Despite Missteps, Bill Clinton's Legacy Will Emerge Intact

What I learn from this election cycle so far,

Barak thinks Reagan is a better president and role model than Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was smeared, toasted and diced by the african american community with the help of Matthews and Oberman

Bill Clinton is smarter, more political savvy, and has more heart than BO

Margaret Burns of NY 11:38AM July 06, 2008

Perhaps the real legacy left by Clinton is his revealing how quickly Democrat liberal loons will throw moderates under the bus, and how quickly black voters will abandon white candidates for one of their own.

AMAZD of MD 8:23AM May 31, 2008

I wish some Clinton supporter explain in rigorous detail for all of us exactly what Clinton's "legacy" is.

fred gill of CA writes that "he gave us eight years of peace and prosperity during which America was both respected and admired abroad. He left a balanced budget and a growing surplus. By taking a common sense approach to welfare and crime he effectively removed two of the GOP's most effective wedge issues from the political scene".

This, apart from being very vague, could be interpreted at most as "a good job", but hardly a "legacy". Somebody has to list for me: what are the great ideas, the vision for the future, the foundations of a progress in education, the changes in health care, the unity in a broken polity, that he left to the country. One cannot leave a "legacy" without thinking of and working for the future and I believe that Bill Clinton, in contrast to great statesmen, never had a vision of any sort. He was only bouncing about in the present.

This is a man who, among the many problems of the country, chose as the first one to solve the burning issue of gays in the military (disclosure: the writer is gay) and was reported in the last months of his tenure to be looking for the issue that would define his legacy (as if he did not have 8 years to think about it). He was admired - I read - for his political brilliance (which, in the mind of Democrats, simply meant to stick it to the Republicans), but this is " partly coincidental and pertains to the moment in which the politician looks brilliant, says Bill Curry".

I do think, however, that he left to the country "a sort of legacy": a deepening chasm and animosity between the red and blue citizens; a sense of politics as a dirty, violent business; the sharp distinction between those who are with me and those who are against me; the complete lack of moral standards (not only in bed); the art of twisting truth beyond recognition (smoking pot without inhaling, what the meaning of "is" is, I've never had sex with that woman etc); the penchant for secrecy (never more obvious now than in the practical inaccessibility of the documents in his library) etc. etc.

Not only most of these lessons have been taken up and perfected by Bush but, for all practical purposes, HE GAVE US BUSH. It is not that "When he left office nearly eight years ago, there was little argument that the country was suffering from Clinton fatigue". It is - I believe - that the country was nauseous and craved for some sanity, which unfortunately too many expected from his pupil Bush.

Perhaps the most enduring Clinton's legacy, the only one that will be remembered in future history books, is that he was the only President in American history to be caught having oral sex in the White House.

Nonoy of MD 1:57PM May 30, 2008

How much the readers' comments reveal about the Democratic Party, which I have belonged to and supported since I was old enough to vote. Only one Democrat since FDR has managed to win two terms in the White House. Despite his bedroom antics, he gave us eight years of peace and prosperity during which America was both respected and admired abroad. He left a balanced budget and a growing surplus. By taking a common sense approach to welfare and crime he effectively removed two of the GOP's most effective wedge issues from the political scene. He left office among the most popular presidents in history and with good reason.

So now he and Hillary have been smeared - quite falsely, and as prt of a deliberate strategy by Obama's handlers - as racists. Why? Because she has dared to continue in a close race against the Left's latest infatuation, a man of no original ideas and no particular accomplishments, who is suddenly the answer to all our problems. Your new little god is a joke, boys and girls. Grow up and find a real one.

fred gill of CA 6:56PM May 29, 2008