A Brief History of Presidential Impeachments

Just for the record:

1842: John Tyler. The first attempt to remove a President via the Impeachment process. The Whigs controlling Congress were horrified after Tyler's promotion to the Oval Office after Harrison's death that Tyler was really a Democrat at heart, but could not offer a legal argument to remove him. They tried to impel him to resign using threat of impeaching, but he refused. The House ended up not having enough votes to carry the process over to the Senate.

1860: James Buchanan. This one I wasn't even aware of because it never got out of committee, but the Republicans in control of the House began a corruption probe of Buchanan's administration that had the authority to file impeachment articles if warranted. The Covode Committee reportedly found evidence of corruption but not enough to pursue impeaching.

1868: Andrew Johnson. The first President Impeached and the closest to getting removed from office, an attempt that failed by one vote. Like Tyler, an unwanted Vice President promoted up to the Presidency and fiercely opposed by a strong Republican Congress, Johnson only survived because the law used to trap him was rigged, because his lawyers were good (and the bribe money better), and because enough Senators were terrified of the replacement - Senate Pro Tem Benjamin Wade was too radical even for his own party - that they figured they could endure Johnson until the upcoming election that booted him out anyway.

1974: Richard Nixon. Watergate, bitches. When the smoking gun tape of Nixon ordering the cover-up got out, Republican Senators told Nixon he was "toast" and he resigned before the House Committee was able to get their three articles of Impeachment to the floor for a full vote.

1998: Bill Clinton. Blowjobs, bitches. While the House made the arguments that Clinton's behavior and deception was unethical, they couldn't convince Americans - especially the voters who sided with Clinton during the 1998 Midterms - that it rose to the level of Impeachment. He was the second President ever Impeached, but the Senate votes failed by such margins that Clinton was never at risk of removal.

2019: donald motherfucking trump. Impeached over charges of Abusing the Office to force a foreign power to intervene in our own elections, and with Obstructing the House investigations into that. From here, given the structure of the Republican-held Senate it seems unlikely that trump will face removal from office, but at least it's finally on record that the son-of-a-bitch has to answer for his sins.

It gets crazier from here, America. Gods help us.

One Sentence About My Thoughts Regarding Jeffrey Epstein's Death in Jail

For starters I'm not buying the suicide report because he'd already tried something like this earlier and for the love of GOD should have been under 24/7 suicide watch just to make sure nobody tried to shiv him, because Jeffrey Epstein's career as a Pedophile Pimp for an exclusive club of billionaire greed-heads and political figures - a list including the Shitgibbon himself, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew from the UK (!) - along with growing evidence Epstein was involved in human trafficking across the globe made him a high risk for certain powerful figures who would risk Epstein's death in jail and withstand the coming public outcry against such an obvious conspiratorial move by fearing the possibility of Epstein exposing global diabolical criminal activities, and so I call on the New York District Attorneys investigating Epstein and his Circle of Carnal Crime to keep digging and arrest every child-fucker and human slaver they can find. Gasp. Shit, that's two sentences. SHIT, THAT'S... okay you get my gist.

Comparisons

If I had to compare the two major Presidential candidates to previous office-holders - so that people could see what the potential administration would be like after 2017 - I'd have to go like this.

To compare Donald Trump to three previous Presidents, in reverse chronological order, I'd go:

George W. Bush. AKA Bush the Lesser.

Even though Dubya did have a Positive outlook on the role of the Presidency - and came into the office with enough experience to at least fake competency (until it was too late) - he shares with Trump one glaring sin: Sheer ignorance of the real world when it comes to making informed decisions. Trump as President will get caught flat-footed and clueless on far too many crisis moments, making bad decisions and even no decisions allowing emergencies to turn into disasters. Anything along the lines of a Katrina can happen, and on a greater scale.

Richard Nixon.

Just on the constant lying alone, Nixon and Trump are soul brothers. In other details, Trump has a recklessness when it comes to delegating authority to untrustworthy underlings. Trump has clearly made enemies and has made it known he'll use the White House to inflict revenge. Whereas Nixon at least grasped foreign policy and to my knowledge worked with our allies as well as our opponents, Trump never will. And Nixon did show a level of bipartisanship with Congress to pass legislation and get things done: even with a fully Republican Congress there is a likelihood Trump's ego will burn too many legislators.

Andrew Jackson.

I know this is a bit of reach going back that far, but honestly in terms of temperament Jackson is a very good example to suggest how a Trump Presidency would look. Jackson led with his massive and angry ego: every political issue he made a personal matter, and obsessively went after the institutions to fulfill his Populist agenda without care or concern of the consequences. Jackson had a slash-and-burn mentality that wrecked his own party, creating political divisions that haunted the nation for decades afterward. Trump will lead the same way. Consider also Jackson's horrific record mistreating Native Americans, and you have a carbon copy with Trump's open hostility to Blacks, Mexican, Chinese, and Muslims.


To compare Hillary Clinton to three previous Presidents, in reverse chronological order, I'd go:

Bill Clinton.

