things that show how Clinton did bad things (which he certainly did!), but do not show how Bush was better. It also seems that the current Bush apologists overlook the fact that Clinton presided over the most prosperous time in our nation's history, and we were actually running a small surplus by the end of his term (meaning instead of borrowing we were actually taking in more money than we were spending, and were paying down our national debt).

I hope that both places become peaceful democracies. Just like I hope I win a million dollars, the end to world hunger, and that we save all the whales. I don't think we had any idea the mindset of these people before we went in. A western-style democracy would not be a bad thing, but it ain't happenin' Snook. But when you imply that I'm a traitor that's going a bit far, and the restriction of language on these Boards prevent me from telling you what I really think about that.

 

A couple of things:

1: Things under Bush may be rough, but I think Snook has a general point in that Bush dealt with some different issues than Clinton did. So unless we have some sort of time machine that can go back and check alternate realities we really don't know if the downturn in the economy can be 100% laid at Bush's door or if those problems would have happened regardless of who was President.

2: I would like nothing better than to see Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and all countries achieve stability and peace. I just don't ever see it happening. I guess I'm a big honking pessimist.

 

Dude, calm down. I'm sorry if you thought I was misrepresenting your position. I read it as, here is a list of everything that I think sucks and they are Bush's fault. I read it that way as the thread was about Bush and Clinton. No offense was meant.

As to the traitor comment that was only because the FBI was asking me questions. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. Just kidding.

 

TGS - OK fair enough. I take you at your word and assume you meant no offense. I am sincere in my one question though - and this applies not just to you Snook, but anyone who voted Bush as better - if you think Bush is better, what event(s) have taken place in the last eight years that can be directly or indirectly tied to Bush that have improved your opinion of him?

 

I knew I shouldn't have responded to this thread, but I am extremely disappointed in some members of this community. How someone could have read my post and thought I was calling Aldeth a "traitor" is beyond me. Then to give negative reputation is probably the most insulting thing I have ever seen. I hope you got pleasure giving me your -5 and -13.

 

Ok, lets make a list as that seems to be the thing to do on this thread. The Patriot act, oh bad!! undermines our rights, hmm, the same rights that clinton was already undermining WITHOUT a law giving him those powers on the books. Here are the specifics:
1)warrantless searches - The warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment, specifying the conditions that must be met before officials may search a person's home or seize papers and effects, provides: "no [search] Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized." The warrant clause protects the citizenry from arbitrary searches by requiring law enforcement personnel to obtain judicial authorization before they demand entrance to any person's home.
The Clinton administration repeatedly attempted to play down the significance of the warrant clause.
2)Warrantless "national security" searches - The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.
Attorney General Reno has already signed off on the warrantless search of an American home on the basis of the dubious "inherent authority" theory. The actual number of clandestine "national security" searches conducted since 1993 is known only to the White House and senior Justice Department officials.

3)Warrantless searches of public housing - In the spring of 1994 the Chicago Public Housing Authority responded to gang violence by conducting warrantless "sweeps" of entire apartment buildings. Although such searches were supported by the Clinton administration, Federal District Judge Wayne Anderson declared the Chicago sweeps unconstitutional.
The White House response was swift. President Clinton publicly ordered Attorney General Reno and HUD secretary Henry Cisneros to find a way to circumvent Judge Anderson's ruling. One month later the president announced a "constitutionally effective way" of searching public housing units. The Clinton administration would now ask tenants to sign lease provisions that would give government agents the power to search their homes without warrants.
The Clinton plan was roundly criticized by lawyers and columnists for giving short shrift to the constitutional rights of the tenants. A New York Times editorial observed that the president had "missed the point" of Judge Anderson's ruling. Harvard law professors Charles Ogletree and Abbe Smith rightly condemned the Clinton proposal as an open invitation to the police to "tear up" the homes of poor people.

4)Warrantless drug testing in schools - The Clinton administration has defended warrantless drug testing programs in the public schools. In March 1995 the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether public school officials could drug test student athletes without a warrant or any articulable suspicion of illegal drug use. The Department of Justice sided with the school authorities, arguing that the privacy rights of individual students were outweighed by the interest of the school in deterring drug use by the student body generally.

Solicitor General Days, arguing for the government, claimed that the school district "could not effectively educate its students unless it undertook suspicionless drug testing as part of a broader drug-prevention program." Days maintained that the Fourth Amendment's requirement of individualized suspicion would "jeopardize" the school's drug program. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter expressed skepticism about that claim and pointed out that if the Supreme Court followed the Justice Department's reasoning, America's public school students might well end up receiving less constitutional protection under the Fourth Amendment than do convicted criminals under correctional supervision.

