Do you remember when we were unified under Clinton?

[Erika]

We were a country with jobs and prosperity. We were looked at for our leadership. Clinton received standing ovations from the U.N. He met with leaders from Israel and Palestine. We had a peace dividend.

Then, Bush, who received less votes than Gore, was elected. It's been a downslide to Hell every since.

I just needed to get that out.

[man4allcats]

1. "Yes, it's strange isn't it?," HAL asked.

"Inconceivable" might be a better word. And yet it happened. Perhaps we are in a journey not of sight or sound but of mind. Yes, that's it. We have just entered "The Twilight Zone." Thanks, Rod, for making some sense of this lunacy. It can't possibly be real.

[Skittles]

2. change that word ELECTED to SELECTED

the bastards stole the election

[Erika]

3. and they stole our country

I am so tired of this Pre-emptive BS and all the rest of Bush's policies.

[Skittles]

4. I believe the America we knew is gone for good

we will be fighting these fascist assholes for the rest of our days

[lpbk2713]

5. I think you're right.

Anyone who had any expectations of decency and fairplay has now been taught otherwise and is probably too jaded and polarized to return to any semblance of objectivity. The asshole repubs will now reap what they have sown. Thanks to the fundies and corporate weasels the country I grew up in is going right down the crapper.

[Zuni]

6. I can't believe how much less stressful life was

The general mood in the US has been much tenser, more unpleasant since Bush took office.

[no name no slogan]

7. It depends on where you were on the economic ladder

Compared to what followed, Clinton is the new messiah. But his tenure was not so great if you're one of the many who did not benefit from the middle-class "boom years" of the 90s.

I spent a good part of the decade under-employed, going from one low-paying dead-end job to another. Although I was a college graduate, I still had a hard time finding something that would not only pay the rent, but also cover the car payment and put food on the table AND leave a little left at the end of the month to save.

And I know that I was not alone. Most of the people I knew were in the same situation. Clinton's corpo-friendly "free trade" policy saw many good-paying factory jobs skip across the border to Mexico, and eventually on to China. We saw our hours go up, our wages stagnate, and our benefits disappear. But, remember, Clinton created "MORE NEW JOBS!" Too bad it took two or three "new jobs" to make up for the one "old job" that went south of the border.

Speaking of China, Clinton helped secure their entry into the WTO, and got them "most favored nation" trading status with the US. Now, US workers have to compete with slave laborers in China

Clinton's ending of "welfare as we know it" has not helped eliminate poverty, but it has forced many mothers to work 80-hour weeks at low-wage jobs, just to keep a roof over their families' heads. It has also increased the burden that state governments have had to take on to provide basic needs to the down and out, too-- a burden once shouldered by the federal government.

The gap between the rich and poor opened even wider under Clinton's watch-- moreso than it did during even Reagan's tenure. The rich got continually richer, the middle-class barely held their ground, and the working-class declined. Somewhat strange for a supposedly "Democratic" president.

Clinton also failed to deliver truly universal healthcare, too. Instead of a low-cost, low-overhead single-payer plan, we got some goofy hodge-podge of subsidized private care that did little to solve the problems of the uninsured, but did a lot to line the pockets of the five largest insurance companies.

Clinton was not afraid to attack first, ask questions later in foreign policy, too. He blew up a pharma factory in Sudan, which supplied drugs for most of East Africa-- even though reliable eyewitness intelligence verified there were no chemical weapons being made there.

He waged a low-grade war on Iraq, above and beyond what the UN proscribed in the 1991 ceasefire agreement. This led to the unnecessary deaths of over half a million people, mostly children.

He attacked Kosovo at the behest of Albania, one of Europe's largest centers for heroin trafficking, displacing thousands of ethnic Serbs, who were being harrassed by Albanian drug runners posing as "rebels".

Clinton also signed into law the 1996 Telecom act, which has done more to consolidate media control in the hands of a few major players than anything that came before. Now most of the media in this country is controlled by three key players, and diversity is all but gone.

His administration also oversaw the dismantling of the Glass-Steagal Act, which was put in place during the Depression to keep financial institutions from doing the same things that led to the stock market crash of 1929. This indirectly led to the market bubble and its burst in 2000, and the loss of millions of dollars of ordinary Americans' nest eggs.

His personal behavior was simply disgusting and irresponsible. He behaved poorly for a man who is not only the leader of the "free world", but also under a microscope 24 hours a day. I'm sorry, but if you're in that position, you should just know better. It's not a matter of "morality"-- it's a matter of not being a dumbass.

The Clinton era was a disappointment for liberals. He came in with many promises and majorities in congress. He squandered both of these, and we ended up with a president whose legacy is less liberal than Nixon's.