The guy standing next to her at most formal functions and the dude to make the history books as the first President to be the First Husband. Where I listed Bill as an Active-Positive, Hillary will not share his skill set as an effective bipartisan deal-maker. Bill is also effective and inspirational as a speaker, able to speak to the issues with a touch that few modern politicians can master. Hillary does share Bill's empathetic nature, but hasn't established a style that can display it well. With Bill in the same White House as hers, he will become an invaluable advisor able to keep her focused on positive agenda while she pushes with a more aggressive style he deployed.

LBJ.

The most direction comparison I can make for Hillary. They share a lot of traits: the need for control, the need to prove him/herself, stubbornness disguising itself as will-to-power, the noticeable insecurities of being in someone else's more popular shadow (for LBJ that was FDR and Kennedy: for Hillary that's Obama and her own husband). Johnson was one of the better Presidents when it came to getting bills through Congress even against incredible odds. Hillary will have the same temperament to get the job done, and has enough understanding of how Congress works - having been a Senator - to follow in LBJ's footsteps. The problem here is that Hillary's stubbornness and Us vs. Them mentality she's displayed before as First Lady (her handling of the 1993 Health Care bill failures) is exactly akin to Johnson's: it's the same kind of mindset that led to Vietnam turning into a quagmire and Johnson's own Great Society agenda turning into a bureaucratic mess.

Harry S, Truman.

The direct comparisons aren't noticeable because Truman's more Active-Positive mindset towards governance conflicts with Hillary's more Active-Negative world-view. However, they share a handful of virtues topped off by driven dedication to homework and awareness of the issues at play. Truman governed with a Confident style, which is what Hillary can aspire to as opposed to a more confrontational one.

So, that's how I see the candidates.

Trump will be the next Dubya, the next Nixon, the next Jackson. Each one of them leaving legacies of economic and political disasters. There are no upsides here. No likelihood of improvement or effective leadership, and every likelihood of civil unrest and economic collapse.

Hillary will be much like her husband Bill, and like Johnson, and hopefully in her better moments another Truman. At her worst she'll be another LBJ coping with a morally dubious debacle that could sink her administration. At her best she'll be maintaining a solid yet underperforming economy with a few foreign policy wins, overseeing  Left-leaning shift in the Judicial system, and in strong position to earn a second term in 2020.

Clinton Foundation Vs. Trump Foundation

Where I work, I have access to a foundations/grants database.

On a whim, I took a look at the two foundations currently in the news:

The Clinton Foundation versus the Trump Foundation (as of 2014 reports)

Clinton Foundation	Trump Foundation
Assets:$354,190,170	Assets: $1,273,895
Giving: $5,160,385	Giving:  $591,450

On the one hand, you can see that the Clintons are working with greater assets, doing a better job of fund-raising, and giving out ten times as much as what Trump Foundation does. The only thing favoring Trump's non-profit is that they give out more (over half) of the assets they claim... it's just not anywhere near what the Clintons are doing.

Clinton Foundation stated purpose "works to strengthen the capacity of governments and individuals to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies, and protect the environment."

Trump Foundation stated purpose "giving primarily for health organizations, youth development, and social services."

Clinton Foundation doesn't set a geographic limit, even giving on an international basis. After all, they're covering global health and environmental issues.

Trump Foundation limits themselves to giving primarily in New York or Massachusetts. No real reason given.

The governing board for the Clinton Foundation has CEO, CFO, executive Director. The only Clinton family member I see active with the non-profit is Chelsea Clinton.

The governing board for the Trump Foundation is all Trump: Donald himself, two of his kids, one of his grandkids, and I think his son-in-law. I know I shouldn't suspect *cough* nepotism *cough* but still...

The database I use didn't show on the records the foundations' rating scale, it may have been under a different part of the directory. But for what I know, the Clinton Foundation is vetted and graded and the Trump Foundation isn't.

And the Beltway media only wants the CLINTON Foundation to close down?

Screw them.

Predicting Character: The Hathos of Hillary Clinton

"Hathos" is a rare word, relatively recent in origin, and doesn't have an official definition in a lot of dictionaries (Merriam-Webster and OED don't recognize it).  It's a portmanteau (not the luggage, the second thing) of two words "hate" and "pathos."  Pathos is "a quality that causes people to feel sympathy and sadness."  Hate is "a very strong feeling of dislike."

Put together, Hathos is "enjoyment derived from hatred of a person or thing."  To Andrew Sullivan, it's "an attraction to something you really can't stand; it's the compulsion of revulsion."  It's something like "Love to hate," similar to Schadenfreude (malicious joy at the suffering of another), but with a more genuine revulsion as Schadenfreude still leaves a person with a regret of having maliciously enjoyed another person getting chewed up by Fate.  In some of my writings against the likes of Rick "No Ethics" Scott or Sarah "Quitter" Palin, I may have been using hathos instead of schadenfreude.  My bad.

Hathos is a very political word in an age of mudslinging and fearmongering.

It is a word that fits Hillary Clinton as a subject of other people's hate to a tee.

Today is the day she officially announces her 2016 campaign for the Presidency.  Per Washington Post:

The announcement - designed to be as low-key as anything involving Clinton can be - will start with a video and social media push. Then, starting as early as Tuesday, she will visit Iowa and other early primary states to meet and greet voters in restaurants and other modest venues.

