I Miss Bill

Just to make it clear, I never voted for Bill Clinton. I'm an unabashed conservative and always have been. OK, there was that one mental lapse when I voted for JFK. All I can say is that I was young, newly married, and confused. Since then I have been more consistent.

I didn't agree with much of what was being done in Washington during the Clinton years. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me when good old Bill announced that we had elected co-Presidents. That he intended to share the top office with Hillary. It became the Bill and Hill show. I remember their cute little trick to bolster support for their programs. Everything was "for the children". I guess that was the teaspoon of sugar that was supposed to help us swallow the bitter pill of reality.

Hillary and her friend Ira went off and invented "Hillarycare". Which was like Obamacare but without the salesmanship. But for the most part those days were good times. Bill liked to take to the podium and speechify. But he didn't have a daily elitist lecture from someplace out at the end of an Air Force One trip. Bill had that good old country boy image down pat and he worked at it.

After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center Clinton bemoaned the fact that there was never a crisis during his administration that made him look like a strong leader. That strikes me as a strange thing to place on your wish list. But, the fact is, that he had the original World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the USS Cole to deal with. Both incidents were given a rather tepid response. So he actually did have his chance.

For entertainment purposes, we had the ongoing White House soap opera. It was not exactly what we had come to expect from Presidential behavior, but a hound is a hound. So, all in all, a pretty good eight years. And I wish we had them back.

After six years of daily lectures, scandal, rancor, out of control government agencies, and a  D minus foreign policy, the American people are at the nadir of trust and faith in government. And with good reason. Leadership in both the country and the world has been abandoned. The Ship of State is rudderless, with torn sails, and a captain who has given up and never learned how to read a compass, anyway.

President Obama works on the theory that, if what your doing doesn't work, keep doing more of the same until it does work. We are all seeing how that is working out. The actual answer is so simple. Just take the big foot of oppressive government from the throat of American business, and things will blossom. Unfortunately that is so antithetical to Obama's basic beliefs that it will never happen as long as he is President.

I didn't think Bill Clinton was a particularly good President, but in comparison? Yeah, I'd take him back any day.