It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Twenty-Five

"The Democrats Return To the White House: Bill Clinton"

Bill Clinton took the oath of office in January 1993. To deal with the Federal deficit, Clinton decided to increase revenues; that is, taxes, mainly on the highest incomes in the land. This went totally against the conservative Republican idea of supply side economics that had been pushed since Ronald Reagan had taken office. Republicans predicted the end of the world to be near, but President Clinton stuck to his general plan. By the summer of 1993 the plan had passed and been signed into law, all without the vote of even one Republican in either house of Congress. Politically folks, this is very risky business, for if the end of the world scenario developed, Republicans could all say, "We told you so," but on the other hand, if no such demise appeared on the horizon, and if the deficit shrank and the economy picked up,* Republicans could not claim to have had anything to do with it, El Zilcho.

The plan passed and signed into law raised taxes on the top 1.2%, added about four cents to the gasoline tax, while cutting taxes for millions of lower income Americans and small businesses. President Clinton had difficulty holding enough Democratic votes to get the measure passed, as some Democrats defected, but pass it did, by just two votes in the House and by one vote in the Senate, that margin provided by Vice President Al Gore, who was permitted by the Constitution to break a tie vote in the Senate. Wealthy Republicans undoubtedly awaited the end of the world scenario by thinking along the lines of Thurston Howell III, of "Gilligan's Island" fame, who, when faced with what he believed was their imminent demise, implored his wife to help him figure out a way to take their tremendous wealth with them. More on the economy later.

Then Clinton took on another contentious issue, health care. Hillary Clinton headed a committee to put together a plan to provide national health care to Americans. The large and complex plan was highly popular for about a week or two, as Republicans and insurance companies picked the plan apart and successfully scared the hell out of Americans, and the whole matter brought even more scrutiny to Hillary Clinton. Polls showed the plan's popularity fell like a rock, and eventually it couldn't make it through Congress, even though Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate. Politically, the lasting effects of the failure, plus scandal charges against the Clintons, hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. (I'll cover the scandals in the next part.)

Gun control was also a hot topic and Congress passed the "Brady Bill," which required background checks on gun purchases. The bill was named for Ronald Reagan's press secretary, who was seriously wounded during the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. The former president wrote an editorial supporting passage of the bill, although the National Rifle Association strongly opposed it. So Ronald Reagan supported some gun control.

Then the North American Free Trade Agreement, better known by its initials, NAFTA, became the next heated discussion. The agreement was highly complex, but it essentially made a trade bloc of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by eliminating trade and investment barriers between those countries. On this issue, Clinton and all the living former presidents supported passage, but the bill terribly divided Democrats, and it took free trade Republicans to provide the votes in Congress to pass.** It also brought Ross Perot to the fore again, as the former presidential candidate opposed the agreement. In a highly touted television debate with Vice President Al Gore, watched by millions of Americans, Perot made points, but he had difficulty explaining many things, especially where money was coming from to oppose the agreement and in refuting the charge by Gore that Perot stood to make financial gain from the defeat of the agreement.

In the midst of all of these hot-button issues came another, a social issue. Clinton supported allowing gay and lesbian Americans to serve in the military, provided they kept their sexual orientation secret, but the military could not ask about their orientation either. Clinton's stand satisfied few, but especially on the political right, where any attempt to allow gay people to legally serve in the military was opposed. The provisions came to be known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." 

Next, "Republicans Come Roaring Back"

* The recession of 1990-91 may have officially ended in 1991, but the recovery was painfully slow, with layoffs continuing for quite some time. The slow growth and relatively high unemployment contributed greatly to George Bush's defeat in 1992 at the hands of Bill Clinton, who was more than happy to remind voters of such with one of his campaign slogans, "It's the economy, stupid," 

** The living former presidents at the time were: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush (Sr.). The complexity of the measure would require an article of its own just to begin to explain it. In the vote in both houses of Congress, more Republicans voted in favor than Democrats, many of whom were correctly (in my opinion) concerned about the impact on American manufacturing jobs. Unions generally strongly opposed the agreement. 

WORD HISTORY:
Cloud-This is another word closely related to recently covered "clod, clot, clout, cloth, clothes, clothe," and also to "clad," by the way, which I didn't cover separately, but which was the past tense and participle form of "clothe," although it is still used today as in, "The lady was well clad in a brand new dress," and often in combination with "scantily," as in "The scantily clad sunbathers shocked some people."  Like its relatives listed above, "cloud" goes back to Indo European "gleuh," which had the notion of "stick together, adhere," with the further sense, "form into a ball." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "klaut," with the same general meanings.The sense "form into a ball or mass" helped give Old English "clud," which then meant "mass of rock/stone." By the 1200s the word was beginning to overtake the English word for "cloud," which was "wolcen" (German still has "Wolke," Low German Saxon has "Wulk," Dutch and West Frisian have "wolk," and English has the archaic "welkin"), as the English saw the resemblance of rock formations to be like "clouds," and to my knowledge, English is the only Germanic language to have that meaning. Old English "clud" then became "cloude, clude," before the modern version.