A former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, Clinton enters as the prohibitive favorite among Democrats while also polling far ahead of any potential Republican rival now on the scene.

More celebrity than politician, Clinton is almost universally known. Nearly every American already has an opinion of her, whether good or bad.

Every part of that coverage - the parts I highlighted in bold - aptly defines the undercurrent of snark, dread, and enjoyment the mainstream media has about Hillary's move.  Enjoyment to be had because the media lives for conflict, controversy, a reason to get up every morning to anger up their viewer/reader base into watching more outrage.  Another word the mainstream media likes to use describing Hillary is "polarizing", and in all the wrong ways.  But also the dread, because there is something about Hillary that makes her uncomfortable to support as a political figure.

Even I share in that dread.  What I wrote about her back in 2008 when she campaigned among the other Democratic candidates then still applies.  I will highlight my own hathos in bold as well.

Hillary Clinton (Clintonland) (current note: arguably she'll represent New York, where she served as Senator, but this underscored for me the fact Hillary was too nationally known - too politically connected across the nation - to where she is for all intents her own corporate brand)
PROS: She's Hillary Clinton. Who else is as ruthless, driven, capable, prepared, as she is? There are remote tribes in the Kalahari that know who she is. There's a massive campaign machine behind her, there's a thousand cameras on her, there's a million people voting for her. Simply because of who she is. There are enough voters who can compare her husband Bill's 8 years in office to Bush the Lesser's 8 years in office, and who will think things were better then and overlook the blemishes now.
CONS: She's Hillary Clinton. No other candidate brings as much baggage as her. While the Republican Mudslinging Machine is gonna trash any Democrat that wins the nom, Hillary will be their biggest, easiest, most desired target. Any other Democrat could keep the GOP dispirited and divided: Hillary would unite them, and give them enough motivation to win. There is also the growing ennui of having another Clinton in the White House: a dueling family feud between Bushes and Clintons. Not so much Scandal Fatigue, which is obvious, but simply Clinton Fatigue, that we've already seen this TV show before. Some voters will think she's already been President (twice). And speaking of Scandal Fatigue, there are questions about where Clinton is getting her money from. Clinton is also ruthless to the point of savagery. Clinton's camp is willing to pick up on a nasty Republican slander on Obama, underlying how desperate she is to win. And despite all her political skill, if you ask any of her supporters, they can't tell you what she's FOR (other than being President). Nearly every other popular candidate, especially Obama, can be seen as running for someTHING. Hillary doesn't. For all her power and reputation, there's no PASSION for the office...

Things have changed between 2008 and 2016.  Eight years can be an eternity in a political lifespan, and situations Hillary's been through can well have altered her world-view and character.

Since I'd written those words, Hillary lost that primary to the eventual winner Obama.  She spent the following four years serving as Obama's Secretary of State, which obviously beefed up her resume for 2016 (since running in 2012 against the incumbent would have been too spiteful even for her, see I'm still writing with the hathos, I'm not bragging I'm just being aware of it).  Her tenure as Secretary had its low points (not in my humble opinion, because I don't emphasize BENGHAZI to the point of parody the way her enemies do) but she also presided over a relatively effective yet low-key period in the department's foreign affairs.  This is from professor Walter Russell Mead, guest writer at the Post:

...Just as the best lawyers aren’t the ones with the most famous courthouse victories but those who quietly keep their clients out of trouble and litigation...
...How did Clinton understand the interplay of America’s power, its interests, its resources and its values? Was she able to translate that vision into policies that won enough support throughout the government to be carried out? Was she able to gain or keep the president’s confidence, and was the State Department under her leadership able to hold its own in the bureaucratic battles of the day...?

First, Clinton is what I call a Hamiltonian, believing that America’s interests are best served by an adaptation of traditional British strategies: sea power, commercial expansion and a focus on strategic theaters in world politics. She thinks that Asia is where America’s interests are most vitally engaged for the long term, and she consistently argued for a greater focus on the region in our foreign policy...She also shares the optimism about America found in the Methodist religious tradition in which she grew up. The spirit of the 19th-century missionaries who fanned out across the world to promote development, human rights, and social and economic reform lives in her and shapes her basic thoughts about what American power is for. For some realists, “global meliorism” — the belief that U.S. foreign policy can and should try to make a better world — is a dirty word. For Clinton, it is a bedrock conviction. “We are the force for progress, prosperity and peace,” she said during a remarkable speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in early 2013... 

...While she did not win all the battles she fought — the president resisted her counsel on Syria, and she failed to persuade him to back Richard Holbrooke’s diplomatic efforts in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region — she managed the relationship successfully and won his trust, to the point that the president wanted her to stay on the job well into his second term. This outcome was not a given; Clinton’s association with Obama began in their bitter 2008 Democratic nominating contest, and her success at building a strong relationship with a president not known for embracing new friends or Washington insiders testifies to her formidable interpersonal skills...

