Opinion: If You Liked the Clinton Era, Vote GOP

(Nov. 1) -- Democrats can't defend Barack Obama's disappointing economic record (with its soaring unemployment rates and budget deficits), so they prefer to cite the "good old days" of the Clinton administration. In particular, they love to compare the prosperity and shrinking deficits of Bill Clinton's reign to the financial reverses that characterized the last two years under George W. Bush -- as if the choice between President Obama and his vociferous GOP critics amounted to a choice between Clinton and Bush.

But this nostalgic pitch ignores the sharp contrast between Clinton and Obama -- two Democratic presidents with radically different policies and priorities.

Clinton came to power as a centrist "New Democrat," pledging to avoid the big government excesses of an older generation of liberals. Obama campaigned for activist government with a host of new initiatives, welcoming comparisons with FDR.
In a much-quoted State of the Union address, Clinton announced that "the era of big government is over"; Obama insists the expansion of big government is just beginning.

Clinton pushed a pro-business agenda of deregulation and free trade; Obama bashes business and pledges to impose new regulation and a more protectionist trade policy.

Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and instituted "don't ask, don't tell'; Obama wants to repeal both.

Clinton worked with the Republican Congress to achieve welfare reform, ending a dysfunctional federal entitlement; Obama backs new and even more costly Washington entitlements, like the trillion-dollar health care bill.

Clinton dropped his plans for a government takeover of health care in face of ferocious public opposition; Obama rammed through an even more poorly designed "health care reform" and ignored the even more fervent resistance of an engaged electorate.

In the end, Clinton -- under pressure from a Republican Congress -- turned big deficits from the first president Bush into surpluses; Obama took moderate deficits from the second president Bush and tripled them.

No wonder news reports suggest that Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama, is the most popular campaigner for Democrats in this election cycle. Embattled candidates who want the current president to stay away because they fear close association with his unpopular record welcome President Clinton with enthusiasm and gratitude.

But those candidates fail to acknowledge that the turning point that saved Clinton's presidency came in November 1994, with the Republican sweep of the midterm elections.

Newt Gingrich and the "Contract with America" GOP captured 53 Democratic House seats and eight Democratic seats in the Senate.

Almost immediately, Clinton reoriented his presidency toward a strategy of "triangulation": positioning himself as the sensible centrist who stood midway between the aggressive conservatives who controlled Congress and his own stridently liberal Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. Abandoning the activism and sweeping goals that characterized the first two years of his presidency, Clinton rediscovered his identity as a New Democrat and governed successfully for the next six years as a pragmatic centrist.

Ironically, the projected GOP gains on Tuesday almost exactly match the results from 16 years ago, and would provide Obama with the same opportunity to shift to the center that enabled Clinton to win his most notable political and budgetary successes. Of course, many observers view Obama as an ideologue and true believer who would never display Clintonian flexibility in reorienting his agenda.

But for those members of the public who truly yearn for the Clinton years, that means returning to the policies and politics of the Clinton years -- and blocking Obama's calamitous lurch to the left. In that sense, a sweeping Republican victory in the congressional elections will provide the current incumbent with his only real chance of replicating Clinton's record.

In other words, there's only one way to cast a vote for triumphant Clintonism in this election cycle: by backing the candidates of the GOP, to provide a much-needed balance and a potential fresh start to the troubled administration that is failing and flailing in Washington.