As a caretaker government in the eight year interregnum of the 28 year Reagan/Bush era, the Clintons were largely faithful to the economic principles of monopoly capital and spoilers of hope for advancement of a populist agenda. The suffering of the Iraq people under the Clinton/Blair “Sanctions” program was as bad as anything the Bushes visited on them. They shepherded the dismemberment of Yugoslavia as if Bill had dreamed it up himself. Changes in health care were proposed and abandoned to the first lady, a bold attempt to provide spousal leadership within the Office of the President that failed.
The Clinton failures were in no way the treasonous abandonment of constitutional law that has marked the G.W. Bush administration, but the hubris that would not permit Clinton to resign to the fact of his spoiled administration may be why Al Gore lost in 2024, Ralph Nader notwithstanding.
What are the chances that either Obama or Clinton will provide fresh beginnings and hold the people who have ravaged the economy and made a mockery of our principles accountable? I suspect they are slim, because whoever wins will inherit the Bush war, and the Bush contractors, and the Bush war crimes, and the Bush inflation, and the Bush recession, and our shared global climate crisis, and our shared energy crisis, and the list goes on. Whoever wins in the fall will have a lot of cleaning up to do and will need help from some of the monopolists whose power might diminish under a populist government. Compromises will be made. Deals will go down. Say hello to the new boss.
[tags]imperials, white house, thugz mansion, hillary and bill BFF, knowing when to say goodbye[/tags]
oh, don’t be a bmoian grumblewort, frank. compromise, much like plaque, is everywhere that matters. it’s right there in your marriage, just in front of your teeth when you tell ole lovergrrl that you don’t mind doing somethingortheotherthatyou’dmuchratherskip.
If it’s there in a due, why should it not be in something as stirring as politics, in a land that purports to accept a variety of creeds and castes?
If it’s politics done right, the spirit of compromise should be there, healthy in mind and embodied in the diet.
The G-whizz nations outside north america have already had their coups and revolutions and such and/or been spanked into submission. North America is still youngish and brashish. There will be some time yet before the rabble here rises with pitchfork and torch; time yet before the underground tunnels and backchannels are fortified with the unfed and fed up.
In the meantime, let’s support the spirit of smart, reasonable compromise. Howzabout we support the clan less inclined toward war-mongering and feasting on the people-prey.
The differences may be subtle at times, but they are big where it counts. Don’t be fooled and don’t give up.
p.s. i have no idea what i was writing with, “If it’s there in a due”, and the muse just left to pick up the pizza (i’ll aske her when she gets back), but there’s a gist in there somewhere.
Oh, for sure, Charles. I’ll keep applying my milli-microgram of political mass on the left side of the scale, and regardless of who gets the Democratic Party’s nomination this year they will have my vote. I’m just saying, it’s easy to be a Kucinich or a Gravel style idealist but it wouldn’t be so easy for them actually turn this ship around, nor will Hillary or Barack find it so.
We need the nominee to pull in dozens of new Democratic congressional representatives on his/her coat tails if we want to get anything done.