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06/21/2004 Archived Entry: "Clinton on 60 Minutes"

Posted by steve @ 03:07 PM EST [Link]

A FULL HOUR OF HIM WAS TOO MUCH: I was going to blog about Bill Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes last night but I had too much last minute work on ESR to get done. That and listening to Clinton actually made me tired. As I was watching it though one line popped out at me:

"I was involved in two great struggles at the same time, a great public struggle over the future of America with a Republican Congress and a private struggle with my old demons. I won the public one and lost the private one. I don't think it's much more complicated than that."

Not surprisingly many conservatives are taking Slick Willie to task for claiming ultimate victory against the Republican Party. Over at NRO, Jonah Goldberg argues that clearly wasn't the case.

Ah, yes, the glorious victory against the Republicans which cost the Democrats the House, the Senate and arguably the White House in 2000. The victory which caused the first two-term Democrat since FDR to tack right on Welfare and trade and abandon the dream of single-payer health care.

Granted, Republicans won the war over socialized health care but I wonder if they won the wider war. George W. Bush is spending in a manner that Clinton never could have contemplated and has introduced programs and endorsed legislation that tack to the left. Under Dubya's watch America has a prescription drug plan and increased federal involvement in education, hardly conservative priorities. And I'm trying to figure out why Goldberg believes protectionist trade policies are conservative in nature.

Although Clinton arguably aided the Republicans' rise to power in the mid-1990s in Congress (and indirectly got Bush elected in 2000), I wonder if history won't record that Bush wasn't too different from Clinton when it came to many, though obviously not all, domestic issues.