bush == clinton?

August 14, 2003 5:04 PM

The left hates bush the way the right hated clintonHere's an interesting article on, of all places, fox news illustrating the similarities between Bush and Clinton. It's a pretty intresting essay, and actualy seems to be... ghasp, fair and ballanced :P
posted by delmoi (42 comments total)

You might say that today, President Bush is doing many of the same things President Clinton did, only backwards, and in cowboy boots.

Oww. That hurts just thinking about it.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 5:19 PM on August 14, 2003

Except of course that one was elected to office and one wasn't.
posted by filchyboy at 5:29 PM on August 14, 2003

They are exactly the same! Clinton too had huge unemployment and a budget deficit beyong counting.

How many reading this nasty posting my me have lost jobs or are fearful that it might be coming soon?
posted by Postroad at 5:31 PM on August 14, 2003

No regular work for me...eight months high and rising.

As for education spending increases, um, why have they had to shut down 14 of St. Louis's city schools, including ones that were recently refurbished?
posted by notsnot at 5:54 PM on August 14, 2003

notsnot: so no child is left behind.
posted by shagoth at 5:56 PM on August 14, 2003

Josh Micah Marshall has been writing about this on Talking Points Memo for a while now: posts 1, 2, and 3
posted by monosyllabic at 5:57 PM on August 14, 2003

They are exactly the same! Clinton too had huge unemployment and a budget deficit beyong counting.

No, see, Bush is doing eveything backwards and in cowboy boots! So instead of quietly decresing unemployment and getting the budget in the black, he's going exactly the other way with gusto!
posted by kaibutsu at 6:04 PM on August 14, 2003

Arnold the terminator for King!
posted by Postroad at 6:14 PM on August 14, 2003

You might say that today, President Bush is doing many of the same things President Clinton did, only backwards, and in cowboy boots.

Clinton did screw the oil industry with the Clean Air Act.
posted by eddydamascene at 6:31 PM on August 14, 2003

...which was signed into law by Bush senior. *smacks forehead*
posted by eddydamascene at 6:37 PM on August 14, 2003

Josh Marshall does have a point, that although I agree on the surface that some of the bush-hating is similar to the clinton-hating, the spreading the meme recently and on Fox News is an attempt to discredit people against bush as fanatical.
posted by mathowie at 6:39 PM on August 14, 2003

I enjoyed the part where Bush "upheld his conservative credentials" on civil liberties, as well.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 6:45 PM on August 14, 2003

No wonder I hate both of them.
posted by Slothrup at 6:57 PM on August 14, 2003

Radley Balko (the author) is an avowed libertarian, according to his site. My guess is that Fox News considers him to be an alternative view -natch- he can bag on Bush as long as he also bags on Clinton.

It's what passes for balance and insight.
posted by stevis at 7:13 PM on August 14, 2003

i too don't care what anyone says; dubhya and his ilk are nothing but a bunch of bigoted warmongering butts - who care nothing about the social issues of america and are in serious need of a rectal examination - and to hell with the 'Defenders Of All Things Duhbya' contingent.
posted by poopy at 7:17 PM on August 14, 2003

For a minute I was actually afraid that the spell check function got taken away.
posted by mokujin at 7:35 PM on August 14, 2003

I really don't understand the hero worship attached to either Clinton or Bush. Clinton was a fink with an extended history of shoddy treatment of women, and a serious honesty problem. Bush is a fink with an extend history of bad management and a serious honesty problem. Both seem to be more interested in advancing their own interests rather than those of the American people. Both have demonstrated a tendency to sell out when money is involved.

Is it too much to ask for both parties to nominate someone who, if not entirely honest, is not a contemporary incarnation of Boss Tweed?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:56 PM on August 14, 2003

I really don't understand the hero worship attached to either Clinton or Bush.

I can't comment on Bush, but you can't really get the Clinton mystique until you've seen him speak in person. I distinctly remember in August of 2000, some friends of mine and I had gotten together for dinner, and the conversation turned into a bitch session about how we all felt let down and betrayed by Clinton, the "great liberal hope" of the early 90s. One of the guests had been a White House intern during the infamous government shutdown in 1995 when the President's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was, um, consummated, making my friend all the more bitter knowing that while he was there, "all that was going on!"

