Wednesday, August 30, 2006

I Never Voted For Bill Clinton

Not a long essay but a random thought.

I didn't vote for Bush or Dole or that weird gnome from Texas either, so you figure it out.

It's twisting my soul but I am starting to regret not voting for Mr. Bill. At the time, I was much more ideologically inclined and couldn't bring myself to vote for such a political animal. The final straw was when he made it well known he would not commute the death penalty of a mentally retarded man. It was cold, calculated political move. Not a moral one and it turned my stomach.

Now, I look back at welfare reform, NAFTA and many other issues of his watch and realize more and more I agree with his moves during those eight years.

As I look back at events of the past 6 years, particularly Katrina, I keep asking myself, WWBD? What would Bill do?

Sure, a lot of what he would have done would have been through the prism of cold political calculus. But given today's climate, I think I could forgive even the most political beast.


Cross posted at Radical Georgia Moderate

5 comments:

Sara said...

I never voted for him either--too young in 1992 and too lazy in 1996. No, the minute I actually got off my ass and started voting we were hit by a plague of dumbassitude...so maybe I should sit 2008 out?

Amber Rhea said...

Dude, I hate this template.

But at least you increased the line-heignt in the posts, thank god.

griftdrift said...

I'm not happy with it either. I really need to get off my lazy ass and do some real coding.

Anonymous said...

(Paula here, too lazy to create a Blogger ID) I didn't vote for Bill Clinton that second term, precisely because he signed welfare reform. Grift, I've been reading your stuff about welfare reform. As a former anti-poverty activist myself, I don't disagree with most of what you say, but somehow still come to opposite conclusions about whether welfare reform was successful. Weird. Maybe sometime we can have a nice nerdy TANF policy talk over plate of onion rings.

griftdrift said...

That would be awesome, Paula.