How do we fit in the Clinton policy of using executive branch regulations and lawsuits to punish organizations/companies that he did not like? (and possibly to drive them out of business)
He did this to:
- the handgun industry
- Microsoft (Al Gore went there to raise funds in 1996 but did not collect any).
Obvious questions:
- Were the lawsuits/legal actions designed to force companies to pay 'protection money' to Democrat campaign organizations?
- Were the lawsuits/legal actions designed to force companies to not contest a union action?
Oh, come on. I don't suppose we'd be willing to accept the canonical reasons for actions against such companies - namely "guns kill people" and "Microsoft is a monopoly"? You may not agree with either of those statements, but I don't see any reason to look for hidden motives here - these are precisely the sort of things democrats have a reputation of disagreeing with, so it's no surprise they took action against them.
What is questionable is whether or not the executive branch took legal action that could not be won just to bankrupt the target industry/company.
Unions do this to non-union shops. see Salting
In the 1992 election, the other high-profile candidates were incumbent
George Bush (Republican
?) and [Ross Perot]
? (Reform
?). In 1996 it was [Bob Dole]
? (Republican
?) and again [Ross Perot]
? (Reform
?).
- Maybe there should be a page for each election, e.g. us/Election1992?, us/Election1994?, etc.
- I agree, but think harder about what to call the pages. See naming conventions. --LS
- Also, Perot was certainly "high-profile" in 1992, but in the 1996 election, he was no more so than Ralph Nader (Green), and received fewer votes and less press coverage. --LDC
Statements like "the most controversial [Presidential Pardon]
? in US history" should probably be left till more than 4 weeks after the event. --
Gareth Owen
- I totally agree! -- LS
- And it can't ever be true anyway; Ford's pardon of Nixon caused much more of a stir. And "...one of the most popular presidents in history..."? Please. I don't think his approval polls ever got much above 70%. That's not something that's really possible to ever quantify, but certainly he was never anywhere near FDR or JFK on that scale. You young folks just don't remember that far back. :) --LDC
- The following information should be massively and fairly rewikified and refactored and then reinjected into the main page.
RE: Controversial Pardon. Excuse me for being an ignorant European, but what exactly happened?? -- WojPob
The PresidentOfTheUnitedStates has the power, under the UnitedStatesConstitution, to pardon people for crimes committed.
- ...or even crimes they haven't committed! --LDC
Clinton critics argue that Clinton's many last-minute pardons were more political than those of the past, and in some cases are baffling except in light of large donations to Clinton campaigns.
Clinton supporters can no doubt point to many other highly political pardons in history, including for example Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. I'm sure that in the entire sordid history of politics, there have been many other cases of apparent pardons for money.
Clinton was considered by some to be the most Machiavellian president of the United States often using presidential powers to decrease the focus on troublesome scandals. He ordered the bombing of Kosovo the day of the Monica Lewinsky impeachment vote and bombed an asprin factory in Sudan to cover up ? He used whatever was politically expedient to further his policies such as observing Confederate? Day while govenor of Arkansas and then condeming Confederate? flags while president.
Bill Clinton was a two (more?) time governor of the state of Arkansas.
Major legislation he signed:
- Balanced budget
- Welfare Reform - vetoed twice - signed the third time
- NAFTA - the previous president George Bush, was largely responsible for getting NAFTA enacted
- Tax increase on Social Security recipients
- Minimum wage increase
SupremeCourt appointments:
Major legislation he vetoed:
Major legislation he failed to get passed through Congress:
- Actually, although a significant fraction of Americans wanted a system like that, others, wary of a large complex system did not, and what Hillary Clinton and all the conferences etc. ended up with was a difficult-to-summarize public/private mish-mash.
- Social Security Reform - He appointed a committee on Social Security Reform and then dismissed their recommendations.
- So was legislation ever proposed?
Didn't he also create (have something to do with creating) the AmeriCorps
?. These people do good stuff, imho. Then there is all the stuff about national health care, nafta, welfare reform, increasing money for student loans ... lots more than the scandal happened. He was also the governor of Arkansas a few times. (this page entails lots of hmwk) --
PhillipHankins
Clinton's compromises on environmental and social issues were a great disappointment to the more progressive and/or radical types who vote Democrat sometimes. However, he did promote dialogue on race issues during his presidency, both in speeches and with a small budget.
See also:
- UnitedStatesGovernment1992?
- UnitedStatesGovernment1994?
- UnitedStatesGovernment1996?
- UnitedStatesGovernment1998?
Wouldn't it be nice to have (is there already) a short standard for nations? There's one that's used for internet domains, us = United States, ca = Canada, etc. Then we could use us/Democrat? (then a us/Democrat? page redirects to UnitedStates/DemocraticParty? i guess).
- No, I don't think so. Such standards are too hard to formulate and extremely fallible, as well as being anti-wiki generally. Just let things develop naturally first, anyway, and see what happens a few months or years down the road. -- Larry Sanger
- The standard already exists, it's an ISO thing, the internet country TLDs use it.
- Here's an interesting bug. There's patches at UseMod:UseMod/Bugs? that look like they might fix it: The BlueQuestionMark? after us/Democrat? points to a page to edit [William Jefferson Clinton/Democrat]? (the SubPage? uses this page as the base page instead of "us"). I'm tempted to create a us page and a us/Democrat? page to check, but i don't want to mess up the database.
- us/Democrat? is not recognized as a link; /Democrat? is. You can use square brackets to make us/Democrat? a link.
- But please don't start in on a "US" page...there's already a United States page.
- If i did it would get redirected :-) --JohnAbbe
This would focus on parties as organizations in separate nations, although there are *sometimes* transnational commonalities in purpose between same-named parties. I guess there could then be a separate DemocraticParty? or [Democratic Party]? page (we need easier ways to create redirect pages -- is anyone coding a Wiki:WikiBrowser? yet? I'll pay real $$ for a GPL'd one that runs on OS X.)
- Renaming is something that system administrators can do. We're just exploring it now. And please, do use Free Links rather than that ugly old mashed together style of linking, which looks silly. -- Larry Sanger
But i digress. The more pertinent question i have is, where are the WikipediaStandardsDiscussions?? --JohnAbbe
- See Wikipedia policy. We've been discussing all this stuff a lot...don't reinvent the wheel. :-)
Thanks! --JohnAbbe
could someone make the history of his presidency less about "Deomocrats..." "Republicans....", and more like the presidential histories you read about presidents like John F. Kennedy, Truman, FDR, Teddy, etc. etc. etc. this reads like a history of the American two party system during the last decade of the 20th century.
I totally agree. --
LMS
I do not agree; at least not totally. First, it is impossible to write anything like the presidential histories of Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, etc. because the Clinton presidency is simply too recent for its historical significance to be judged.
Second, the impact of the Clinton presidency on American politics is not unimportant; although I agree that in the current article it seems overemphasized, I believe that is mainly because the article is so incomplete in its treatment of other topics. - HWR
Not very Pro Clinton - Created the "unofficial" Clinton at:
This might be useful -
The Clinton Presidency and the Crisis of Democracy - by Howard Zinn
Actually, the NY Times article says the following: 'The Bill Clinton entry, for instance, said in late August he was "a two (more?) time governor of the state of Arkansas." Within two weeks it was updated to reflect the years he served as governor. (He served six two-year terms, or 12 years over a 14-year period.)' Our article says he served two terms as governor of Arkansas. --KQ
Why have several links been deleted and replaced by others in the latest version? --Robert Merkel