BARACK OBAMA: Post-War American Presidents (12)

[This is the final piece in a series about the 12 Post-War American Presidents from a British perspective.]

The election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 was a giant step and symbol for Black Americans and a moment of final acceptance of racial equality for all Americans. During his tenure Obama has presided honestly and with due gravitas in his high office. There have been legislative achievements and a notably cautious overseas policy. The initial euphoria has subsided as the humdrum necessities of state take centre stage and there may be some disappointment that his Presidency has not been more creative. Yet a legacy that now an able Black American can be elected decisively, then re-elected, and conduct a respected Presidency is in itself surely a substantial achievement. 

President Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (1961 -  ) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of his namesake Barack Obama I and Ann Dunham. Obama is described as a “Black” President but his antecedents are far from typical of the black African-American. He would be more accurately described as “multi-racial”. His mother was Ann Dunham (1942-95), a white American from Wichita, Kansas. She was a young student at the University of Hawaii when in 1960 she met Barack Obama senior, an overseas economics student of Luo origin from Kenya. She was 3 months pregnant when they married in 1961 and he said he had divorced his first wife in Kenya; this was not true. After separations they divorced in 1964. Obama senior returned to Kenya but was not an attentive father; he made one 4-week visit to Hawaii in 1971 when our Obama was 11 which he fondly remembered and honoured in his 1995 memoir Dreams with my Father. Obama senior eventually had difficulty holding down a job in Kenya and his life was erratic. He died in a car accident in Kenya in 1982.

Ann Dunham’s parents were very supportive and looked after young Obama in Hawaii when Ann met an Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, a geographer. They married in 1965 and she took Barack with him in 1967 for 4 years in Jakarta, where Lolo worked as a government cartographer and Barack went to local schools. Ann had a daughter Maya in 1971 but mother and children then returned to Hawaii to the children’s grandparents. Ann and Maya set off for Indonesia in 1975 and Ann stayed there for most of the rest of her life, doing anthropological fieldwork, even though she divorced Lolo in 1980. She died of cancer in 1995. Meanwhile Barack had stayed with his grandparents and finished his education in the United States. It is surprising Barack weathered this rather fragmented childhood so well – he spoke especially of his love for his influential mother.

Grandfather, Mother, Maya and Barack

Father Barack Obama Senior

Stepfather Lolo Soetoro

 

After high school in Hawaii, gifted Barack went for 2 years to Occidental College in Los Angeles before going on to Columbia University, New York, where he studied political science, graduating BA in 1983. He was involved in a campaign protesting against the state of the NY subway but his real political apprenticeship grew from his working for the Chicago Developing Communities Project 1985—8. In 1988 he entered the Harvard Law School, becoming an editor and then the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1989 finally graduating magna cum laude in 1991. These years saw Obama joining the intellectual elite.

Between 1991 and 2005, Obama launched his political career while also working as a Lecturer at Chicago Law School and becoming a civil rights attorney. In 1996 he became a Democrat Illinois State Senator, being busy and prominent in liberal causes but failing to be elected to the US House in 2000. He resigned in 2004 to fight for the Washington Senate seat; he won in a landslide and became a prominent Democratic candidate for a future Presidential attempt. 

A significant personal event was his marriage in 1992 to fellow-lawyer Michelle Robinson from Chicago, who graduated from Princeton and Harvard and has a post-graduate degree too. Michelle’s background is far more typical of aspiring black Americans and she is perhaps even more charismatic than Barack. She is certainly a substantial political asset. They have two teenaged daughters, Maya and Sasha.

First Lady Michelle Obama

As the junior senator from Illinois, Obama was a prominent legislator supporting inter alia more transparency in government spending, orderly immigration and weapons reduction but maintaining his opposition to and doubts about the Iraq war. 

By 2007 he was fundraising and planning his bid for the Presidency in a fairly open field. As the primaries loomed, his main rival was Hillary Clinton but the Obama campaign outvoted her and she withdrew at the 2008 Democratic convention at Denver throwing her support behind Obama. His running mate was Joe Biden, senator from Delaware, who was thought to connect better with blue-collar Americans and who had developed extensive foreign affairs contacts. Obama delivered an eloquent acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in front of 80,000 spectators and a vast TV audience.