However, three months later, where does Clinton decide to make his last public speech as president but Northeastern university, where a cousin of mine was attending law school. She procured a ticket for me, and by the end of Clinton's rousing speech where he called upon us to help make the world a better place and declared that he's more optimistic about America and our political climate now, at the end of his term than he was when he started, we all left practically in tears thinking to ourselves, "Clinton was just so awesome."

In the end, I think it's star quality or whatever quality it is that makes someone a celebrity... whatever it is, Clinton has it. He's like a rock star.
posted by deanc at 8:23 PM on August 14, 2003

It's too bad Arnold can't run for President, since he wasn't born in the US; my dream is a race between him and Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia); that way you'd have a Republican Kennedy vs a Democratic Rockefeller.
posted by Rebis at 8:24 PM on August 14, 2003

The most eerie coincidence: Clinton rented out the Lincoln bedroom, while Bush rides in a limousine made by Lincoln.
posted by kindall at 8:27 PM on August 14, 2003

President Bush is about to send a “humanitarian” military mission into Liberia. President Clinton sent one into Somalia.


Clinton sent troops to Somalia? Really? I thought Bush Sr. sent them, and Clinton pulled them out. Is this that revisionist history I keep hearing about?
posted by electro at 8:27 PM on August 14, 2003

I dislike Bush gravely not on intellectual grounds, but moral. Consistently misleading on behalf of corporations, with no apparent consideration for the common good is atrocious. Give big business a hand, but look at the majority as well. The American people. The laceration runs deeper when Bush stumps on "let loggers cut down trees to stave wild fires." Just say you want to give loggers more land, why mislead?

Lastly, what has Bush done that benefits the America people, outside of the arguable benefits of mass retaliation, foot in the door conquest, after September 11?

The loathing of Bush is widespread, but I believe it to be for moral grounds.

Further, I've come to believe that choosing the 'left' or the 'right' is not a question of intelligence, as some seem to espouse. There are many not-so-bright leftist. I see the choice of politics as firmly moral. Intellect lends depth and perspective to one's politics, but does not choose it.
posted by the fire you left me at 8:28 PM on August 14, 2003

I'm pro-logger too.
posted by Witty at 9:00 PM on August 14, 2003

that although I agree on the surface that some of the bush-hating is similar to the clinton-hating, the spreading the meme recently and on Fox News is an attempt to discredit people against bush as fanatical.


Agreed. Extremists exist on both sides, but I think by far that the tendency was more for the far right to hate Clinton just because he was Clinton, whereas the left hates Bush on reasons which are much more policy- and action-based.

I mean, "I hate Clinton, he got head" and "I hate Bush, he got people killed" aren't quite the same thing, in terms of impact.

So trying to equalize them could well be a sort of attempt at discrediting protest on the left. I don't know... and I can't figure it out quite right now.
posted by nath at 10:06 PM on August 14, 2003

If you ask a right wingnut why they hate Clinton, you'll hear that Clinton was running drugs out of Mena, that Clinton had Vince Foster and a bunch of other people killed, that Clinton was a serial rapist, that Clinton was a Communist spy ever since he was in college.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of zeteticism. Just because the establishment says all of those charges are lies doesn't mean they are. Who knows, maybe Alexander Cockburn's right about Mena (yeah I know he's a left wingnut, but the right ones sure latched onto that allegation). The thing is, if Clinton was a KGB mole, then that requires a conspiracy. All of those charges do.

If you ask left wingnuts why they hate Bush, you'll hear that Bush is in the pocket of big oil, that Bush has close connections to the Carlyle Group, that Bush lied in the run-up to the war with Iraq, and that Bush is hiding the truth about 9/11.

These charges seem a whole order more reliable. You can read PNAC's plans for world domination on their website. It's not a secret that Bush senior is on the Carlyle board, or that Cheney used to run Halliburton. Anyone who's spent five minutes looking at the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 knows that there's more to 9/11 than the American public knows. Last weekend the Washington Post gave the most conclusive case yet for lies, exaggeraions, and omissions in the case for war with Iraq.

Where the Clinton haters argued off of information they claimed they had and no one else did (for example, the KGB spy charge), the Bush haters argue off public information other people don't bother to read or have a different interpretation of (like PNAC).

