MR. CLINTON'S "DEVIL'S LUCK"

(Also see my Ronald Reagan entry Tear Down That Curtain, plus the Losing Russia entry, both posted on my blog on January 18^th, 2011, as part of the mega-entry Assassination Of An American Dream.)

Mr. Clinton has been acknowledged as one of the smartest politicians in American history, and despite being a liar, a promiscuous and irresponsible man, rightly impeached, yet gutlessly acquitted by the US Senate, he has managed to hold on to a huge popular following in the United States, and in many other ‘free’ countries of the world, while his historical presidential rankings range from the partisan high of #7 (!) to the low of #23, which is of course an exceptionally high “low.”

To be honest, I would probably have been more lenient toward him, despite his notorious moral failings and his unscrupulous submission of the American Presidency to special interests and the highest bidders, had his foreign policy provided some sort of counterbalance. But it is precisely on account of his foreign policy, and especially with regard to his Russian policy, that he is liable the most to an unequivocal condemnation. The USSR had been a mighty adversary to the United States, and the military might of post-Soviet Russia had not dissipated all of a sudden, with those same thousands of nuclear weapons still posing a threat to America’s national security; and besides it was a show of exceptionally bad sportsmanship to denigrate the fallen giant, who, as we know, had not really ceased to exist, as Mr. Clinton had let his country to believe. The American nation may not have suffered from itright away, but in the long term, his treatment of Russia hurt American interest more than any other action or policy of an American President in the history of this nation.

Yes, his reaction to the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been a delay-action calamity, while on the surface, both in his foreign policy and in domestic affairs he was hugely successful, even though in the former he happened to light up the fuse to a bomb that would explode long after he had left his office, and thus, even in this, he and his supporters could blame his own malfeasance on the future presidents of the United States.

In matters of the economy, he was riding an exceptional lucky streak, which had much more to do with the so-called dot-com bubble and the overall stock market speculative bubble (Dow Jones reaching 11,908.50, on January 14, 2000, and Nasdaq shooting up into the stratosphere, with 5,408.62 pts. on March 10, 2000, only to suffer a subsequent sharp drop, especially with Nasdaq, staying at about 50% or lower of its Clinton peak pseudo-value up to this day.

Yes, it was Mr. Clinton’s devilish luck, especially with the USSR having just collapsed, and chickens not yet coming home to roost at the end of the deceptively prosperous eight years of his presidency.

There is a pretty obvious reason why Mr. Clinton is still being given a hero’s treatment, and his presidency is still remembered with a great nostalgia. Since he left the office in 2001, on a continuing streak of good luck, the country has been going down, politically, economically, financially, and militarily, both under President Bush-43, and under his successor, the incumbent President Barack Obama. Thus, even in this, Mr. Clinton’s fortune has lasted for more than a decade after his tenure, and will probably keep lasting, until one day America wakes up and realizes that something unwholesome had been done to her some time ago. Only then, as she goes back in time to trace the path of her misery to its source, may she eventually wizen up to the role Mr. Clinton had played in this, and identify him as one of her rapists.