...Clinton was an influential secretary of state and a savvy manager with a clear agenda that, at least in part, she translated into policy. So how did it all work out?
The answer: Historians will probably consider Clinton significantly more successful than run-of-the-mill secretaries of state such as James G. Blaine or the long-serving Cordell Hull, but don’t expect to see her on a pedestal with Dean Acheson or John Quincy Adams anytime soon.
She weighed in hard and strong in favor of the president’s risky but ultimately justified decision to attack Osama bin Laden’s last refuge. The focus on Asia — relabeled a “pivot” before it became a “rebalancing” — reinvigorated America’s Pacific alliances but also elicited a more aggressive China, which has taken a harder line with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam since the pivot began. The “reset” with Russia enabled concrete cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program and at the United Nations (notably on the resolution authorizing intervention against Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi), but it would be hard to argue that Washington and Moscow have ended up in a good place...

It's neither a harsh critique nor a hagiography: Mead clearly points out where policy efforts led to backlash... but then again every foreign policy has a give-and-take as other nations react then act on what a major player like the U.S. is doing.  The key takeaway from Hillary's tenure as State Secretary is that during her service our nation's foreign relations with other major powers improved after the disasters that were the Bush the Lesser years.

If there is anything else to take away from this, in my estimate, is that the harsh view of Hillary's ambition needs to be taken down a notch (just the one for now).  Rather than sabotage Obama's agenda from within (in any noticeable way, ach I gotta stop doing this): Hillary worked with the administration, followed through on input, provided input on her own that the others accepted as honest counsel, and performed with enough savvy to leave her tenure on relatively successful terms.  The thing I'd say about it was that she had "mellowed," having turned away from a previous documented behavioral norm of undercutting others or pursuing an ambitious agenda that made her reputation so dreaded in the first place.

Hillary is coming back into the Presidential campaigning as one of the most-written about political figures of our time.  There are autobiographies/memoirs aplenty - from which we shouldn't make observations, as memoirs are always self-serving and contain many glaring omissions - and a ton of political hit-jobs and hagiographies from which we can't rely on much either.  Hillary-hate has existed ever since 1992, when the Republicans campaigned as much against her than campaigned against her husband - the actual candidate and eventual President - Bill Clinton.

Are there any reliable sources of Hillary's life - her childhood and formative years - to which we can apply James David Barber's techniques of figuring out Hillary's world-view and her likely Presidential Character?

For that, you'd have to go through the hundred or so books written about her, about Bill, and about them as a team (the Clintons essentially guarantee a successful publishing industry just by standing there, that's not hathos by the way just a sarcastic complaint against an obsessed wingnut media).  For a quick link here to my blog with something (relatively) reliable online, I went with Peter Beinart's "Unified Theory of Hillary" article for the National Journal:

The more I read, the more I became convinced that she possesses some of the qualities most necessary for presidential success. But if she struggles, there's reason to suspect it will be for the same reason she appears to have struggled with the D.C. bar exam in 1973. She's terrific at developing and executing a well-defined plan. She's less adept at realizing that a well-defined plan is not working and improvising something new. Single-mindedness is both her greatest strength and greatest flaw... (note: this is italicized for emphasis but not for hathos, I'm bolding any hathos for the purposes of this blog entry)

It's telling that Beinart's primary impression of Hillary is that she could be the "Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama's John F. Kennedy."  Because for the seven people who've kept up with my blog, you've read my Barber-inspired reviews of both LBJ and Obama and you know my views on Obama being Active-Positive... and LBJ being Active-Negative.

Back to Beinart:

...In her recently released papers, Hillary's late friend Diane Blair recounts a 1994 conversation in which Hillary was "furious" that Bill "can't fire people, exert discipline, punish leakers." Throughout his presidency, Bill had trouble making decisions, in part because he had trouble telling people things they didn't want to hear. By contrast, Hillary, even as an undergraduate at Wellesley, was "notably direct in almost everything she did," Bernstein writes. (Including her famed decision to approach Bill in the Yale Law School library after she spotted him eyeing her.)
...Hillary will never be the orator Obama is, and how well she'd rally the public to her side in policy disputes is an open question. But inside the Beltway, she'd likely do a better job of both rewarding her friends and making people fear being her enemy... ...Bernstein quotes Bob Boorstin, who oversaw communications for Hillary's health care task force, on how Bill and Hillary differ: "He gets angry, and he gets over it. She gets angry, and she remembers it forever." In HRC, Allen and Parnes point out that, in 2012, Bill Clinton repeatedly intervened in Democratic primaries to help candidates who had backed Hillary against rivals who had backed Obama—thus reminding Democrats that even when Hillary loses, opposing her carries a price...

Beinart goes into detail about how Hillary's dedication and focus can translate into legislative success, and then highlights how the biggest defeat she suffered - the failure to get any health care reform passed in 1993 when Bill made her the chair of his administration's efforts - had little to do with such efforts.  Her existing management skills - which required secrecy, control of the message, failure to accept or acknowledge input from outside her committee - ran against the more complex, messier stage of national politics:

At task force meetings, Bernstein notes, participants were forbidden from copying draft documents or, in many cases, even taking notes. The secrecy alienated not only members of Congress, health care activists, and the press, but key figures in the Clinton administration as well. Hillary and Magaziner both knew a great deal about health care policy. But neither knew as much about health care politics as Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, or Office of Management and Budget Director Leon Panetta. Yet because of the task force's secrecy, and because they feared directly confronting the president's wife, Bentsen, Panetta, Shalala, and others in the administration often felt marginalized. As Haynes Johnson and David Broder document in The System—their indispensable book on the health care battle—Clinton officials angered by their lack of influence repeatedly leaked damaging information to a press corps angered by its lack of access...

