Clinton Redivivus

Leon Hadar, libertarian fellow at CATO Institute, reviews a new book, A Bubble in Time, by historian William O'Neill on the 'interwar period' of 1987-2001. After reviewing the Clinton 90's, he concludes with a comment on how Obama fits into this context:

Clinton’s main asset had been the economic and political reality of the 1990s, which included the end of the Cold War, the resultant “peace dividend” at home, the opening of new markets abroad, and the lack of global challenger to the U.S. in a time of the high-tech revolution. This created the conditions for the Clinton Age economic boom, and international peace benefited many sectors and demographic groups who supported the status quo and helped elect and then re-elect Clinton.

O’Neill contends that an important feature of Clinton’s success was the “evil things” that didn’t happen under his watch, though they were seeded during it. “The new age of blood and iron ushered by President Bush II, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the three men of the apocalypse,” didn’t come out of nowhere, he writes. “Beneath the frivolity of the Clinton years dark forces had been gathering their strength, waiting for a chance to slouch towards Bethlehem, the opportunity that 9/11 would give them.” In little-read publications, think tanks, and “other shadowy venues, neoconservatives and their allies plotted to invade Iraq, alienate the rest of the world, and ruining the American economy by means of runway spending, massive tax cuts, and lax regulation—the trifecta of looters.” Or to put it differently, the many disasters of the Bush years were “incubating in the heart of Clinton’s America.”

O’Neill concludes his study without any reference to the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. Obama is not even mentioned in the index. But my guess is that he would urge the new Democratic occupant of the White House to resist taking Clinton’s road down the political middle and accommodating Republicans. There are some signs, however, that Obama may be trying to do just that. By selecting leading Wall Street-friendly former Clintonites as his top economic advisers and choosing a veteran Republican figure as the Pentagon chief, Obama has demonstrated that, like Clinton, he has no desire to challenge the status quo in Washington, despite the fact that more and more Americans are becoming disenchanted with the political system. It would not be surprising if O’Neill’s next volume of “informal” history chronicled the many disasters that incubated in the heart of Obama’s America.

That's pretty much my developing view on how Obama is governing (versus how he campaigned), as a triangulating Clintonian Democrat, who ends up hugging the Establishment middle and refusing to push for the big changes that we need in our country and culture.