So your defense boils down to Bill Clinton is an old guy that does more good than most people? We can all agree on that.

Are you saying you didn't wince just a little at various times during this campaign at things he's said?

I'll agree that Clinton is the best president of my lifetime (of all 4 presidents I've experienced), and that he is without a doubt one of the premier politicians alive (with all the savvy, policy accumen, etc. that implies). Politically, he tracked more to the center than I would have liked, and I certainly don't agree with everything from his administration -- but I do respect that he was an able president and did admirable service to the country during his tenure.

Nonetheless, I think he has stepped out of bounds a few times this primary season, and I do think it's fair to call him on it. Your post has noble intensions, but ultimately seems to suggest we can't fault Clinton now because he was a decent president then. The logic strikes me as the sort that prompts Republicans to say things like, "Don't insult President Bush, he's still your president and you must respect the office!"

Can you see how some may not agree with that position?

It truly is astonishing what Bill is still able to accomplish for the greater good, while all the while living the life of a mendicant, and being forced to scrape by on a mere Hundred million dollars in income.

Instead of always picking on Kindly Old Bill, why don't you lot try and scrape by on $200, 000.00 speech fees from needy trade cartels, and bashful robber barons, instead of casting aspersions.

I don't think Clinton's a bad guy, down deep, but his ego has gotten in the way of his political instincts. He didn't shoot himself in the foot in eight years as he has in the last six months (on political issues, leaving aside the Great Unmentionable). It's not a good idea to have a former president who is this invested in a primary in his own party. I don't remember Old Man Bush getting this wrapped up in the 2000 GOP primary, I could be wrong. Of course it didn't drag on this long.

One_wilson

I think you raise a reasonable defense for Bill.

I don't think it would be as easy for Hillary.

Bill Clinton? A good guy?

Maybe you should take a look at his association with the Saudis. You thought GWB was bad?
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/01/saudi-investments-in-bill-and-hillary.html

Now, I hear utterances like "...sad...", or "You're better than this". I don't like these condescending insinuations, not least because they sound CANNED to me - the sort of thing that would be covertly e-mailed around as a kind of "acceptible" way to shiv the former President.

Sorry, you lost me at this. It's just a dumb, paranoid charge. There is not some secret list server where we Obama supporters coordinate our responses to posts on TPM (Ummm, right guys? Or . . . is it that there one and you didn't invite me? *snif*)

Look, it is sad, he is better than he's shown himself to be in this campaign and it just plain makes many of us who stuck for him in the 90s ill to see him acting the way he's acted over the last year. Since Iowa, he and Hillary have behaved like their on a mission to validate the 1990s Republican caricature of them and its as disconcerting as it is discouraging. Even more so because the more she acts like the caricature, the better the Republicans seem to like her.

Bill Clinton is to me the finest President of my life-time.

Well, depending on how old you are, that could be a pretty low bar!

You also need to define what you mean by "finest". In what area?

Now, it's true that unlike the GOP, he managed to reduce government size -- a worthy accomplishment that Reagan and GWB couldn't manage (but claimed wanted to).

However, if you talk about inspirational, he pales against Ronald Reagan. That doesn't mean you have to like Reagan, but you have to look at the facts. (For example, even today, with the worst polling numbers ever, nearly 1 out of 3 Americans *approve* of GWB!)

Bill Clinton quickly squandered the excited, hip feeling that his supporters had and got him into office (in a narrow victory, and likely because of a strong 3rd party candidate). By 1996, he wasn't the excited choice of many... but he was okay.

However, every day is a new day to redeem or demean yourself.

Bill Clinton's behavior for the past 5 months has ruined whatever ideas I had of him in the past. He feels he is just as entitled to the White House as Hillary.

This is why dynasty politics needs to end.

Let Bill play on the world stage as Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have. That should be enough. It's more than most of us will ever get.

Bill can seriously go sit on a railroad spike. This guy is not afraid to throw people out the window if it suits his political needs. With the signing of the Defense of Marriage Act, he did more damage to gay rights than George W. Bush has. And of course, he encouraged Kerry to throw the gays out the window during the 2004 campaign also.

As I get older, I increasingly find Bill's ethics and morales to become more and more questionable.

You are on an Obama blog and pointing out that Bill Clinton was the greatest President in our lifetime is completely lost on Obamites. They have a crush on their hero and slime anyone against him in the most negative campaign in our nations history. They love to cheer madly while their media shills call Hillary a F*cking Wh*re at Obama fundraisers. They are all losers and that is why so many Hillary supporters would vote McCain in the general if Obama somehow wins. Don't worry, Hillary kicked his ass again tonight and will easily win the popular vote. You should be asking them-
What was it you did not like about the Clinton years, was it the Peace or the Prosperity?

