Retrasado said:
Clinton had absolutely nothing to do with the surplus. Nothing. What caused the surplus can be summed up in two words: microcomputer revolution. If anything, you could say Clinton caused part of the current debt mess by failing to anticipate the dotcom bust (which bush had to deal with in the early part of his term). And ftr I'm not saying that was his (clinton's) fault, I'm just saying that his actions as president in no way caused the '90's economic boom, which is the real reason the US government had a surplus. OT: worse than Harding, Buchanan, Johnson...? no. Was he a good president? hell no, but he's not even close to the worst. and neither is Bush btw. I would like to point out though that you really have to wait at least 35-40 years before you can get a truly accurate picture of how good or bad a president's actions were. For example, look at how people view Nixon today vs. when he left office. Nobody thinks he was a great president (though I have read some historians praise his foreign policy decisions), but nobody is like ZOMG!!! WORST PRESIDENT EVAHH!!!11 like they were in the late '70's.
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So then why wasn't Bush running a surplus during the housing bubble and the times during his administration when the economy was doing well?
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