Obama’s presidential campaign emphasised universal healthcare, energy independence, control of lobbyists and Iraq withdrawal. He was ranged against John McCain and Sarah Palin and initially the Republicans polled well, with women especially. Obama was thought weaker on economics. The Lehman crisis was in full flow, but when it emerged at a White House meeting that neither President Bush nor John McCain had even read a 3-page memo from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson outlining his recovery proposals, well-briefed Obama gained in confidence. The outcome was a decisive Obama victory of 365 to 173 in the Electoral College.

Obama in full flow

I will not catalogue all the various events so far of the Obama administration. Suffice to say, the so-called “Obamacare” healthcare law passed in 2010 is the keystone achievement broadening the availability and affordability of medical services at very substantial cost to the Federal government. Measures to stimulate the economy seem to have helped the USA to exit earlier than many from the Great Recession. Congress was pro-Democratic from 2008 to 2011 but the rise of the Republican Tea Party group won voters to the opposition and the House has turned Republican since 2011 and the Senate is very closely balanced. Obama has not been able to push through his legislative programme without substantial amendment, although there have been useful measures on lobbying, transparency and minority rights. He did enough to defeat Mitt Romney’s challenge in 2012.

Foreign affairs have been as frustrating and unpredictable as usual, with Hillary Clinton performing sensibly as Secretary of State in the first term. Despite Obama’s campaign pledge, Guantanamo prison remains open – Congress not providing the money to close it. US troops have been withdrawn from Iraq and much reduced in Afghanistan, but neither country is stable. Osama bin Laden, author of 9/11, was eventually tracked down and killed in Pakistan in 2011 to general approval. The Arab Spring lost the West some solid allies; Gaddafi in Libya did not go quietly and a mainly Anglo-French NATO group removed him, with the USA participating in the early stages. Libya still lacks a coherent government. The rise of the Islamic fundamentalist ISIL may draw Western military forces back to the Middle East, to our despair. Russia worked up a crisis in Western-leaning Ukraine resulting in icy relations and severe sanctions likely to disrupt the world economy, if not worse. The Chinese economic miracle may have peaked and the Chinese are not notably cooperative on the world stage.  Second term Secretary of State John Kerry has spent ineffectual months talking to Israel and the Palestinians but a settlement seems far away and Gaza regularly explodes.

Joe Biden, President Obama and John Kerry - The A-Team

                                               

 Obama is an excellent speaker and his orations can energise the young and idealistic and inspire many others. But it is a gift earning diminishing returns, as Winston Churchill discovered. If nothing much actually happens on the ground, the fine phrases, the rolling words and the rousing calls for unity sound more and more hollow. Obama may actually speak too much. Such oratory also separates him from the ordinary American: it is a highbrow skill. When his pleas are ignored, Obama may easily discount his less educated compatriots. There is a touch of arrogance about Obama, an understandable air of superiority - and that superiority is very real – though it is always better to conceal it in these democratic days.

Recent weeks have been darkened by the racial troubles in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City. A combination of trigger-happy cops and disaffected black youths is always combustible. The revelations of institutionalised CIA torture have also muddied the good name of America and damaged its long-earned esteem. One must hope these clouds are rapidly dispersed.

Now in the “lame-duck” phase of his Presidency, Obama may have run out of steam; he plays too much golf (more rounds in 2014 than Tiger Woods, it is said!) Yet there is no doubt that Obama’s Presidency has been historic, that he has real achievements to his name and he has brought intellectual distinction to his Office.

SMD

14.12.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

GEORGE W. BUSH: Post-War American Presidents (11)

[This is 11^th in a series describing the 12 Post-War American Presidents from a British perspective]

George W Bush left the Presidency with historically low approval ratings. His domestic policies were moderate but he had been forced to react to the appalling Islamist terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11/2001 which so shocked the American people. Bush went to war against Afghanistan, a terrorist hotbed, then, with much less justification legally, he invaded Iraq and overthrew the tyrannical government of Saddam Hussein; the aftermath has been bloody and confusing. On his watch too, the Western banking system almost collapsed in 2008 requiring a vast taxpayer-funded bailout. These were horrendous problems and history may say that Bush (Iraq apart) made the best of an unenviable job leading the US through this mess.

George W. Bush

George W Bush (1946 - ) was born in New Haven, Connecticut and was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas, where his father was in the oil business. The Bush family was highly political and his father George W. H. Bush held senior Republican office before serving as Vice-President to Ronald Reagan and a one-term President 1989-93. George W was the eldest of 5 children – 4 brothers and 1 sister, one brother Jeb becoming Governor of Florida.

