Robert Parry: End of the Bush-Clinton Era?

seafan

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun May-25-08 11:01 PM
Original message

Robert Parry: End of the Bush-Clinton Era?

(Robert Parry allows unlimited use of his work at Consortiumnews.)

End of the Bush-Clinton Era?

By Robert Parry
May 25, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s comment, referencing Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination to explain why she’s continuing her campaign, may serve as a crass punctuation point for the end of a grim period in American history, the Bush-Clinton era.

This period – roughly marked by George H.W. Bush’s rise as Vice President and then President from 1981 to 1993, Bill Clinton’s embattled two terms, and then eight years under George W. Bush – represented an extraordinary period of lost opportunities for the nation as its global power peaked and began a rapid descent.
Notable for its bitter partisanship, mindless jingoism and willful historical amnesia, this era saw the United States fail to address its bloated energy consumption, reverse the decline in its manufacturing base, stop the erosion of the middle class, provide universal health care for its citizens and wisely deploy its military might.

So, on one level, the Democratic presidential battle has been a struggle over whether Democrats want to revert back to their brief hold on the White House in the 1990s (by picking Hillary Clinton) or strike off in a new direction (by nominating Barack Obama).

Early on, some Democrats told me they supported Sen. Clinton because her election would repudiate the Bush family and its nasty brand of politics. They envisioned a hard-working and battle-tested President Hillary Clinton completing some of the reforms that Republicans thwarted in the 1990s.
However, other Democrats have come to see the Clintons as less a cats-and-dogs enemy of the Bushes than two sides of the same coin, a kind of duopoly that is more common in Third World nations where two ruling families trade power back and forth without disrupting the power structure.

In this view, Bill Clinton essentially earned his bones with the Bush family in 1993 when he swept a dustbin full of Republican scandals under the rug – including the Iran-Contra Affair, Iraq-gate and the October Surprise question.
President Clinton may have thought he was being responsible and buying some bipartisan peace. But he actually cemented an incomplete and false history of the Reagan-Bush period, thus denying the American people a thorough understanding of what their government had done over those dozen years.

Clinton also freed up the Republican attack machine from playing defense for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, enabling it to go on the offensive against Clinton and his wife. In other words, Clinton’s acquiescence to the Reagan-Bush cover-ups proved to be both wrongheaded and shortsighted.
Yet Clinton didn’t seem to learn much. Despite the pummeling he took – including suffering only the second presidential impeachment in U.S. history – Bill Clinton still kept his Justice Department on the sidelines when George W. Bush stole the Florida election and thus the White House from Al Gore in 2000.

Then, after leaving office, Clinton made one of his chief priorities the forging of an alliance with George H.W. Bush, as they traveled around the world on humanitarian missions. This Bush-Clinton tandem became a feel-good measure of how Washington insiders gauge bipartisanship, the two ruling families working together.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton – having won a Senate seat from New York in 2000 – demonstrated another side of this elite bipartisanship. In 2002, she sided with President George W. Bush in his desire to invade Iraq and remained a staunch war supporter over the next several years.

All in all, at the start of 2005, the future of this Bush-Clinton duopoly looked fairly bright.
George W. Bush had secured a second term and Washington pundits lavished praise on his neoconservative vision for the Middle East, hailing the soaring rhetoric of his second Inaugural Address as well as the seemingly successful election in Iraq and other glimmers of hope across the region.
There was political talk, too, that Sen. John McCain had struck a deal with the Bushes, embracing George W. Bush’s reelection bid in 2004 with an understanding that he would get the Bush family’s backing in 2008 and possibly agree to pick Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as his running mate to set the stage for another Bush restoration in 2012.

On the Clinton side, there was optimism that Hillary Clinton was well positioned to win the Democratic nomination in 2008, with her staunch support of the Iraq War serving to dispel doubts among the general electorate about her national security credentials.

.....

However, 2005 didn’t play out as either the Bushes or the Clintons envisioned.

.....

On Dec. 17, 2007, a still-confident Bill Clinton offered voters a sense of what bipartisanship meant to Hillary Clinton. He announced that his wife’s first act in the White House would be to send him and George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to explain that “America is open for business and cooperation again.”
In other words, the Clintons and the Bush patriarch would clean up some of the messes left behind by a headstrong Bush son. Implicit in this picture was the Clintons giving another pass to the Bush family.

.....

As the Democratic “base” started to rebel against this Bush-Clinton arrogance, Barack Obama’s support began to surge. In the Iowa caucuses, he pulled off a stunning victory, with Hillary Clinton stumbling in third behind John Edwards.

With dreams of their restoration suddenly threatened, the Clintons quickly turned to divisive tactics often associated with the Bushes and Republicans. Indeed, one of the arguments that I heard from Clinton operatives at the time was that it was their duty to destroy Obama now because otherwise the Republicans would do it in the fall.

.....

Yet, whatever was going through Clinton’s mind, the RFK reference – when combined with the Wallace/McCarthy/Atwater/Rove tactics that preceded it – there can be little doubt that the Clintons are grasping at whatever straws still might be available, no matter how flimsy or how slimy.

This ugly denouement has the look of an ugly era reaching an ugly end.

Arguably the Bush-Clinton duopoly might have a chance at another restoration if something bad does befall Obama or if John McCain wins as a likely one-termer in November.
If Obama loses, Hillary Clinton can say “I told you so” and make another run in 2012.
And perhaps another round of nostalgia for the Bushes might give Jeb a chance to carry the Bush family’s banner back into the White House four years from now.

But it looks more and more as if the American people have chosen to move on – leaving the disasters and the disgraces of the Bush-Clinton era to a sad chapter in the history books.