You know, the party in control of Congress and the Presidency could get away for awhile with blaming the Clinton Administration for its nonfeasance and misfeasance on this or that current issue. But as Joe Conosan points out in an article at Salon, that dog just won't wag anymore.
The fear and loathing which the intellectually and morally flexible Clinton evoked in the stolid classes may have survived to the extent of causing a knee-jerk response to the sound of his name, but in the meantime, those same people have had plenty of time to observe what a world in control of the GOP actually looks like. And the Bush Administration and its GOP enablers have had a full term and a half to address any problems which might have been left over from Clinton's day.
Even the dimmest adherent of the GOP must by now wondering why they did not. Even my friend and neighbor Billy Bo Bob Smith and his wife Betty Jo can doubtless dimly recall that the world looked different during the Clinton years. Even they can work out that Clinton, despite enjoying a bit of slap and tickle during working hours with an adult intern, didn't send dirty e-mails to teenagers. (Sadly, they haven't shown so far that they've worked out that this means they maybe shouldn't vote Republican.)
This article by Joe Conason at Salon addresses the desperate attempts of John McCain and others to pin North Korea on Clinton.
[quote begins from Joe Conason article at Salon, Wagging the Big Dog]
It was startling to watch the Republicans respond to a boilerplate critical statement from Sen. Hillary Clinton by mounting a full-bore, multilevel assault on her husband's policies. At first, the White House refrained from "playing the blame game," as the president likes to say, and instead allowed surrogates to do the attacking. The first to step forward, unsurprisingly, was Sen. John McCain (or "Rove's poodle," as he is known without affection on a listserv I read). Speaking as if there had actually been nobody in charge at the White House, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon for the past five or six years, McCain excoriated the 1994 agreement negotiated between the Clinton administration and the North Korean regime as "a failure" that had rewarded Pyongyang repeatedly without achieving anything...
Both McCain and Mehlman ignored the central achievement of the Clinton policy, which was to maintain monitoring of Pyongyang's plutonium supply for eight years -- and thus prevent the building of plutonium bombs or the transfer of those materials to other states or terrorist organizations. The North Koreans started a secret uranium enrichment program precisely because they could not use reprocessed plutonium to build weapons under the 1994 Agreed Framework. Since the Bush administration cast aside that process in 2002, Kim's scientists have been freed from the scrutiny of international inspection.
Whatever the merits or defects of Clinton's diplomacy in Asia, however, the political risks of focusing on that topic seem far greater than any potential rewards. Already once in this season the Republicans have learned (or should have learned) that angering the former president is unwise; he is far more popular than Bush is and considerably more skilled in argument than anyone on the other side, including McCain.
Even if Clinton's policy was completely misguided, why should any sane voter accept the notion that current policy problems are his fault? Didn't the mature statesmen and women of the Bush regime declare a clean break from the previous administration as soon as they assumed power? Where have they been since January 2001 and what have they been doing? What are they going to do now?
[quote ends from Joe Conason article at Salon]
Yes, exactly.
McCain and company, it may be true that Bill Clinton might have done more; but the fact remains that the opportunity for the Bush Administration to do something has existed for six years. They couldn't do anything because they were busy elsewhere. That, at least, is not Bill Clinton's fault.
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