This is where irony is more painful than hathos.  And this is where Hillary's reputation as a control freak - and the hate-fest from the Beltway media elites - gets its foundation.

Beinart's article doesn't delve much into Hillary's childhood, which is where Barber would prefer us going to establish Hillary's world-view, but her performances as an adult and as a leading national figure are already well-documented enough to get an idea what her views are.

A consistent behavior that emerges with Hillary is a Compulsive trait, intelligent and focused but also calculating and inflexible once a course has been plotted.  Hillary won't be anywhere near a Bush the Lesser in terms of inattention, but she won't be anywhere near the political game-player Obama is (whose failures are not so much aloofness that Beinart implies in his article, but from open obstruction with a Republican faction that chose to deny Obama any legislative victories that history would view favorably).

In this regards she mirrors Lyndon Johnson moreso than other past Presidents who were Active-Negatives in their own ways. Unlike Nixon who was self-destructive in his quest for personal crises, unlike Hoover who avoided a more aggressive reform effort believing himself limited in power, Hillary Clinton would be a major backer of legislative efforts that would ensure her legacy while having the political skills - knowing objectives, knowing the political players who can get things done - to get them passed.  Her faults will most likely fall along the same faults LBJ's were: any failures or rejections would be taken as personal defeats, with a creeping series of defensive layers piled up in an Us vs. Them mindset - to where valued critical voices within her circle would get sent in exile - that would make her administration inflexible to ongoing crises.

If Hillary's got positives, they are mostly in the comparative sense.  Where I wrote that Hillary's got baggage (true), I should note that this time most of her opponents (especially the Republican potentials) are bringing even bigger, messier personal issues than she has.  In terms of appealing to average voters, Hillary wins in double-digits mostly because of how terrible, ill-informed, tone-deaf the entire Republican Party leadership (and their platform) is today.  In the matter of dynasty vs. dynasty, the most dreaded of campaigns between the Clinton and the Bush, the current polling shows Hillary stomping on Jeb 55 percent to 40 percent.

This is because in spite of Hillary's own personality, in spite of the lack of progressive support from her own party, in spite of the hatred the Far Right has for her, in spite of the hathos, Hillary represents a Democratic Party platform that's currently pro-immigrant, pro-gay marriage, pro-women, pro-finance reform, pro-jobs, pro-health care, pro-let's not start more wars.  While Hillary's voting record - and past inaction for gay rights (Don't Ask Don't Tell) - may still be a problem, Hillary can easily argue her positions have evolved much the way the Democrats' positions evolved (even Obama evolved on gay rights issues: when he did, you could see the narrative shift tilt the nation towards a civil rights victory), and the regular Democratic voting base will forgive her.  The only sticking point will be her Iraq war vote, and her refusal to admit it was a mistake when it mattered.  After two terms of Obama struggling with the entire Middle East, the Democratic voters will give her a pass as long as she avoids taking the Far Right position of "Bomb Everybody".

That noted, Hillary doesn't have to stand much FOR anything so much as allow her Republican opponents to stand AGAINST everything, which they are doing on their own in rather obvious and self-destructive ways. (This is hathos directed at the Republicans, so there)

For all of Hillary's Active-Negative traits, they pale in comparison to the entire Republican Party, where each major candidate is pretty much Active-Negative themselves and backing a more Compulsive, bitter, self-serving agenda far worse than anything Hillary stands for.  Compared to the entire GOP line-up, Hillary's practically an Active-Positive.

In simple math, all Hillary has to do is win electorally the same states Obama did in 2012 (Obama only lost two states - Indiana and North Carolina - from 2008, still allowing him a clear electoral victory to match his popular vote).  As of right now, none of the Blue states look primed to switch over to vote as Red states to the GOP (not even Florida, where the massive South Florida immigrant voting bloc will swamp any support regular state voters might have for Jeb... and Jeb's not that well-liked to begin with).  If the Republicans nominate a clear anti-immigrant candidate or an openly gay-bashing social conservative who can (and probably will) say the dumbest things about sex, Hillary could arguably win over previously Red states wavering on the demographic tipping points.

Another advantage Hillary currently enjoys as a candidate is that among the Democrats, she's it.  There are few current rivals or opponents on the stage able to steal away the disgruntled progressive supporters that are eager for a "true" Leftist visionary to lead us all to a happy utopia (this is why the "Draft Warren" efforts will not stop until Election Day 2016 itself, and yes, that bold hathos is my disdain for the obsessive Democratic voting bloc that would rather not vote for a sane pro-government candidate all because Hillary is "Centrist", and allow an obviously insane anti-government Republican win the White House and doom us all.  I will keep calling you cowards, Democrats, when you keep refusing to use your electoral advantages - there are more of you than Republicans - out of spite).  While other names are out there - and some are arguably solid candidates like O'Malley, more on him when I get the chance - there are none that are as charismatic as Obama was when he challenged Hillary's supremacy in 2008... and won.