5)Warrantless wiretapping - The Supreme Court has recognized that electronic surveillance, such as wiretapping and eavesdropping, impinges on the privacy rights of individuals and organizations and is therefore subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause. President Clinton, however, has asked Congress to pass legislation that would give the Federal Bureau of Investigation the power to use "roving wiretaps" without a court order. The president also fought for sweeping legislation that is forcing the telephone industry to make its network more easily accessible to law enforcement wiretaps. Those initiatives have led ACLU officials to describe the Clinton White House as "the most wiretap-friendly administration in history." it is precisely the sort of unchecked power that the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause was designed to curb. As the Supreme Court noted in Katz v. United States (1967), the judicial procedure of antecedent justification before a neutral magistrate is a "constitutional precondition," not only to the search of a home, but also to eavesdropping on private conversations within the home
President Clinton also lobbied for and signed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which is forcing every telephone company in America to retrofit its phone lines and networks so that they will be more accessible to police wiretaps. The cost of that makeover is expected to be several billion dollars. Any communications carrier that fails to meet the technology standards of the attorney general can be fined up to $10,000 per day. The passage of that law prompted Attorney General Reno to marvel at her newly acquired power: "I don't think J. Edgar Hoover would contemplate what we can do today."

6)The Separation of Powers - The Framers of the Constitution believed in an independent judiciary. To guard against that potential threat to the impartial administration of justice, the Framers created a court system in which federal judges would enjoy lifetime tenure as long as they remained honest and avoided malfeasance.
In the 1992 presidential campaign, Governor Clinton assured the legal community that he appreciated the importance of an independent judiciary in our constitutional framework: "As a lawyer, a former law professor and attorney general of [Arkansas], I have a deep commitment to our legal system and a reverence for the role that federal judges play in our system as interpreters of federal law and protectors of constitutional rights."

A few years later, President Clinton shocked the legal community when he brazenly pressured a federal judge to reverse an evidentiary ruling. In March 1996 Federal District Judge Harold Baer Jr. suppressed incriminating physical evidence and a videotaped confession in a New York City drug bust. On March 21, 1996, the White House let it be known that if Judge Baer did not reverse his suppression ruling, President Clinton would ask for his resignation. The chief judge and three senior judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a statement that said calls for the resignation and impeachment of Judge Baer had "done a grave disservice to the principle of an independent judiciary." The White House quickly retreated from its earlier announcement.

7)We all here the claims that bush didn't ask congress for permission to attack other countries & he is setting a dangerous "precedent". How can it be a precedent when the preceding president did it?
President Clinton claims the Constitution gives him the unilateral power to attack other countries whenever he deems that course of action appropriate. Missile attacks against Iraq, Air strikes in Bosnia, and threatened to invade Haiti. In each instance the president claimed that it was unnecessary to seek any constitutional authorization from Congress.
Haiti was not an isolated incident. The Clinton administration has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use military force without congressional authorization. In September 1996, for example, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Iraq. The president characterized that attack as a "retaliatory strike" because Iraqi forces were engaged in murderous activity in an "exclusion zone" that President Bush had created, on his own authority, in 1991.

President Clinton's rationale for his Iraqi missile attack is extremely distressing because it perfectly illustrates the dangerous propensities that the Founders apprehended at the Constitutional Convention. The Framers wanted the legislative branch to have the war power because of the ambitious tendencies of the executive branch.

Today, the United States military is obviously involved in an open-ended "police action" in the Middle East--and the fateful decision to engage in full-scale war rests with a single person in the American government: Bill Clinton.

There are many more examples available, however since they are posted on a conservative site they must be lies.
Personally, aldeth i am better off because unconstitionally laws banning whole categorys of firearms based solely on their looks are no longer on the books & i can get back to collecting as wide of an assortment of weapons as i wish.

8)I drink alcoholic beverages occasionally, as do a fair number of others here. Yet clinton tried to keep alcoholic info from us.

In November 1994, for example, the Coors Brewing Company asked the Supreme Court to recognize its First Amendment right to display truthful and verifiable information about alcohol content on its beer labels. Solicitor General Days urged the Court to uphold the constitutionality of federal labeling restrictions because "consumer preferences might change if . . . brewers were free to market malt beverages on the basis of their alcohol content." The Supreme Court unanimously rebuffed Days's argument. Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the Justice Department was carrying its paternalistic notions of consumer protection too far.

