Anyone who believes that the Clintons' are being unduly mean to Barack Obama has only to wait until the GOP machine gets its rabid bloody fangs into him to realize what a powderpuff derby it has been compared to what will come if he wins, to which he is naively ill prepared. All this crap about
is the craziest thing I have ever heard.
January 28, 2008
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Lessons of 1992
Op-Ed Columnist
It’s starting to feel a bit
like 1992 again. A Bush is in the White House, the economy is a mess,
and there’s a candidate who, in the view of a number of observers, is
running on a message of hope, of moving past partisan differences, that
resembles Bill Clinton’s campaign 16 years ago.
Now, I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization of the 1992 Clinton
campaign, which had a strong streak of populism, beginning with a
speech in which Mr. Clinton described the 1980s as a “gilded age of
greed.” Still, to the extent that Barack Obama 2008 does sound like
Bill Clinton 1992, here’s my question: Has everyone forgotten what
happened after the 1992 election?
Let’s review the sad tale, starting with the politics.
Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in
a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few
months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has
decried.
This bitter partisanship wasn’t the result of anything the Clintons
did. Instead, from Day 1 they faced an all-out assault from
conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a
Democratic president.
For those who are reaching for their smelling salts because
Democratic candidates are saying slightly critical things about each
other, it’s worth revisiting those years, simply to get a sense of what
dirty politics really looks like.
No accusation was considered too outlandish: a group supported by
Jerry Falwell put out a film suggesting that the Clintons had arranged
for the murder of an associate, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial
page repeatedly hinted that Bill Clinton might have been in cahoots
with a drug smuggler.
So what good did Mr. Clinton’s message of inclusiveness do him?
Meanwhile, though Mr. Clinton may not have run as postpartisan a
campaign as legend has it, he did avoid some conflict by being
strategically vague about policy. In particular, he promised health
care reform, but left the business of producing an actual plan until
after the election.
This turned out to be a disaster. Much has been written about the
process by which the Clinton health care plan was put together: it was
too secretive, too top-down, too politically tone-deaf. Above all,
however, it was too slow. Mr. Clinton didn’t deliver legislation to
Congress until Nov. 20, 1993 — by which time the momentum from his
electoral victory had evaporated, and opponents had had plenty of time
to organize against him.
The failure of health care reform, in turn, doomed the Clinton
presidency to second-rank status. The government was well run
(something we’ve learned to appreciate now that we’ve seen what a badly
run government looks like), but — as Mr. Obama correctly says — there
was no change in the country’s fundamental trajectory.
So what are the lessons for today’s Democrats?
First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they
don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group,
at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat
who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an
unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given
credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring
themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not
on Page 1).
The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support
Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t
one of them.
Second, the policy proposals candidates run on matter.
I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama’s rejection of health
insurance mandates — which are an essential element of any workable
plan for universal coverage — doesn’t really matter, because by the
time health care reform gets through Congress it will be very different
from the president’s initial proposal anyway. But this misses the
lesson of the Clinton failure: if the next president doesn’t arrive
with a plan that is broadly workable in outline, by the time the thing
gets fixed the window of opportunity may well have passed.
My sense is that the fight for the Democratic nomination has gotten
terribly off track. The blame is widely shared. Yes, Bill Clinton has
been somewhat boorish (though I can’t make sense of the claims that
he’s somehow breaking unwritten rules, which seem to have been newly
created for the occasion). But many Obama supporters also seem far too
ready to demonize their opponents.
What the Democrats should do is get back to talking about issues — a
focus on issues has been the great contribution of John Edwards to this
campaign — and about who is best prepared to push their agenda forward.
Otherwise, even if a Democrat wins the general election, it will be
1992 all over again. And that would be a bad thing.
login
Frontpage - Top level