Hillary has the advantages of 1) getting the best campaign managers now unlike 2008, and 2) being the best candidate to run on incredible legacies, BOTH Bill Clinton's lasting legacy of a popular Presidency AND Obama's current legacy as a popular President.  Yes, Fox Not News, Obama is still popular at this late stage of his administration, Obama is still viewed a success in spite of Dick Cheney's hate, and he's never dipped as low as your boy Bush the Lesser.  One of the historical lessons taken from Gore's failure to win in 2000 - other than "never use a butterfly ballot" - was that he ignored the evidence of Bill Clinton's continued popularity - he bought into the Beltway mindset that Bill's sex scandal was toxic - and refused to use that legacy to win over voters.  Hillary won't be running from Obama's successes she will be using them to prop herself and the Democratic Party, and can easily keep the voters Obama earned in 2012 to win in 2016.

I just hope to God the Vice-President she chooses is a Passive-Positive.  She'll go crazy if the Veep is Active-Positive, and will likely suspect anyone Active-Negative to the point of paranoia...  Ahem, just saying.

Update (4/19): Just a link here to a blog article from Forward Progressives about the best, positive reason that liberals, progressives, moderates and independents should have to back Hillary and vote FOR her.

The next president we elect (assuming he or she serves two terms) could very well be the individual who selects four Supreme Court Justices...
...So, while I understand that Hillary Clinton isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I can promise you this much – she’s a hell of a lot better than any Republican alternative. So to all of you liberals who loathe her and feel that voting for her would be “selling out,” do you really want a Republican president potentially replacing four Supreme Court Justices?...
...It all goes back to one simple fact: If liberals don’t want to get behind whomever is the Democratic candidate for president in 2016, then a Republican is going to occupy the White House after President Obama. This isn’t me trying to sensationalize anything or using hyperbole, I’m just telling you the truth. Even if we break this down to its simplest form, ignoring any mention of who is or isn’t running for president, then the question really comes down to: Who do you want potentially replacing four Supreme Court Justices in the next 8 to 10 years – a Democrat who supports same-sex marriage, abortion rights, health care and the separation of church and state, or a Republican who opposes all of that and then some?

I FINALLY FOUND THAT ARTICLE I WAS LOOKING FOR

Apologies for the All-CAPS headline, but dammit I've been looking for a link to this thing for years.  I've really been trying to find it when I wrote my Presidential Character review of Bill Clinton last year.  As a librarian I revel in the success of finding a research item...

Lemme explain.  I wanted to make a point about Bill Clinton being an Active-Positive based on a character analysis on him talking about "future imperatives" and how America was a nation that looked forward by setting up goals that would benefit future generations and not the current one(s).  The article itself was really going into how the Baby Boomer generation - sans Clinton, who accepted the "future imperative" - was the horrific exception, the generation obsessed with its own needs and doing nothing to set up any "imperatives" for future kin.

Problem was I couldn't find the article, which I knew was at least archived somewhere: it was either an online article I saw in Salon or else in a magazine with political/current cultural focus like Rolling Stone or Esquire.  As a librarian who prides meself on finding anything, being unable to find this was frustrating.

This morning, doing some side work researching another matter, I decided to retry my search terms to focus more on the Baby Boomers and how they were destroying everything on the political landscape.  THAT'S when I got a search result to a New York Times 2012 op-ed called "The Entitled Generation".  And THAT referred to the article I was looking for!

The article by Paul Begala was in Esquire (I knew it was one of those) published April 2000 titled "The Worst Generation".  Finally.  At last.  I'll need to update that Clinton review now.

As for the reason I wasn't finding that article before: well, my bad, I mis-remembered the phrase.  It wasn't "future imperative" it was "future preference":

...It is my contention that the single greatest sin a generation can commit is the sin of selfishness. And it's from this standard that I draw my harsh conclusion. I'm not alone in this view, of course. The Boomer in Chief, my former boss, Bill Clinton, used to tell me about an influential professor he'd had at Georgetown. His name was Carroll Quigley, and he taught young Bill Clinton and hundreds of other Hoyas about something called the Future Preference.

I can still see Clinton doing his Quigley impression, eyes full of mischief, his voice an Arkansas version of a bad Boston accent, as we bounced around in a bus or flew through a thunderstorm on Air Elvis, our campaign plane back in 1992. "Mistah Begahhla," he'd intone as he looked at me through the bifocals perched on the end of his nose. "Why is America the greatest sociiiiiiety in human hist'ree? The Few-chah Pref'rence. At every critical junk-chaah, we have prefuhhed the few-chah to the present. That is why immigrants left the old waaahld for the new. That is why paahrents such as yours sacrifice to send their children to univehhsities like this wan. The American ideal is that the few-chah can be bettah than the paahst, and that each of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so..."

