Bill Clinton certainly had his flaws as a President. He was a militant free trader, who used all of his political skills to win support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, permanent normalization of trade policy with China and a host of other initiatives that slowly but surely kicked the legs out from under American workers, communities and industries. His welfare, education and telecommunications reforms were bumbling at best, and more often malignant. He showed only slightly more respect for the Constitution than the current president, and his military misadventures and meddling in the affairs of other countries suggest that he had no respect at all for George Washington’s warning about avoiding “foreign entanglements.”
But Clinton’s presidency saw significant progress on some fronts, including the signing of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, a tax increase that reversed the growth in federal deficits that had ballooned during the spending-spree presidency of Ronald Reagan, the nation’s last minimum-wage increase and a period of economic growth that lasted long enough to actually begin to modestly improve the circumstance of the country’s poor. The relative health of the economy during the second term of his presidency surely contributed to the 65 percent approval rating that Clinton took with him when he left the White House, which represented the highest end-of-term enthusiasm level for any President in the post-Eisenhower era.
Clinton remains a beloved figure in many circles, and that surely accounts for the substantial continuing interest in the former president and his life – and interest that has created something of a tourist boom for tiny Hope, Arkansas, the community where the 42nd president grew up.
Last week, the U.S. House voted on a perfunctory measure authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to designate the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site and unit of the National Park System. It is notable that, at a time when Republicans are banging away on critics of the Bush administration for not respecting the office of the presidency, the vote was not the unanimous show of approval that might have been expected.
Republican members of the House forced a roll-call vote — extremely rare on such matters — and a dozen of them then voted against so honoring Clinton’s birthplace.
The “no” votes came from Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Florida’s Ginny Brown-Waite, Utah’s Chris Cannon, California’s John Doolittle, Virginia’s Virgil Goode, Oklahoma’s Ernest Istook, Texan Ron Paul, Pennsylvania’s Bill Shuster, Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland and North Carolinians Virginia Foxx, Walter Jones and Patrick McHenry.
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Ron Paul gets a pass. The former Libertarian Party presidential candidate is against just about everything the government does.
Give Walter Jones a pass, as well. He’s a principled critic of the free-trade policies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations, who says, “If it had been a historic site for George W. Bush, I would have voted against it. I’ve seen this country outsource jobs and outsource security. I can’t even get money for people of my district.”
But what about the rest of these “no” voters? Were they just so offended by Clinton’s personal transgressions that they could not bring themselves to help a little town in southwest Arkansas stir up some tourism?
Istook’s spokesman said the congressman “has never been a big fan of Bill Clinton” – which was, at least, honest. But many of the other members suggested that they had ethical problems with Clinton.
“There are a lot of things to be concerned about, but designating this as a historic site is a joke,” growled McHenry, who said of Clinton: “history has not made a final judgment on his presidency,” and then added as an aside: “Maybe it should be a landmark. He is only the second president to be impeached.”
Brown-Waite, who forced the roll-call vote on the designation, grumbled that: “(Clinton) has some explaining to do.”
Frankly, this is an interesting crew to set itself up as the defenders of political virtue and elective ethics.
Indeed, we could be looking at something of a “people-who-live-in-glass-houses” scenario here, considering the fact that:
• Doolittle’s name has been more closely associated with that of Jack Abramoff, the GOP “super lobbyist” who pleaded guilty to three felony corruption charges in January, than any member of the House except DeLay and Ohio Republican Bob Ney, accepted more than $100,000 in contributions from the lobbyist and his clients. Doolittle wrote letters and contacted federal agencies on behalf of those clients. The congressman has, as well, been linked to San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, who has been implicated in the November bribery conviction of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
• Istook took $29,000 from Abramoff and his lobbying partners and, according to the Associated Press, repeatedly signed letters on behalf of Abramoff clients after accepting those contributions.
• Shuster had to give away campaign contributions from Abramoff and his associates after the scandal blew up.• Westmoreland accepted more than $15,000 from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC, was a leader in efforts to apply ethics standards to DeLay and has been repeatedly linked to “K Street Project” concerns. Westmoreland is, as well, a close ally Abramoff-tied lobbyist Ralph Reed, and an active supporter of Reeds campaign for lieutenant governor of Georgia this year.
• Foxx also accepted $15,000 from DeLay’s ARMPAC and also voted to weaken House ethics rules in order to protect her mentor.
• Blackburn’s another major recipient of DeLay’s largesse and a loyal ally of the indicted ex-leader, having contributed $5,000 to DeLay’s legal defense fund. McHenry’s one of DeLay’s biggest defenders in the House, having declared after the Texan’s legal troubles arose that, “I think in this situation Tom DeLay has become a whipping post for all the liberals in Washington.”
• Brown-Waite took $20,000 from DeLay’s ARMPAC, voted to weaken the ethics rules, contributed to DeLay’s legal defense fund. She also met with Abramoff and took money from his clients.
• Cannon took thousands of dollars from associates of Abramoff and then actually hired one of them, David Safavian, to be his chief of staff.
• Goode, along with his friend Duke Cunningham, has been linked to the defense contractor MZM – the company accused of bribing Cunningham with millions of dollars in exchange for defense contracts. Goode recently donated $88,000 in political contributions he had received from MZM and its associates to charity. According to a USA Today investigation: “In more than 30 instances, donations from MZM’s political action committee or company employees went to two members of the House Appropriations Committee — Cunningham and Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. — in the days surrounding key votes or contract awards that helped MZM grow.”
