AlterNet Revisits the Legacy of Bill Clinton

15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World 

Bill Clinton remains one of America’s most popular presidents. A national poll last March by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found 56 percent of Americans had a clearly favorable view of Clinton.

...for more than a year before Hillary Clinton launched her latest presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has been selectively telling media outlets that he made some mistakes as president and might have acted otherwise. He's even tried to recast actual events and been taken to task by fact-checkers who recall his leading role in what became major crises, such as the 2008 global financial implosion.

What follows are 15 ways Bill Clinton’s presidency did not serve America or the world, and in many ways deepened and perpetuated the problems we face today. This article was prepared by AlterNet staff members Janet Allon, Michael Arria, Jan Frel, Tana Ganeva, Kali Holloway, Zaid Jilani, Adam Johnson, Steven Rosenfeld, Phillip Smith, Terrell Jermaine Starr and Carrie Weissman.

1. Prison-loving president. In May, on the heels of the unrest in Baltimore sparked by Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, Clinton apologized for locking too many people up. Thanks, Bill.

The 2.4 million people in prison and the 160,000 Americans serving life in prison largely because of his policies might be excused for not accepting Clinton's apology. Tag-teaming with ex-President Ronald Reagan, Clinton is the president most responsible for the mass incarceration of Americans on an epic scale. The gung-ho crime fighter-in-chief passed the single most damaging law with his omnibus federal crime bill in 1994, which included the infamous “three strikes” law (three felony convictions means a life sentence) and ensured that mandatory minimum sentences imprisoned even low-level, non-violent offenders for a long, long time.
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And the list carries on, all the way from 'Welfare-reform' to war: Always useful to revisit history, given that some in the electorate are too young to remember it, and given how selective and unreliable our memories tend to be.  Clinton may have run as a liberal*, but he certainly didn't govern as one as this piece reminds us.

Although yes, to be fair**, we should really judge Hillary on the basis of her own accomplishments, since she started a political career by parachuting into a safe Senate-seat in New York.  Unfortunately, I can't think of any.


* See ?  Selective Memory-Syndrome strikes again.

** Because that whole 'co-president' thing never happened, and it's not as if nostalgia for the 'nineties is the primary appeal of Hillary's bid for the presidency.