Bill Clinton vs. George W. Bush

Overview

Defenders of George W. Bush sometimes argue that Bill Clinton set a new (lower) standard for presidential behavior. While this is at best a "he did it first" argument, and more likely just changing the subject, it is worth setting the record straight on the matter in order to minimize the amount of time spent being sidetracked.

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Related Pages

• See the discussion page for substantial discussion on this topic.
• Balkans vs. Iraq: A comparison between one campaign under Clinton and one under Bush

Specific Points

	Bill Clinton	George W. Bush
	doubled the Border Patrol early in his first term	severely cut Border Patrol funds1
Subject of lying	his personal life	significant matters of state
Severity of lying	charged with perjury2 (lying under oath)	aforesaid lies were merely official statements and not under oath
	charged with obstruction of justice2	informally accused of attempted destruction of Democracy
Economy	"It's The Economy, Stupid"
Average annual GDP growth	3.6%	2.6%
Non-farm employment	added 22.7 million jobs	added 3 million jobs (worst record of any US president in 70 years)
Unemployment	7.3% -> 4.2%	4.2% -> 4.7%
Real median household income	grew by $5,825	fell by $1,273
poverty rate	fell 3.5% (6.4 million fewer people)	rose 1.3% (5.4 million more people)
S&P 500	+ 308% (435.49 -> 1342.54)	- 2.1% (1342.54 -> 1314.78 as of 9/22/06)
NASDAQ	+ 395% (700.77 -> 2770.38)	- 20% (2770.38 -> 2218.93 as of 9/22/06).
Federal Spending as % of GDP	22.1% (fiscal 1992) to 18.4% in 2000	back up to 20.8% (fiscal 2006)
total executive branch employment does not include classified numbers for CIA, DIA, NSA, & other intelligence agencies; does not include outsourced jobs	down by almost 450,000 (2.225 million -> 1.778 million)	up by almost 100,000 (to 1.872 million).
Federal Debt	deficit of $290 billion —> surplus of $236 billion (fiscal 2000)	increased by almost $3 trillion (as of 2006)
Public Debt as % of GDP	-16.4%	+4.4%

See also Balkans vs. Iraq

Note 1

"savagely cut funds [to the Border Patrol, and continued] cutting till the border tsunami began bothering even his most loyal redstate supporters"[1], leading to the 2006 immigration crisis

Note 2

These charges were made by Republican-led congress but acquitted by the Democrat-led Senate, a decision which many (especially but not exclusively Republicans) disagreed with vehemently.

Bumper Stickers

"No children died / when Clinton lied." – seen 2006-09-22

Quotes

"Republicans used to observe derisively that Clinton had a difficult relationship with the truth. Bush has a difficult relationship with the truth, too. It's just a different – and perhaps more grave – kind of difficulty." – William Saletan

David Brin said on 2007-03-25 (with minor editing):

The top ostrich tactic is to claim that Clinton was only marginally not quite as bad [as Bush], but made of the same substance. Wrong. He was utterly and diametrically opposite to these guys in almost every way. While a sinner and somewhat slick/slimy, he stayed with a wife and child his entire adult life. Since Reagan, the GOP has done an utter reverse and become the party of divorce, utterly forgiving [their] marriage-monsters simply because they are on the right side, and ignoring the hypocrisy that nearly ALL of Clinton's pursuers had no right to cast stones at him, or even to stare upward in awe at his marriage. This hypocrisy is vastly outweighed by the far worse hypocrisy toward malfeasance in office. Dig it. EVERY weapon of disclosure was aimed at the Clintons. Congressional investigations raged, special prosecutors stomped about like Godzilla, spending BILLIONS. FBI agents were diverted from important anti-terror duties DURING THE SIX MONTHS BEFORE 9/11 with the sole goal of finding a smoking Clintonian gun that could lead to indictments. (An act of treason, frankly.) The GSA and all Inspectors General were ordered to leave no stone unturned. Now add to that the fact that Clinton et al DECREASED SECRECY IN GOVERNMENT to a larger degree than any before it. Ever. Diametrically opposite to the skyrocketing secrecy of these monsters. Add it all together and the result? Absolutely ZERO INDICTMENTS OF ANY CLINTONIAN FOR MALFEASANCE IN OFFICE OF ANY KIND, WHATSOEVER. Twelve years of culture war and radio screeches and howls about "slick willy" and "the most corrupt" administration... ...and it turned out to be – by any objective measure – by far the most open and honest administration in the entire history of the entire human race. Proved (ironically) by the relentless scrutiny of its opposition. Disprove this. Put up or shut up. I am sick of this example of the Big Lie. The Big Truth is that Clinton was an honest and excellent administrator whose appointees treated the civil servants and officers with respect and got good work out of them, trying to make government lean and effective in service of the people of the United States. This is proved and diametrically opposite to absolutely everything about the monsters who replaced them. So no. I will not stop mentioning Clinton. It is perfectly relevant to demand that ostriches ponder "what if Clinton had done this?" Because if Clinton had – if he had done a SCINTILLA of the monstrous things that are leaking out of the tight wall of collusion and secrecy and stonewalling – then the ostrich would have screeched bloody murder. This is hypocrisy, cowardice. And if some new thing happens – say to the US Navy – without ostriches waking up to pull their heads out of the sand and turning their eyes to treason in their midst, then I say that they will be traitors, too.