George W finished high school at top-drawer Phillips Academy at Andover, Mass, then read history at Yale 1964-68. In 1968, no doubt to avoid the Vietnam draft, he served in the Texas Air National Guard and later the Alabama equivalent until 1974.

Bush in the Air National Guard

George had not been a particularly distinguished student though he earned an MBA at Harvard Business School 1973-75. He entered the oil business with mixed success. He had a reputation as a tearaway and his heavy drinking was anything but responsibly Presidential. No doubt in a typical incident, in 1976 George had a drinking contest with the famous Australian tennis player John Newcombe at the Bush compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, and was subsequently fined $150 for drunk driving. The early career of George W was thus none too promising. 

Then George took a grip on his life. In 1977 he met at a barbecue party, and married 3 months later, Laura Welch, a seriously minded teacher and Methodist. She was a moderating influence and gradually he became some kind of born-again Christian, encouraged by evangelist Billy Graham: eventually on the day after his 40^th birthday in 1986 he renounced alcohol and has been teetotal ever since. 

A younger George W with Laura Bush

The reformed George W turned to his real family business, politics. He ran unsuccessfully for the House in 1978 but with a Vice-Presidential father he was always favoured. His oil industry career was marred by the failure of an exploration company but he hit the jackpot in 1989 by co-owning and managing for 5 years the Texas Rangers baseball team. His investment cost $800k and he sold out in 1998 for $15m, a substantial coup, making him independently wealthy.

He helped his father in his successful presidential campaign in 1988 but, emulating his brother Jeb in Florida, he turned his thoughts to the Governorship of Texas. He secured the Republican nomination and then won against popular Democrat Ann Richards in 1994, starting a 4-year first term. He soon introduced a large tax cut, stimulating the state economy, and instituted various educational reforms. George W’s campaign had been masterminded by Karl Rove, who subsequently became a controversial and influential eminence grise, guiding George down the ideological hard-Republican road of small government, states’ rights and widely interpreted personal liberty. In 1998 George easily won a second term; his ownership of the Texas Rangers made him a popular figure and his upbeat speechifying, often with religious overtones, played well in Texas. 

Strategist Karl Rove

Seasoned Dick Cheney

Rove was on hand when George decided to run for President in 2000 when Bill Clinton’s second term ended. George was up against Al Gore for the Democrats. Gore was admired in liberal circles for spouting all their nostrums, espousing green policies and racial equality but he was rather wooden and uninspiring. But George W himself was no orator. He could read a set speech convincingly enough but, most unusually in the eye of a Brit, he was not the usual (over-)articulate American politician conjuring up the sonorous phrase or smart riposte. He easily stumbled or became tongue-tied. Yet he was genially handsome and folksy. Bush chose Washington veteran Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate, a forceful neo-conservative and later a powerful colleague.

The election was as close as could be with Gore winning a majority of the popular vote (48.4% to 47.9%) but Bush winning the crucial majority (271 to 266) in the Electoral College. The result was in doubt for some weeks as votes in Florida had to be recounted (“hanging chads” on voting machine ballot papers finally favouring Bush). The legitimacy of Bush’s Presidency was ever questioned in partisan circles, though the Supreme Court clearly endorsed it.

George W, with Laura, takes the inaugural oath

The first term started off in a business-like fashion with the useful No Child Left Behind Act aimed at subsidising tuition to underperforming schoolchildren. In conservative mode, Bush proposed that same-sex marriages be declared unconstitutional, an initiative that failed. A Budget proposing very substantial tax cuts in 2002 was prepared. These domestic concerns were completely overshadowed on 11 September 2001, when almost 3,000 American and international victims died in suicide attacks using 4 hi-jacked airliners; 2 flew into the twin-towered World Trade Centre in New York and one hit the Pentagon.  The 4^th airliner crashed when the passengers attacked the hi-jackers allowing the Capitol in Washington to escape. The 19 perpetrators were Saudi members of Islamic terror group al-Qaeda, The twin towers collapsed but the Pentagon was quickly repaired. These appalling events traumatised and infuriated Americans who rallied round their President.