"Any [governmental] "interest" in restricting the flow of accurate information because of the perceived danger of that knowledge is anathema to the First Amendment; more speech and a better-informed citizenry are among the central goals of the Free Speech Clause."

In another case, Justice Clarence Thomas also rejected the government's asserted interest in keeping legal users of products and services "ignorant in order to manipulate their choices in the marketplace"

Thats all for know.

 

Interesting rhetorical strategy. "The war", is it?

 

Wow. This turned into a flame fest.

First of all, I think most of TGS's comments were on target (a bit poorly phrased, though). I also think Aldeth brought up very valid points -- even in a self-admitted rant. I though he conveyed his frustration very well (and a lot of people in the US have the same frustrations). A few things I've seen over the years....

1. The economy follows long term trends. If you look at the past performance of the stockmarket you see short term gains and losses -- but more importantly you see those long term trends. Every 20 or so years the market tanks. Real estate tanks on a cyclic basis as well. Many experts have predicted the economy to take a downturn (especially the real estate market -- followed quickly by stocks) for the past five to ten years. Most of these trends started during the Clinton administration (but weren't his fault either -- I can't believe I just said that). To blame Bush on the current woes of investments and real estate ignores the evidence.

2. Real estate woes are primarily the fault of the buyers and the financial institutions. Equal blame needs to shared there. I bought my house five years ago and, in spite of the terrible financial advice by the lending institution, I went with a higher rate fixed mortage loan (see #1 above -- I read Fortune, Money and the financial section of the newspaper). Lending institutions have been giving money to high risk purchasers for years -- a questionable practice. Adjusting loan rate on ARM's to allow people to buy beyond their means was flat out dishonest. Unfortunately, the Joe Average Taxpayer is now paying for those mistakes. I hope the US government makes those institutions repay the buyout with interest (as the government did with Chrysler).

3. War is very profitable on the homefront -- not on the battlefront. The vast majority of spending (US consulate notwithstanding) for the Iraqi and Afgan wars have been paid in US dollars to US companies for product made in the USA. Bullets, clothing, toiletries, food, etc. have been purchased from US companies and sent overseas. The influx of money into the US economy is substantial.

4. I've said it before -- the high prices of gasoline appear to me to be closer tied to the falling dollar than to anything else. Bush IS partly to blame for that. The falling dollar is the biggest item NOT being addressed by the candidates.

Feel free to flame me as well.

Oh yes, Bush is probably one of the worst Presidents in modern times. He will certainly go down in history as worse than Clinton (who really wasn't must better). However, he is a better President than either Gore or Kerry ever will be. Just had to add that dig.

 

On Al Gore, we agree. Al Gore is the singular worst president we've ever had. He was so ineffective that he couldn't even get sworn in after winning his election.

 

Well, nobody is perfect and the "Framers" certainly jacked that one up quite a bit. I'm with those Founders (read as Thomas Jefferson) who believed that the courts should still be held accountable to the People. In the defence of the "Framers," they never intended for the Supreme Court to have its current set of powers. The "high court" was actually quite weak in the early years after the framing of the Constitution. Nevertheless, it was politics (read as the Federalists), that brought the court to its current role. BIG mistake, IMO.

No, sorry there has been quite enough garbage on this thread already. There's no need to "troll" for any more....

 

I personally never like to assign responsibility for the economy to politicians. They have some influence but it is in the large picture quite minor so whether the economy is good or bad there is very little to take credit for or get blamed for in my opinion.

As for oil, prices are going up all over the world. The Iraq war probably plays a part but again there are many many other factors so even here I would give Bush a free pass.

I know these are issues that affect people and that matters so I understand why you Americans focuses on htem now when comparing presidents but I can't help but miss the talk about torture, that your leaders manufactured and lied to sell you a war, that rampant corruption is running free, that unaccountable thugs are being unleashed on foreign countries. I don't know but from my perspective Clinton was a regular American politician, no worse and no better than what I know of your other presidents. Plenty of skeletons in the closet to go around. Bush and his crew seems to have taken the step from politician into the realm of cartoonish supervillains taking on charactarestics of a movie villain and once and for all eroded the always very hazy line between what is worse: The US or what the US is currently fighting.

 

In the short term war will certainly help to boost the economy, but increasing public spending to boost the economy, but will also show up most likely as a budget deficit, a raise in taxes or higher inflation. Someone will have to pay for that short term increase of public spending at some point.

Many if not even most economists tend to agree atleast to a degree, which is exactly why monetary policy is supposed to be free from political influence.