I never thought I'd say it, but, boy, am I longing for the Clinton years.
Sure, the Clinton administration was rocky early on — lots of stumbling and
embarrassments. There was the travel office scandal, the Whitewater scandal,
the White House security hack who pulled up FBI records on Clinton
opponents.
A handful of Clinton cronies got pinched and sent to the clink, but nobody
much cared.
I remember, too, the agitation I felt when Hillary tried to nationalize our
health-care system. But that effort helped pave the way for a massive
Republican takeover in the House and Senate in 1994.
Initially that made me happy. The Republican Congress combined with a
pragmatic Clinton brought us restraint, a surplus and a commonsense welfare-reform
policy.
The welfare-reform idea was simple enough: Give a man a hand up, not a
handout, and while we're at it let's teach him to fish.
Critics said the poor would be destitute. The opposite occurred. The poor
did extremely well. Their success reminded me of a bumper sticker: "Liberalism
— The haunting fear that somehow, somewhere people are able to care for
themselves."
For the most part, the Clinton years were a lot of fun. The economy did well
— the dot.com bubble was a great ride. Republicans, for the most part,
acted Republican.
Better, the Cold War was over and nobody worried about much. We dropped
bombs on people now and then — we waged a war in Kosovo solely from the air —
but did nothing too messy that might make for scary images on the news.
Sure, there was that incident in 1993 with the World Trade Center — a
handful of radicals tried to blow the place up — so we took them to court and
sent a few of them to jail.
Nobody knew then that seeds of 9/11 were being planted, in part, by our
lawyerly response. Nobody seemed to know that the masterminds who arranged that
terrorist strike decided they were safe — and so they began planning a more
fatal strike.
Nobody paid much attention in 1990's, either, when the Clinton
Administration pressured government-sponsored organizations Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac to
loosen their standards.
Fannie and Freddie buy up packages of loans that are originated by banks,
thrifts, mortgage companies, etc. to enable lenders to lend more.
According to a 1999 New York Times article, the banks, thrifts and mortgage
companies were also eager for Fan and Fred to loosen standards. Once they
knew Fan and Fred would buy up the riskier loans they issued, they could issue
more loans to more people and make more dough — without taking on the
increased risk.
Most folks didn't worry then that the change would be one of the causes of
the financial mess we now find ourselves in — a mess that would grow well
beyond Fan and Fred and eventually swallow up many private institutions done in
by their own greed.
No, most folks were fat, dumb and happy — and amused. For entertainment
value alone, we had a president who was the gift who kept on giving:
"Monica Lewinsky was on 'Larry King Live,'" said David Letterman. "She
really liked Larry King. Actually, she likes any guy with a desk."
Nobody much cared what our president did — the impeachment thing was an
annoyance — so long as stocks kept rising and our collective nap went
undisturbed.
It's true the economy and the dot.com bubble started to tank in the last
year of Clinton's term. It's true, too, that soon after Bill left, 9/11 would
hit, we'd go to war and the Fed would unleash easy dough to try and stave off
recession.
Unfortunately, conditions would be perfectly set — a perfect storm of sorts
— to create and eventually explode a housing bubble that would cause our
global financial system to melt down.
Who knows what is next. All I know is that I'm longing for the Clinton
years. I'd give anything for a Monica Lewinsky scandal about now.