Writing it when he did (2000) Begala was setting up his fears about the OTHER Baby Boomer threatening to become the next President, Bush the Lesser.  Whose administration did ignore the future in the obsessions of satisfying present needs (massive tax cuts even after being warned of the massive deficits that would happen, a bloated Medicare package left unfunded) and in the recklessness of starting fights (a war in Iraq) without a care (there was no Plan B) about how to resolve such fights so that our future (the poor kids sent in to fight that war) wouldn't have to fight it again...

So that's it.  That was the keyword I should have been looking for.  Future Preference.  It's something we should be looking for in our political leaders from now on.  I've added it to my Labels.  Hashtagging it on Twitter asap.

Presidential Character: Week Forty-Two, I Survived The Clinton Years (UPDATE)

(UPDATE below)

SO SUCK IT, LIMBAUGH.  You fear-mongering Cubicle Commando.

Ahem.

I really wanted to refer to this article I read ten or twelve years ago about Baby Boomers (those born between 1945 to 1965) that a fellow boomer used to describe his own generation as selfish, destructive, and reactionary.  Except where he made note of THE Boomer President, Bill Clinton, as a notable exception to that destructive impulse because Clinton genuinely believed in "the future imperative".

Clinton was referring to something a college professor had taught him, that the Future Imperative - not the language construct, but a political viewpoint - was an American-based ideology where the players and motivators on the political stage in the Present focused on how their current actions would boost or help Future generations.  The article writer's implication was that, where the Boomers would focus on their own needs at the expense of past generations - their parents - and future generations - their children and grandchildren - the likes of Clinton would focus on taking care of needs so that future generations would have something to work with.

And damn me for a fool, even for five straight days of using my librarian skills to the fullest, I can't find the thing.  I've forgotten if I'd read it in Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, or someplace online like Salon.com.

'Cause that bit about "the future imperative" is what's stuck in my head when it comes to defining Clinton's Presidential Character.  Without Professor James David Barber as a lighthouse guiding me on the matter (I also tried looking for journal or magazine articles by Barber about Clinton, but it seems 1992 was his retirement), this is one of those cases I've got to make using my own evidence.

UPDATE (7/17/14): The article has been found!  The search term should have been "Future Preference", not Imperative.  My bad...

The actual quote about (and from) Bill Clinton provided by Paul Begala in his Esquire article "The Worst Generation":

...I can still see Clinton doing his Quigley impression, eyes full of mischief, his voice an Arkansas version of a bad Boston accent, as we bounced around in a bus or flew through a thunderstorm on Air Elvis, our campaign plane back in 1992. "Mistah Begahhla," he'd intone as he looked at me through the bifocals perched on the end of his nose. "Why is America the greatest sociiiiiiety in human hist'ree? The Few-chah Pref'rence. At every critical junk-chaah, we have prefuhhed the few-chah to the present. That is why immigrants left the old waaahld for the new. That is why paahrents such as yours sacrifice to send their children to univehhsities like this wan. The American ideal is that the few-chah can be bettah than the paahst, and that each of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so."

So there it is.  Now, back to the original essay...

Doing research online, I've come across others referring to Barber's Character charts and applying the Passive-Positive label on Clinton, mostly due to his open desire to be liked and popular - the Congeniality trait - and because Clinton seemed to bend too much in dealing with a Republican Congress, being viewed as a weakness.

But that habit of dealing or working with Congress is a common Adaptive trait, if one noticed how Clinton, despite the expectations of his being a Liberal or Far Left leader, was able to deflect a rebellious GOP Congress from shredding more of the New Deal than they sought to destroy.

One of the big gripes I'd seen against Clinton was how he allowed the existing Welfare program to change from basic financial aid to families into an employment-related "workfare" program that satisfied most voters' concerns about a social aid program that appeared to allow the poor to endlessly live off the government (the reality may have been different, but the conservatives had succeeded in convincing the public that's what Welfare had become by the 1980s).  The thing is, the reform benefited by timely improvements to the economy itself - aided by job-boosting trade deals started under Bush the Elder and carried over by Clinton, and by a technology boom with computers and the Internet that few if any ever predicted - and from changes to the tax code and other social safety nets (food stamps) to cover any consequences of the workfare changes.

Rather than fear the dangers of changing welfare - as the Far Left worried that it would force more families into poverty, not less - Clinton and his administration was able to accept the bigger picture that the reform could work as long as other economic forces aided it.  In this regard, along with other points, I'd put Clinton in the Active-Positive category of Presidential behavior.

If Clinton did fail on some of the big Liberal ideas he was expected to pass/defend - failing to pass a healthcare reform that, let's admit it, was too complicated for its own good - it was because the nation itself was still not ready for most of those ideas (we as a nation are still not prepared for universal healthcare similar to every other major economic power on the globe, so how the f-ck can it be a commie socialist plot to destroy America if it works in England and Japan?).  For example, it had to take another decade of increasing health care costs for the nation to even tolerate a conservative, pro-business plan that became Obamacare.

