FLASHBACK: Bill Clinton?s Chaotic, Confused, Failing First Year As President
The Daily Caller
Richard Pollock, Reporter
10:03 PM 08/28/2017
Excerpt:
There once was an American president whose approval rating hovered at 36 percent, who lost a pivotal health care vote although his party controlled Congress, who faced a special counsel investigation, who had an inexperienced and highly partisan White House staff, and who encountered public outrage over a $200 haircut that shut down the Los Angeles International Airport for two hours.
Donald Trump? No. Bill Clinton
Clinton?s presidency was such a disaster in only four months that Time Magazine devoted a June 1993 cover story to his long string of failures. The cover featured a tiny Bill under the large print title, ?The Incredible Shrinking President.? Inside the magazine, the headline asked: ?Is Clinton up to the job? Americans are starting to wonder.?
"Reports of chaos, confusion, and infighting seem to leak out of the West Wing on a daily basis. The president is his own worst enemy, easily distracted, obsessed with minutiae, and uninterested in instilling much order in his administration, the Atlantic wrote a month earlier. ?His staffers, many of them young, don?t really know the ropes, and it shows.?
Clinton ran as an outsider with no federal experience and as the governor of a southern state that ranked 48 among 50 states in poverty. His obvious lack of experience became his downfall in his first year in office, as his presidency became engulfed in scandals and legislative failures.
?If he fails to adjust quickly, he will confirm the widespread belief that the biggest problem with the Clinton presidency is Clinton himself,? Time warned.
Clinton?s first two nominees for attorney general ? both women ? had to withdraw because of scandals. Lani Guinier withdrew when it was discovered she approved of ?race-conscious districting? to guarantee that black lawmakers would win political office.
Next, Zoe Baird removed herself when news broke she failed to pay taxes for illegal immigrants who worked in her home. The Baird ?Nannygate? scandal was among the first of many scandals that would plague the Clinton White House for eight years.
?The humiliating disclosure tonight that another presidential choice for attorney general had withdrawn underlined the point: It was ?absolutely stupefying and deeply worrying,'? The New York Times R.W. Apple wrote at the time, citing an unnamed Clinton strategist.
The jockeying among Clinton?s young and inexperienced staff was another problem in his first year. The press office, headed by George Stephanopoulos, was so young, White House reporters nicknamed them the ?Kindergarten Kids.?
Time said many Clinton White House aides were ?simply in over their heads.? Among them was Clinton?s long-time Arkansas friend Bruce Lindsey who could not approve appointments because he was so disorganized. Lindsey now serves as chairman of the Clinton Foundation.
I have a young man (25) who works for me in Nor Cal, I moved him out West from Pittsburg for an opportunity and he is extremely sharp and very conservative. I was working with him last week and was shocked at a comment he made, "its funny how Hilary is so off base on everything when her Husband was so on point" well after I picked myself up off the ground we had a little history lesson and he now sees the light. This is a great example of how academia is changing History, this young mans insight to BC was formed by his college professors and slanted media. Hell Trump said P%^^y and the left went ballistic, Clinton had troopers in Arkansas bringing women to him, accused of sexual assault how many times and got a BJ from an intern in the oval office, lied about it under oat was hit with contempt of court.... holy crap this is a great man.