Bush is told of the 9/11 attacks

The 9/11 attacks had been planned by Saudi Osama bin Laden who lived in Afghanistan under the protection of the local Islamist Taliban. With UN approval Bush put together a coalition of nations to overthrow the Taliban. Various war-lords were co-opted into the struggle and ground forces sent. The Taliban was deposed in 2002 and Mohammed Karzai became the new head of government. Bin Laden escaped to live safe years under Pakistani protection. But Afghan society was anarchic and corrupt, the writ of the government barely ran beyond Kabul and the Taliban regrouped to mount a persistent insurrection, still unsubdued. The war was expensive in treasure and there were no easy victories. US casualties were 2,234 and UK’s 453 – the public soon yearned for withdrawal and the future of Afghanistan remains dubious.

Much more controversial was the War against Terror – the Axis of Evil being described as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. A doctrine, later known as the Bush Doctrine, was promulgated by the Republican neo-cons, notably Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bolton, whereby the US was justified in launching a pre-emptive war against rogue states harbouring Weapons of Mass Destruction. Bush put pressure on the fetid Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then launched a war in 2003 for his overthrow without UN approval. 

Allies Tony Blair and George Bush

Bush found an enthusiastic ally in articulate and persuasive Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, who committed UK forces to the war. Blair carried the UK Parliament with him but there were dissenting voices notably that of ex-foreign secretary Robin Cook – the mendacious “dodgy dossier” purporting to show intelligence on Saddam’s arsenal was heavily doctored. In truth, Saddam was a squalid tyrant whose removal was highly desirable, but Iraq was not a credible threat to the US or the UK and in time no weapons of mass destruction were found. While the war overthrew Saddam, (Bush foolishly boasting “Mission accomplished”) the resulting power vacuum was filled by weak government and sectarian terrorist groups, causing blood-soaked chaos. Bush and his advisers planned the war badly, not understanding the murderous Sunni-Shia-Kurdish tensions unleashed and making a serious error in disbanding Saddam’s army and leaving nothing to support the civil authorities. The US and UK have now finally left still divided Iraq. The expedition there deeply dented Bush’s reputation and destroyed that of Tony Blair.

Amid all these troubles, Bush ploughed on with his domestic programme. An immediate response to 9/11 was the Patriot Act, drastically extending the surveillance rights of the US government. Extra Medicare help was given to older citizens, educational improvements were made but Bush’s plans partially to privatise the social security system did not gain support and were dropped. His tax cuts probably contributed to the large deficit being run as the economy grew only modestly up to 2007.

Bush won the close fought 2004 Presidential election against John Kerry with 51.7% of the popular vote against Kerry’s 48.3% and 286 votes to 251 in the Electoral College. But the political tide was running against Bush; Congress became Democrat dominated in the 2006 mid-terms.

Bush also got blamed, not wholly fairly, for the slow Federal response to the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina which devastated Louisiana and particularly New Orleans in 2007. He should have been more pro-active when his officials underperformed.

Bush comforts Katrina victims

A much larger crisis came to haunt the luckless Bush in his last year. There was much instability in the sub-prime mortgage market from 2007 as recessionary pressures multiplied. House prices sharply declined and bank loans were going bad. Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve had regulated too lightly; the banks were grotesquely over-exposed; many Wall Street financial instruments were of doubtful value: the banking community had been reckless and greedy. Despite the efforts of Hank Paulson at the Treasury and Ben Bernanke at the Fed, leading investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and a procession of famous names failed, had to be bailed out or sold at low prices at considerable taxpayer expense. Business morale was shattered in the US and Europe and Bush carried the can. Recovery eventually came, much too late to help Bush.

Bush thus left under a considerable cloud. His presidency had not been distinguished but none of his predecessors have had to face the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war and the 2008 financial meltdown. He quietly retired to his Texas ranch, dutifully appears at formal occasions and can only hope that the verdict of history will be kinder and not wholly negative.

SMD.

3.12.14.

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

BILL CLINTON: Post-War American Presidents (10)

[This is 10^th in a series describing the 12 Post-War American Presidents from a British perspective]

Bill Clinton had the good fortune to preside over the US in a period of sustained economic prosperity. Politicians reap the benefits of such periods even if their own contributions are marginal. The international crises Clinton faced were episodic rather than chronic. Knowledgeable and articulate, he is rated as one of the most popular of US Presidents. Yet not all his domestic programmes found favour and the sharp scandals surrounding his personal life raised uncomfortable questions about his integrity.

