Searching for America's Heart by Peter Edelman
Author:Peter Edelman [Edelman, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Poverty & Homelessness, Political Science, Public Policy, Economic Policy, Biography & Autobiography, Political, Social Classes & Economic Disparity, Social Activists
ISBN: 9780547561363
Google: g18CnKTq8xwC
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2001-01-22T05:20:51+00:00
The Legacy of the Clinton Years
A BALANCED ASSESSMENT of Clintonâs presidency must include several positive developments. Crime, both violent and nonviolent, is down substantially. Nonmarital teen births have declined. Poverty is down somewhat. Clinton took on Big Tobacco and pushed for stronger gun control. He contributed toward peace in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, and in Bosnia and Kosovo. And it is true that he was distracted, practically from the beginning and long before he provided near-lethal ammunition in the form of Monica Lewinsky, by a group dedicated almost pathologically to destroying his presidency. Clintonâs best claim for good marks comes from the spectacular performance of the American economy. A healthy economy has always been the strongest weapon against poverty, and Clinton does deserve credit here, even though groundwork was laid by the 1990 Bush budget agreement, which, ironically, may have contributed to Bushâs loss. This agreement began the process of deficit reduction that was crucial to what followed. Clintonâs deficit reduction package of 1993 was a further major step.
However, the improvement in the economy was accompanied by the glitz factor, the materialistic and amoral excess accumulating for a long time and accelerated spectacularly by the pileup of high-tech wealth. This was happening before Clinton, but he did nothing to slow it down. He worked the glitz for all it was worth, literally, as he took political fundraising to new levels of excess. He was the perfect political figure for the new Gilded Age, the Gatsby of the new world order.
Perhaps more important than Clintonâs susceptibility to glitz is the fact that his penchant for elevating shadow over substance has hurt poor childrenâand not just poor children. He has tended generally to make things worse for the politically powerless. âThe targets?â Mario Cuomo once said of Clintonâs actions. âThe immigrant, the prisoner, the poor, children: people who canât vote or donât vote.â
After I wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly about the welfare bill entitled âThe Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,â Anthony Lewis wrote that he wasnât so sure it was the worst thing Clinton had done, not because he disagreed with me about welfare but because âthere is a strong argument that what he has done to civil liberties will have even more damaging consequences for American ideals.â He went on to say that Clinton âhas the worst civil liberties record of any president in at least 60 years.â
The list of regressive laws Clinton signed is substantial: the so-called antiterrorism bill, the 1996 immigration bill, the Prison Litigation Act, which reduced the ability of prisoners to get relief from mistreatment, and the omnibus crime bill enacted in 1994. The antiterrorism law curtailed the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to overturn state criminal convictions for violations of constitutional rights. It also lets the government deport noncitizens legally in the U.S. for alleged connections to terrorism without letting them see the evidence against them. The immigration law reduced the chances for people seeking political asylum to present
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