There is a chance I'm biased on this because I didn't follow politics during Clinton's administration the way I do now. I certainly wasn't keeping up on the wingnuts on both sides. So it's possible it's just distance that makes the older Clinton haters' allegations seem so much more illogical to me...
posted by jbrjake at 10:45 PM on August 14, 2003

In the end, I think it's star quality or whatever quality it is that makes someone a celebrity... whatever it is, Clinton has it. He's like a rock star.

Tony Blair has it too. You must judge politicians on actions, not words. As far as foreign policy is concerned, the hypocritical sale of arms to oppressive regimes didn't stop under Clinton, and IIRC, the bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory also happened under Clinton. Doesn't matter whether you have a left or right government, the old patterns still continue.
posted by Summer at 3:05 AM on August 15, 2003

"In the end, I think it's star quality or whatever quality it is that makes someone a celebrity... whatever it is, Clinton has it.

"Tony Blair has it too."

Psychopaths, also.
posted by Blue Stone at 3:47 AM on August 15, 2003

So can someone explain to me where the "fair and balanced" portion of that story went? I didn't see it.
posted by nofundy at 5:34 AM on August 15, 2003

nofundy: it was a Fox News article about Bush and Clinton that didn't openly pander to Bush's popularity among its viewer base. That makes it fair. Neither did it openly pander to Clinton's popularity in the world outside its viewer base, which makes it balanced.

As an aside (and I know most other news organizations do something similar, but I find this style particularly annoying), didn't hypertext get invented so we wouldn't have to bold (search)
text that refers elsewhere? It looks like a damn Hollywood (search) gossip column (search).
posted by Vetinari at 6:18 AM on August 15, 2003

Fair and balanced my ass. The article points out why the far right hates Clinton, mostly on "moral" grounds, sure enough, but misses the mark on why the left hates Bush. It reduces the latter to the "Bush is an intellectual midget" argument. This may be the source of many jokes on late night tv, but it certainly is not among the many reasons people on the left are so frustrated.

The left's hatred of Bush has much more to do that the "Plan for a New American Century" crowd, the "Patriot Act" policies and the irresponsible fiscal policy.

No one on the left is underestimating Bush anymore. He's indifferent to the condition of anyone not directly contributing to his campaign war chest, and willing to use "patriotism" and fear to steamroll anyone that gets in his way.

I dunno, I'll take moral relativism over that any day.
posted by psmealey at 6:21 AM on August 15, 2003

Biggest joke line of the "balanced" article:

President Clinton was in fact more conservative than President Bush

Rrrrrrrrr-right.... unless you count tax policy, labor issues, the environment, health care, education, medical research, diplomacy, separation of church and state, etc...

The article holds up a straw man argument that the left despises Bush because he's dumb. Speaking for myself, that's the least of my concern. I despise him because he's a corrupt, lying whore for big business, corporate and industrial supporters, and the religious right...
posted by crookdimwit at 7:00 AM on August 15, 2003

You might say that today, President Bush is doing many of the same things President Clinton did, only backwards, and in cowboy boots.

So Bush is the one giving, not receiving, the plo chops?
posted by rocketman at 7:06 AM on August 15, 2003

The strawfigures runneth over.

there is a deep, seething hatred for him among the far left.

While I admit to a deep, seething hatred, I hate that me and those who think like me get the dismissive "far left" label attached. I don't think I'm on the far left (I consider myself a semi-liberal with libertarian instincts), and neither do many of the people I know who also hate Bush.

Similarly, Bush is hated by the far left (search) because they find him intellectually unfit for the office of the presidency.

As has been noticed already, this is not why I (not on the far left) or the people I know hate Bush. We hate Bush because he's a shill for moneyed interests in the Republican Party. Because he lies to us and acts imperiously on behalf of those interests. Because he took us to war, an illegal and immoral war, that will ensure that people in that area of the world hate Americans for generations. Because he's surrounded himself by idealogues and demagogues that are doing lasting damage to the government, the environment, and the country. Etc.

And then beyond the strawfigures there's just puzzling statements that defy credulity:

you could make a convincing case that President Clinton was in fact more conservative than President Bush has been so far

and

President Bush talked much in his campaign about education choice (search), but in the end, signed an education bill President Clinton would have been proud of -- one that increases, not decreases, federal involvement in primary and secondary schooling.

and

Both men dropped bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan.