President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton (1946- ) was born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Arkansas. His father died 3 months before his birth in a motor accident. His mother Virginia, who trained as a nurse, brought him up alone, with her parents help, and her second husband was Roger Clinton, a car salesman, moving to Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1950. Although Bill took on his stepfather’s surname in 1962, Roger Clinton was a gambler, alcoholic and wife-beater with whom Bill was often in conflict. His mother divorced then remarried Roger before he died in 1967. Bill was a good student at Hot Springs High and when 16 he became so adept at the tenor saxophone that he thought of a career in jazz music. However his political interests were fired by meeting JFK in 1963 on a school visit to the White House and by listening to Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a dream..” in the same year.

Clinton meets JFK in 1963

 Retrospectively and only partly fancifully, Clinton has been described as “the first black President” coming as he did from a rural Southern state, from a poor one-parent family and a broken home, enthused by jazz and by Dr King – classic badges of the black experience. Bill’s ambition was to gain admittance to Georgetown University, Washington DC and he won his Bachelor of Foreign Service degree in 1968. During his time there he was active in college fraternities and clerked in the office of the distinguished Senator for Arkansas William Fulbright.

Young Clinton

 His academic prowess earned him a Rhodes scholarship to University College, Oxford in 1968-9 to study PPE; he could have been drafted to serve in Vietnam. He had straight-forward draft deferments in 1968/9 but he subsequently went through various devious manoeuvres to avoid the draft. No doubt these were common enough among ambitious young men at that time but they rather haunted him as Presidential candidate later. He was moving Left then – Fulbright was a critic of the Vietnam War and Bill joined anti-war demos in England. In 1972 he worked in Texas for the doomed Democratic Presidential candidate ultra-liberal George McGovern, thrashed by Nixon.

In 1970, he entered Yale Law School and from 1971 dated fellow student Hillary Rodham from Chicago, Illinois. Relatively affluent Hillary was clever and committed; they became inseparable and married in 1975. In time they had one daughter, Chelsea.

Bill marries Hillary in 1975

Hillary was very influential and pro-active as First Lady at Little Rock and at the White House. Her own independent political career as New York senator and as Secretary of State has been a formidable one and may not have ended, even though she is now 67. 

After Yale, Bill taught law at the University of Arkansas, but had turned his closest attention to politics. He narrowly failed to be elected to the House in 1974, but was voted in as Attorney-General of Arkansas in 1976. In 1978 he was elected Governor of Arkansas, at 32 the youngest state governor ever. His first 2 year term was undistinguished and he was not re-elected in 1980, a year of Republican resurgence. However he returned to office in 1983 serving until 1992, establishing himself as a leader of the centrist New Democrats. The Clintons, for they were a team, are credited with transforming the Arkansas economy and with so improving the state education system that from one of the worst in the Union it came to be rated as one of the best. Bill became chairman of a Governors’ group and started to feature as a modest national figure. The only real shadow was the convoluted Whitewater controversy where some claimed the Clintons had acted improperly in a land development deal, which later failed. The Clintons never faced charges though a number of others, including Bill’s successor as Governor, were convicted for fraud; whiffs of historic corruption are never easy to disperse.

In 1988, Clinton contemplated contending for the Democratic presidential nomination but thought better of it. He gave an overlong and poorly delivered speech to the Convention in support of Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts who won the nomination but lost the election to George Bush, Senior. Clinton planned his 1992 nomination campaign more carefully although he started off as an outsider well behind Governor Jerry Brown of California. He lost in Iowa, trailed in the polls and then came a close second in New Hampshire (earning the nickname The Comeback Kid). Some successes in the South including Florida and Texas, was followed by a stunning triumph in New York. He went on to win the California primary knocking out Jerry Brown. The Clinton bandwagon was racing on and he easily secured the Democratic nomination, choosing Al Gore as his running mate.

