Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Abandoning the Clinton Legacy:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_10-2009_05_16.shtml#1242140942
[1]Bill McGurn's column today suggests that the Obama Administration
has done more to repudiate the legacy of President Clinton than that
of President Bush. He writes:
there's a persuasive case that the legacy most threatened by the
Obama presidency belongs to the last Democrat who sat in the Oval
Office: Bill Clinton.
Think about it. It was Mr. Clinton who campaigned on the promise to
"end welfare as we know it." It was Mr. Clinton who signed the bill
removing the Glass-Steagall barriers separating commercial from
investment banking. Most famously, it was Mr. Clinton who assured
us that "the era of Big Government is over."
Today all the assumptions that once defined Bill Clinton's "New
Democrats" are being contested by the Obama White House. And
nowhere is the contrast more stark than on the defining issue of
trade.
I think (hope?) it's too early to judge the Obama Administration's
trade policy, but the point still stands. At the same time, the Obama
Administration has made only modest, often just cosmetic, changes to
the Bush Administration's counter-terror policies and is continuing
the Bush Administration's fiscal profligacy. Is this a fair
assessment?
References
1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124208471345908641.html
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