Conservatism Unravels, Part Five

For "Part Four, see:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2008/12/conservatism-unravels-part-four.html

With the Republicans (including many new, what I called, "fire breathing conservatives") in control of Congress, Clinton and his administration developed a basic political strategy which came to be called "triangulation." With liberals on the outs in Congress, it gave Clinton the chance to move more rightward. Clinton, ever the politician, saw that the Republicans had ideas that were, at least in principle, favored by many Americans, including many folks who identified themselves as Democrats. Congressional Republicans would propose legislation, and the left wing of the Democratic delegation would offer counter proposals, but Clinton would frequently take something of both proposals and offer his own third plan (thus "triangulation"). Clinton aimed to take as many issues off the table for Republicans as possible, while garnering as much of the credit for himself as possible. Welfare reform was passed and signed into law by the President.*** Earlier, Clinton had proposed special funds to be distributed to local communities for law enforcement, with the aim of increasing the number of police by 100,000 nationally to combat the crime rate. This was almost the perfect "triangulation," as it used federal money (favored by liberals), but gave that money to local governments (favored by conservatives). A fair number of law enforcement people hopped on the Clinton bandwagon, thus nibbling away at a loyal Republican constituency. The crime rate did drop, but furious Republicans couldn't wait to dismantle the program after Clinton left office.

During Clinton's time in office, the economy revived, and in fact, boomed, but underlying all of this was much speculative behavior, especially in Internet and related businesses. Further, gradually American based manufacturing took some hits from the foreign trade deals. With the Cold War essentially over, Clinton was able to shift money around to other areas (some would say that he neglected the military too much, and that's a worthy debate, but it also has to be remembered that Republicans controlled Congress for six of Clinton's eight years, so any blame must be shared). Another benefit for Clinton was that energy prices tended to be pretty low during his terms in office; that is, until about his last year, as then prices began to creep up. There's no question that centrist Clinton, advised by Wall Streeter Robert Rubin, bought into a lot of the deregulation concepts, and it was on his watch that many banking safeguards from the Depression were regrettably removed by the Republican Congress.

The various Clinton scandals (including sex scandals) and investigations hurt Clinton's presidency (AND the country), but like Houdini, Clinton escaped removal from office, but interestingly and ironically two of his Republican critics did not survive, as both Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston resigned for sex scandals of their own. Hmm, maybe "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?" Well known Henry Hyde, a congressman from Illinois, and former Democrat turned Republican, was also involved in a sex scandal, but remained in office.

To be continued....

***Many on the Left were highly critical of many of the reforms, and of Clinton for signing the legislation. One of their main criticisms was that the two year limitation on benefits would prove to be too stringent. With the economy now in massive contraction, we may find out if they were correct. The overall issue of welfare had been a bug-a-boo for Democrats for quite some time. To hear Republicans tell it, even decades ago, the whole problem with U.S. budget deficits was because of welfare. There's no question that, to the Republicans' credit, the situation with welfare got out of hand, but the idea that it was at the root of virtually every problem, including the budget deficits, was nonsense. Many on the Right trumpet VA benefits, which is in many ways a form of welfare. I'm for helping veterans, but again, it comes down to how far you go.

Word Histories:
Was-past tense verb form-This much used word goes back to Indo European root "wes," which had a concept of "remain, dwell." The Old Germanic offshoot continued with this meaning as "wesanan." The developing Germanic dialects continued forms of the word: Old Saxon had "wesan," Old Norse had "vesa," Old Frisian "wesa," Gothic "wisan," Old High German "wesen," and Old English had "wesan," which meant "to remain." The first and third person singular form in Old English: "waes," which eventually became "was," and supplied English with the past form of "to be." Modern German has the related "war" (pronounced "vahr") for "was," and "Wesen," a noun meaning "being, existence, essence."