One huge MISTAKE of Bill Clinton is his dismantling of the financial regulatory structures set up to protect us from the current mess in Wall St., and believe me, taxpayers' money are bailing out the white collar criminals to the tune of possibly 1 trillion (i.e. the floor as some economists are predicting). No, you won't see that as a "bill", it will come in the form of shocking inflation, and you'd be told it's instability in thye Middle East, rising demand from China/India, etc., a bunch of BS. The truth about Inflation is that it's a form of invisible tax, it's massively issuing $$$ thereby devaluing the $, punishing savers and wage-earners. The Fed prints the money and "pumps" it into the economy (and they don't even release M3 money supply figures anymore), the top cats spend it, more $$$ chase the same finite amount of goods, the $ plunges. Oil has quadrupled in price and possibly going to $200, it means at least 4 times the paper $ have been released into the global economy, accumulated and spent by the billionaire industrialists, bankers and financiers in Wall St., exchanged for something with real value and tucked away in safe havens around the world. It means all our dollar-denominated savings and some assets have been shaved away of 75% of its value, as well as our wages. You can thank Bill Clinton for getting rid of Glass-Steagall, for giving the *private* banking entity aka. The Fed and the wealthiest guys in the world who make deals in smoke-filled rooms a leg up over the "people".

Great post. Don't worry about the Clinton haters. Just ask them, "So what didn't you like about the Clinton years? The peace or the prosperity?"

The difference between the Bill Clinton we're seeing now and the Bill Clinton we've seen previously is not related to age or health or him losing his touch.

HE JUST SUCKS AT LOSING!!!!

He hasn't been part of a losing election since 1980 and we didn't get to see that one unless we lived in Arkansas. When he's winning, he's very charming and magnanimous. He's supremely talented. But he's part of a campaign that's been getting its ass regularly kicked over the past few months, is clearly NOT going to result in a nomination, and his feelings are hurt. And he's a sore loser. I can't say I'd be any better, but so what - I don't have to be.

For the first black president to be losing to the first black president has just gotta SUCK for the first black president.

In my lifetime, I think these presidents have been better overall for the country than Clinton: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford.

Carter was a much more effective president on the environment. Carter passed real reform. Clinton couldn't get his BTU tax passed, and worked on the periphery.

Kennedy and Johnson did far more for civil rights.

Eisenhower did far more for the infrastructure

Just about any president (except Bush 2 and Nixon) has had a more ethical administration. Including Johnson who lied about Tonkin.

Ford healed the country (and lost re-election for it) while Clinton helped to divide the country as it has never been divided since the Civil War.

Clinton's claims to fame are peace and the economy. The Cold War had ended. The US was dominant. Yet Clinton did not lay down the framework for real peace, did he, as distracted by his prick and its aftereffects, he allowed Al-Qaida to thrive.

So we are left with the economy, in which he played a role but probably not a decisive one. Presidents have much less to do with the economy than dot-com booms and busts, sub-prime crises, interest rates, computerization, productivity, and the ever-present business cycle. He started with a recession that was ending by itself and ended with a recession for Bush 2.

His deregulation has probably caused more long-lasting damage than his economic prowess.

I voted for the guy twice and supported him and his really stupid recklessness against all critics I knew. They now tell me I told you so and I have to agree.

One last point here, probably my last: I am not a "liberal", at least in the current conotation of the word. I hope that may clarify a few things about my opinions.

I am a centrist, moderate, DNC dem., "new" Dem. - take your pick. I like to think of myself as results-oriented and practical. I generally believe in the free-market, private-oriented approach to things. I tend to believe (along with about 50% of the American public, last time I checked) that good results can be obtained by compromise somewhere in the middle part of the spectrum that places liberals on the left, and conservatives on the right. I tend to vote with the party that I think has a better purchase on that center - that is where real things happen, real lives get improved, and real problems get ameliorated.

I actually voted Republican fairly often until 1988. I thought that for a while before that, they were more balanced and rational in their views and attitudes, and Democrats were off the beam on too many wooly-headed tangents. The Reagan years convinced me that the Democrats had once again become the party of good sense, and I swung back.

8 years of peace and prosperity. Seems like such a long time ago. Most folks here probably dont remember that. The Republicans made a conscious effort to unseat a rightfully elected president. Lots of good reading about that, Newt Gingrich was the ring leader. So, when I see the vile hatred aimed at Senator Clinton, it reminds me of the Republican Hate machine. In fact, most of the talking points I see hear about Senator Clinton seem to have been lifted from Free Republic and Lucienne.com. Sad and misguided.

Bill Clinton, who basked in the limelight of being called a consummate politician (and a lawyer, by the way), didn't have the good sense to say, when first asked about Monica Lewinsky, "Yes, she gave me a blow job, and I allowed it. She is of age, and anything more that needs to be said about this needs only to be said between me, Ms. Lewinsky, and my wife. I won't be commmenting on this any more."

And the Republicans in the House and Senate would have gotten their backs up, farted dust, and consulted among themselves in a little snit and ultimately would have done nothing, because they would have had nothing legal to do. No impeachment, no screwjob, and Starr pretty much stumped for what to stick his snotty little nose into next. That's Clinton's strike one.

Add Jennifer Flowers, strike two. Add Paula Jones, strike three. Add the other woman whose name escapes me, and he's playing ball by the kiddy rules to stay at bat.

Then take all the ways that he pandered to the right in his campaigning and the way he jerked the party to the right to get elected at all, and as far as I'm concerned he's got more strikes than I care to count.

A democrat for capital punishment? Good god. NAFTA? What a piece of shit. Go look into his pardons, if you can stand the smell. We had better candidates than Slick Willie, and he pandered and triangulated his way past them all. We got something called a Democrat elected that would have been called a Republican when I was a kid. Governor Milliken of Michigan was more of a Democrat than Bill Clinton, and he was a centrist Republican.