Normally the one-term incumbent George W H Bush, could expect re-election. Bush had won huge public support during the Gulf War, but his breaking of pledges not to increase taxes, the looming economic recession and Bush’s diffident manner told against him. Clinton won in 1992, substantially helped by the 3^rd party intervention by Ross Perot to whom Republican votes mainly leaked. The outcome was:

Bill Clinton         43.0%

George Bush      34.7%

Ross Perot          18.9%

Clinton takes the Oath at his 1993 Inauguration

Clinton was a mere 46 when he became President. He spoke well in a folksy and informal way; he could be cheerfully convincing although he was ever the consummate politician, pressing whatever buttons appealed to the audience he happened to be addressing. It was hard to pin down his principles or his deeply held beliefs, if he indeed possessed any. His critics called him “Slick Willy” and he somehow never seemed entirely trust-worthy. Throughout his career he had enjoyed various liaisons with other women like a large percentage of men and he lied about them, like an equally large percentage of men. He was all too human and no saint.

Clinton’s first term was fruitful. He tried to introduce a comprehensive Health Care Reform bill, but the opposition of the doctors’ lobby and the insurance industry was enough to see the bill rejected by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1994. The abortion laws were liberalised, the Don’t ask, Don’t tell compromise protected gays in the services and the Brady Act modestly tightened up the gun laws. A new Family and Medical Leave law allowed (unpaid) absences from work in certain circumstances. His 1993 Deficit Reduction Act overhauled the tax system, introduced new tax bands and restored some welfare benefits. The US economy began to recover steadily. Overseas, Islamist enmity grew. A US engagement in anarchic Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993 resulted in Marine casualties and in 1996 Clinton escaped assassination in Manila when at the last moment a Bin Laden-inspired bomb plot was uncovered. Aggressive Bosnian Serbs were bombed in the lethal civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. Clinton did enough comfortably to brush aside the challenge in 1996 of Republican Senator Bob Dole in the Presidential election.

But trouble was brewing. In 1997 Clinton embarked on a series of encounters with a White House intern, 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky, who regularly gave him oral sex, on a wholly consensual basis. Investigators of other complaints against Clinton seized on this liaison, which Clinton denied. The affair became a partisan public scandal and in due course Clinton was accused of obstruction and perjury; he was impeached by the House but fortunately the Senate acquitted Clinton in 1999.

Monica Lewinsky

Clinton denies Monica

Clinton had behaved very unwisely in unzipping himself and looked like an ignorant hillbilly when he insisted that “I have never had sexual relations with that woman!” His shameless apologists claimed that he was the victim of a predatory girl and that, to the Southern male, oral sex does not count – only penetrative sex does. A blow by blow account (pun intended!) of the affair and of a notorious stained blue dress was published in the Starr Report by an “independent counsel” to the toe-curling embarrassment of the US public and wretched humiliation of Hillary. In time the matter faded but Clinton had demeaned himself and besmirched his high Office.

To his credit Clinton (with Hillary pushing too) passed the Children’s Health Insurance Programme, a policy centre-piece, which gave joint Federal and State aid to families in a band above the Medicare income limit. Europeans would consider this rather basic assistance but the US has been very slow to provide universal affordable healthcare, jibbing at the expense and ignoring the social benefits. Most crucially the Clinton years ended on an economic high with 3 years of budget surpluses from 1998 to 2000.

In foreign affairs, Clinton responded sensibly to events. Harassment of ethnic Albanians by Serbs triggered off US punitive bombing and in time the creation of UN administered Kosovo. Friendly overtures to a renascent China were returned; substantial efforts were made at Camp David to reconcile Palestine and Israel but while Ehud Barak was willing, Yasser Arafat eventually walked away. More ominously in view of later events, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed with substantial loss of life by Islamic terrorists in 1988 provoking bombing raids on Sudan and Afghanistan. As Saddam Hussein’s tyranny worsened, US forces imposed a no-fly zone over parts of Iraq. 

Clinton leaves Office

Clinton was succeeded by George W Bush in 2001, as the political pendulum swung towards the Republicans. Clinton’s popularity ratings were high as he left office. ABC News summed up the public consensus pithily: You can’t trust him, he’s got weak morals and ethics – and he’s done a heck of a good job.

In 2001 he was only 55 and he is now 68 and still in the public eye. He has devoted himself to lecture tours and to good works, notably to help earthquake ravaged Haiti, to improve global public health and to resolve ethnic conflict. He campaigned vigorously in favour of Hillary when she tried to win the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008; though she was unsuccessful he loyally supported Barack Obama and nominated him for re-election in an admired speech in 2012.

Americans have forgiven Clinton his various transgressions and look back nostalgically to the booming, confident Clinton years after the stumblings of George W and the disappointments of Obama.

SMD

25.11.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014