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Democratic Party.
This bit of fluff-turned-fact is offered up primarily from the right where you'll hear
a steady drumbeat of punditry hammering home how the Clinton legacy of
"corruption and dishonor" permanently smeared a once-great party.
To some, Bill Clinton is the most reviled president of modern times. Even many
opponents of George W. Bush, among whom I count myself, have trouble
matching the virulence with which Mr. Clinton was hated by the Republican
Party. To this day, the right continues to propagate the story that Clinton forever
tarnished his party and that his successors inherited only a flawed bequest of
electoral disaster.
Unfortunately, even some on the left have picked up the idea, altering it to say
Clinton wasn't liberal enough, that his moderation drove a GOP agenda into
power.
So is either side right? Let's look at the facts about Clinton's alleged ruination of
the Democratic Party. Judge for yourself whether Clinton's brand of progressive
centrism was a workable formula or a terrible mistake.
see its before and after picture.
the Republicans paint him to be the GOP must have gotten some folks headed
the other way during those eight tumultuous years. In all my research I found
only one blue-to-red shift. Just one. West Virginia with its five electoral votes
went from Democratic to Republican. That's it. We got California, Illinois,
Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington, Maine
and Oregon. They got West Virginia. We got 147 electors and gave up 5. Not a
bad trade, eh?
Hmm ... it doesn't look like Bill Clinton's legacy to the party was all that bad to
me. So why are the Republicans so determined even now, years later, to tell the
Democrats about all the awful things he did to them? Why is it that President
Clinton is still smeared so mightily so often by so many?
The answer to that is obvious. What's less obvious is why Democrats let the
GOP get away with such rank silliness. We should be proud of our president,
his balanced budgets, his economic boom and most of all the fact that he
worked to help ordinary folks and they responded by resurrecting the morbund
Democratic Party that had been losing elections since Adlai Stevenson
accepted the nomination.
Clinton was far from perfect of course - personally and politically. Like other
men he made his share of goofs. Only a fool believes totally in the infallability of
any man. But Democrats should be proud to push an agenda of fiscal
responsibility, a progressive tax system, economic stimulus and a workable
healthcare system.
Clinton's populist centrism, his middle left roots and the way they reinvigorated
the Democratic Party all represent the biggest threat to the GOP since
Roosevelt. If the Democratic Party ever learns the lessons Bill Clinton taught it
about the success of pursuing a course of moderate, responsible
progressivism, the Republicans are cooked - and they know it.
That's why they hate Clinton so much - and why they fear him.
