Here's how I see it from my limited time on the planet.
I'll start with Clinton. Many of his actions in office were lost on me since I was in jr. high and high school for most of his time in office. He screwed around with an intern and then lied about it to his wife and then to his whole country. Deplorable? Yes. Reason to be impeached? Yes, he lied under oath. Make him a bad president? No. One of the best things he did in office from my perspective was increased educational spending. As far as his administration raising government spending by 30% over his terms, the average rate of inflation in this country is approximately 4% a year give or take a touch. Is the figure adjusted for that inflation? If not his spending was right in line with inflation and should be commended, if not, what is it compared to other presidents? Taxes are how we pay for government actions. Without taxes we can't do anything such as support a military or Medicade. As far as being a dem or rep, I do consider myself a dem due to my lack of desire to be conservative in religious values, but other than that I'm completely open for anyone who can actually make a difference and not just run their head about this and that.
Bush I have quite a few more opinions on. I'll start with educational spending on him as well. "No child left behind" is the worst legislation to effect the education system in the country ever, IMO. It has destroyed free thinking and creativity. Teachers are forced to abandon original lessons and forms of education to teach to a MINIMUM SKILLS test. Is this seriously how we want the future of our country to turn out? A bunch of people that pass the minimum skills required by some congressman that went to prep school then ivy league? My wife is a teacher and I am a substitute teacher part time and all I can see is that these kids can add and subtract, spell and form sentences, and tell you the different parts of a cell, but couldn't problem solve their way out of a paper bag. Original thought is what our country is based on, for me I see free enterprise an off-shoot of this.
Now on to the war. I may back track some of the stuff I said in another thread, if I do, I apologize. Firstly I'll mention that the Bush administration gave as much notice to terror "intelligence" prior to 9/11 as the Clinton administration did, "let's keep an eye on it". There is always reports of this may happen and they might be planning this, but neither of these guys took these reports with much more than a noticing glance. Once 9/11 did happen, something needed to be done. I think no matter what side you are on you would agree with that. I see two major things that happened just about immediately after, the invasion of Iraq and the PATRIOT act. I'll start with the latter.
The PATRIOT act is and incredibly long and complex bill that I have never had the intestinal fortitude to read so I'll keep this topical. First off, if Toshiba had marketing directors as good as the guy who named this thing, HD-DVD would be kicking BD's *** all over the planet. It became a big sticking point whether you supported this act or not, seeing as Joe Sixpack would automatically call you a patriot if you did, and a traitor if you didn't. The reality of this piece of legislation is that it destroyed our civil liberties. Think you make private phone calls on your cell phone? Mention one of about 50 trigger words and it's automatically tapes. Think you or your house can't be searched without a warrant or probable cause? Try putting something online that the government might see as anti-American or even worse that they construe and helping the "enemy". Who makes the call on what is and isn't acceptable? Some people sitting in an office, probably near DC or Langley with the sense of humor of Sen. McCarthy. This is very saddening to me. While this act has gone a great distance to protect us from our collective adversaries, what has it done to protect the American people from the government? IMHO I feel that it has done more to destroy our freedoms than it has to protect us. I'll leave this at that.
As for the invasion of Iraq, Saddam was an evil man. He did many things in his life that I wish that I never even knew existed, but did he have anything to do with 9/11? Nope. None whatsoever. Were there terrorists in his country? Probably, there's a whole lot of empty area out there. Did he have intentions on attacking us? Some day, maybe, but as we found out afterwards, he lacked the means. Has the Iraq war done anything to waylay terrorists? Probably, they were forced to go into hiding and scatter to the wind. This is both good and bad. Good because there are fewer of them and are less organized, bad because finding them or any intelligence on their future plans will be even harder now since they are moving more and more to a "cell" type structure where only 5 people in the world knows what they are going to do.
Do I Clinton is better than Bush, sure. But I do take into account that Bush had a significantly tougher term in office, and I also think that through stubbornness on different stances Bush made it tougher on himself. I'll leave it there. Thanks for reading my treatise and I hope to hear what you guys have to say about this.
Mike