Other signs of Clinton's A-P traits cover his self-deprecation, an honest desire to genuinely mingle and emotively relate to American voters (his "I feel your pain" was easily mocked, but it was sincere).  He was also able to re-position himself without ever crossing the line into flip-flopping, earning him a moniker "Slick Willie" (among other reasons, such as lying and using lawyer-speak to wriggle out of jams) but also making him adaptable to any political circumstance, including his fights with his opposite number Newt Gingrich, fellow Boomer and then-Speaker for most of Clinton's tenure.

For all of Gingrich's pro-conservative bluster, and for all of Gingrich's ambitions, Clinton could run rings around the guy.  And Bill was never that fast of a runner. /rimshot  Nearly every time Newt tried to confront Bill on a domestic issue - above all the budgets that were held up by Congress-fueled shutdowns - the President would get the nation to see his side of the argument and humble the Speaker and Congress down into accepting deals that may have benefited a conservative agenda but came across as Republican defeats.  Attempts to weaken Clinton during his first term of office with a legislative war didn't work: Clinton cruised to an easy re-election in another threeway race between himself, the Republican Bob Dole, and Ross Perot (whose impact, already meager, was diminished by 1996).

If anything weakened Clinton, it was himself: odd among most Active-Positives in that his personal and business dealings were very self-destructive (another reason some critics viewed him as a Passive-Positive like Harding, who did share those habits).  It could be argued that things like his Whitewater dealings, or his wife Hillary's law firm billing practices, were a mark of the post-Watergate era of unethical behavior by a lot of political figures.  But it left him vulnerable in ways that did limit his decision-making on the Presidential stage and had an adverse effect on his own staff.

Clinton's advantage during all of this was the colossal overreach of his political enemies.  All too eager to think the worst of a "hippie liar", hating on wife Hillary as a prominent feminist figure (the vitriol for her was worse than any bile aimed at him), the Far Right that came to dominate the Republican Party post-Reagan/Bush began an open campaign to discredit, humiliate, and delegitimize the Clinton administration.  Aided by a cable news channel led by a prominent conservative media whiz - Roger Ailes and his Fox News - and by radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh - whose career flourished the more he attacked Hillary - they talked up every potential scandal against Clinton they could find.  Whitewater became the new Watergate.  The firings of the White House travel office staff became headlines.  The suicide of a Clinton personal ally became the focus of three separate Congressional and grand jury investigations.

The overreach achieved peak crazy when it got out that Clinton had a sexual affair with a White House intern.  Immediately convinced she was the keystone to every Clinton scandal ever, the Lewinsky Affair dominated the news.  Long-standing media elites like Sam Donaldson openly predicted Clinton's resignation "within the week."  Clinton was forced under other investigations, including a civil suit by Paula Jones contending he sexually harassed her, to testify about having an affair with Lewinsky (and like any guy who thinks with his d-ck, Clinton did his best to weasel out of it).

But by this point a majority of Americans were jaded and burned out by the constant scandal-mongering by the Far Right.  What had started out as serious-sounding scandals - Corrupt land deals!  Dead lawyers!  A Trail of corruption across Arkansas! - turned up nothing but an intern with a stained dress.  What was promised as "worse than Watergate" ended up as "blowjobs".   Hillary was able to with a straight face go on national television and accuse their accusers of being part of "a vast Right Wing conspiracy".  And a lot of people agreed with her.

By the time the GOP Congress pushed to impeach Clinton for his perjury and obstruction before a grand jury (the BEST they could come up with), the Republicans were embarrassed by a poor 1998 midterms campaign that saw their seat numbers in both houses drop, although they retained majority control in both.  Feeling betrayed that they lost voters against Clinton's moral failings, the House turned against Gingrich as Speaker forcing him to drop the title (he would resign from the House less than a year later), and then coped with the embarrassment of their Speaker-designate Bob Livingston resigning when his sexual scandals came to light.  Meanwhile, with the Senate nowhere near the 2/3rd required to impeach the President, the vote wasn't even near that: the perjury charge went 55 votes against impeaching to 45 for, and the obstruction charge went dead even 50-50.

By 2000, Clinton left office with decent popularity numbers (although rightly hit for his poor honesty) while his opponents were sitting around thinking "what the hell happened?"  Rubbing salt into the wounds was the fact that during the impeachment and after, Clinton (A-P as always) was still able to get bills through Congress, nowhere near lame as most ending two-term Presidents tended to be.

--

It is hard to describe to the children and teens of today what it was like to be a survivor of both The Reagan Years and The Clinton Years.  Both different in terms of tenor and yet both similar in terms of economic booms presided over by highly charismatic and influential figures.

The take-away from the Clinton Era was a feeling of a missed opportunity, that Clinton could have been so much greater if he had reined in his personal appetites and unlocked his personal fears of political overreach.  If he had focused on a more comprehensive agenda that covered more needs rather than the several he prioritized above others.

To be fair, Clinton's Boomer impulses focused inward rather than outward onto his administration or the nation.  His one strength of political character - Adaptability while remaining tasked to a big picture - remains the saving grace of an otherwise bruised administration.

Next Up: If anyone's read this blog since the day I started it, You know how I feel about this one.  I may yet prove charitable regarding his Character...