(I mean, he can't tell the difference between a bomb drop and FULL FLEDGED BLITZKRIEG????)

This is more conservative disinformation designed to discredit the opposition to the president, and it sickens me that people fall for this. Wake up and smell the propaganda.
posted by norm at 7:19 AM on August 15, 2003

hear hear on the norm's sickened thing.

Politics should be an intellectual choice not a moral one. Morals are for church. Our agreement to live together and not beat each other up and take each other's stuff is an intellectual choice. There's no room in the world of basic sociopolitical rights for personal moral values.

Comparing the fundamentalist right's hatred of Clinton and the educated left's hatred of Bush is like comparing toxic waste and apples. Does it matter to the country that Clinton lied about sex in the same way that it matters to the country the Bush didn't graduate from Yale? That's the crux, right there.

Note I said: In the same way. Clinton was an ass, and he failed the American people. But it doesn't seem that Bush merited the chance to fail.

I was going to add a link, but I'll post it up front...
posted by ewkpates at 7:41 AM on August 15, 2003

Like all things Fox, this article is bullshit. I find it disturbing, however, that it displays much more subtlety than its usual hamfisted yellow journalism. Is it because the "moron" portion of America has been so thoroughly counquered in their ratings that now they are going after "sophisticated" America?


In the end, I think it's star quality or whatever quality it is that makes someone a celebrity... whatever it is, Clinton has it.

Yes. I remember hearing this from people I met several times during his administration. People who either disliked him or at the very least weren't convinced by him until they heard him speak in public, they came away a bit shocked that they were so impressed by him. Apparently he has a personal magnetism that can overwhelm his detractors when they have closer contact with him.
posted by sic at 7:51 AM on August 15, 2003

Both seem to be more interested in advancing their own interests rather than those of the American people.

And all you have got to do to get proof of this is look at the evolution of the nation's deficit (hint: it was once a surplus).

FOX News? Get a grip, people

Lastly, nice how the right focuses on clothes (both male and female) to judge a president's honorability. Never mind stuff like conspiracy to defraud the United States Government. Clearly a minor issue, this last one. Which is why the culprits are back in positions of power.
posted by magullo at 8:18 AM on August 15, 2003

I don't know whether this is shared by fellow across-the-ponders, but it seemed as if Clinton represented the side of America that non-Americans find compelling -- someone who genuinely rose through the ranks, and succeeded based upon smarts, charisma and a fine political brain. The sex thing really wasn't an issue: if anything, a glance at the Starr report showed that much of his horndoggery was a byproduct of working into the night.

By contrast, Bush seems to be a flag-bearer for the side of America that's frankly alien to most Europeans. That's not to say that European politics is immune from scions of moneyed interests in the service of moneyed interests (quite the contrary) but you really can't imagine Bush, with his particular body of support, being elected to a leadership position in Britain or anywhere in Europe, whereas Clinton -- as demonstrated by his party conference speech last year -- would be eagerly adopted as Labour leader. So, the basis for anti-Bush feeling outside of the US is along the lines of 'how the fuck did this man get into office'?

Perhaps that's partly because non-Americans didn't really experience at first-hand the compromises (and frankly, the sellouts) that Clinton's domestic policy brought to his key constituencies, and were more aware of his role on the international stage. Still, were it not for the 22nd Amendment, I don't doubt that he'd still be in the White House.
posted by riviera at 8:20 AM on August 15, 2003

And all you have got to do to get proof of this is look at the evolution of the nation's deficit — magullo

Here, I'll help:

posted by nicwolff at 9:56 AM on August 15, 2003

I like both of them, though as a Canadian my opinion is irrelevant. Both of them are flawed, but then who isn't?
posted by timeistight at 10:31 AM on August 15, 2003

norm, you're not far-left, it's just that the rest of the idiots have been taking baby steps to the right for the past couple decades. The middle has shifted.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:22 AM on August 15, 2003

Foreign policy?  Both men dropped bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan.

That line right there is all you need to know about the writer.
posted by jragon at 12:25 PM on August 15, 2003

"Now I know how Republicans felt in 1998."
posted by homunculus at 7:35 PM on August 15, 2003