Thursday, September 22, 2005

90s Nostalgia

This article in the Post by Tina Brown made me nostalgic for the 90s and the Clinton years:

Now after the Iraq debacle, the ballooning deficit and the aftermath of Katrina, Americans are pining for grounded leaders in public office, too -- leaders who have moral conviction, yes, but also the gnarly, dexterous ability to think things through.

The irony is that no one would have believed that Clinton -- the king of spin, who went out under a cloud of indecency five years ago -- could climb back to such credibility. Monica is fading and he's backlit now by his disciplined handling of the economy, the unsought comparisons of how well FEMA used to perform under his watch and the enlightened nature of his global activism.


I miss those years, not just because there was a Democrat in the White House, but because I remember the sense of hope and optimism about the future at the dawn of the 21st century. It seems now that all of that has been squandered by our current petulant and ineffective president.

Yes, Sept 11 was a huge blow to our psyche and shattered the illusion that we lived in a peaceful world, but this administration squandered, along with our budget surplus, the opportunity to really bring people together. In those days, after Sept 11, Bush could have asked just about anything of us and we would have followed.

But just five short years from the end of the century we are faced with looming budget deficits, corporate cronyism in government, ineffective emergency response systems, two incomplete and incompetently run wars with no end in sight, growing natural disasters, the fear that we may have damaged the environment irrevecobly and growing international animosity towards our policies, there is the sense that things are unraveling at the seams.

I think its about time we get back to that place of hope and possibility and leave behind the policies that are keeping us trapped in fear. And we need to start now. I know my state has local elections this November and the congressional mid-term elections are next November in 2006. We need to start electing leaders who are going to bring us back to policies that make sense and represent the needs of all Americans.

"We are so arrogant because we are obsessed with the present," he told his guests at the conference's end. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me. I just don't want anybody to die before their time anymore."

2 Comments:

At 12:36 PM, Blogger Jet said...

I agree that history is treating Clinton favorably, or rather, that now the hoopla and spin is vaporized we are seeing the true strengths of his leadership.

What's happening in Washington these days is the wholesale rape of America's virtues.

 
At 2:10 PM, Blogger liberalprogressive said...

hey, jet...welcome to my blog!

I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is heartbreaking to see our whole society auctioned off to Bush's cronies and watch them attempt to dismantle everything that has made our society great.

 

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