in Contrary Brin

Response from the original provocateur:

"RadicalModerate" wrote: It's not that I think Clintonco was just as bad as Bushco. Rather, Clintonco would have been as bad as Bushco given a similar set of circumstances. There are three major differences: The 90's were truly a "vacation from history." The economy literally ran itself and sizeable foreign policy blunders had no consequences until Clinton was out of office. Bushco has certainly not had that luxury. Divided government is accountable government. Clinton benefitted hugely from having the GOP nipping at his heels. In other words, he was forced to have the most open government in history by his political enemies. Bushco got to run open-loop for 6 years because his own party wouldn't investigate him. While I'm sure I will indulge in much eye-rolling over the next 2 years, the fact that the relationship between Congress and the Executive is once again adversarial will vastly improve Bushco and the Congress. I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but the single mistake of invading Iraq the wrong way has warped all subsequent foreign policy. I'd like to think that Clinton would have been wise enough to avoid this decision but frankly I don't know. The man certainly had his own "wag the dog" propensities when backed up against the wall. Woozle responds: Point #1 I am skeptical of. So the whole Balkan thing isn't part of history now? Oh, wait, you mean it isn't part of history because we didn't screw up terribly, leaving a distinct absence of huge wounds in the national psyche which will take decades to heal, so nobody really remembers it, so it doesn't count? I doubt that's the only example of "history" in progress during the 1990s. (Clinton also made some of what I would consider mistakes, e.g. signing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law; I don't hear you mentioning that, but I'd have to say that was history too.) Point #2: Oh come on! Clinton, from the very start, was all about Town Meetings and listening to ordinary citizens to find out what they wanted to see the government doing, and talking extensively about what he was doing and why, and opening the process so everyone could see the proof. He didn't have to start the most massive declassification in history, and it certainly wasn't at the GOP's insistence that he did so. (WTF?). Bush has been completely the opposite, sheltering himself from all but his closest advisors. If Clinton been Bush Jr. in disguise, he would have spent his first 2 unopposed years in office (before the neocons took over) classifying and hiding everything the way Bush has done, and he would have responded to the first sign of threat by clamping down even further. Point #3: "single mistake"?? Iraq is a series of mistakes a mile long, and even now Bush wants to add another surge of them. He also made plenty of other mistakes, some of them quite possibly deliberate.

David Brin said on 2007-03-15:

[Clinton's perjury] is far worse than relentless firehose tsunamis of relentlessly shameful lying about matters of PUBLIC POLICY and LIFE and DEATH? Bush and Cheney and Powell lie to the entire world and to the American people, in order to get us to waste a trillion dollars, ten thousand of our own lives, half a million foreign lives, destroy our alliances, our readiness, our world trust... ...but none of those are REALLY bad lies BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T PERPETRATED UNDER OATH? Sorry, wrong. They WERE perpetrated under oath. An oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.

in Contrary Brin

Brin goes on to point out that this argument is pure sophistry in any case, as it is equivalent to saying that FDR is a worse war criminal than Hitler because FDR signed orders creating Japanese internment camps during WWII, while Hitler never actually signed the orders creating Auschwitz. (Is there a name for this logical fallacy?)

Links

• 2006-09-26
  • 'Tucker' for Sept. 26: more discussion of Clinton's interview ("The former president lost control of himself famously during a FOX interview on Sunday."), with Terry McAuliffe (former DNC chairman) defending Clinton and attacking Bush; Tucker seems to take a sympathetic stand but comes up with things like "eight years of negligence on the part of the Clinton administration".
  • Arguments for your obstinate uncle...: some more comparison points (by Russ Daggatt, with some Brin commentary)
  • Bill Clinton's Fox News interview (alternate transcription (partial))
    • Keith Olbermann comments ("A textbook definition of cowardice"):
      • Points out that (a) Clinton did try to do something about Bin Laden, (b) Clinton was indeed distracted by the Lewinsky scandal, and (c) The distractions of 1998 and 1999 (Lewinsky and other scandalous trivia) were manufactured by the same people who got George W. Bush elected President.