No, I’m not being sarcastic. Not at all.
Acknowledgments of the 42nd President’s 73rd birthday have been sparse and muted today, because, well, you know. Nevertheless, he is one of the dedicated, brave and patriotic 44 public servants (remember, Grover Cleveland counts twice!) to take on the killing, brutal, near impossible challenge of the biggest job in the world.
Almost 10% of our Presidents have been shot; another three were shot at. Almost 20% have died in office.
I was never a fan, indeed I began my first ethics website because nobody in the media was discussing the ethical implications of Monica Madness. As with all Presidents, however, President Clinton deserves a measure of honor and respect for taking on the job.
And he did balance the budget once.
Ethics Alarms 
Happy birthday President Clinton! Probably the last president to effectively govern from the middle. Between Bill and a Republican Congress, it was a fairly effective team.
Happy Birthday President Clinton!!!
Bill Clinton was also somewhat moderate, such a stark contrast to the insane offerings from today’s democrat party. He was also vastly more competent than the next two.
Boy, if I misspelled “competent” I’d never hear the end of it…(Fixed it)
He will be up there with Franklin Pierce or Buchanan: He was ambitious and knew how to play to the crowd: That was about it.
1. “Down there.”
2. His best comp is Nixon.
That’s my beef against Clinton. He had excellent leadership skills and tools, a knack for compromise, and natural charisma. He could have—should have—been a great President. He also had a unique opportunity to soften the divisions in politics and the nation.
He also couldn’t keep his hands and eyes to himself, lied as naturally as he breathed, and tried to talk his way out of things. That’s why he wasn’t so great.
No birthday cake from me: Clinton was great for taking credit for accomplishments he had nothing to do with such as the booming economy thanks to the rise of the internet. He was asleep at the wheel as the terrorist threat grew larger and larger and he relied on polls to determine his tepid response to the Khobar Tower bombing which killed 19 American soldiers. There was also the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the attack on the USS Cole which killed 17 sailors and was linked to al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden. He reminds me a lot of the “dough faced” pre civil war presidents like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.
But irrelevant, Wayne. The point is that he took on the job, and served the country by doing so. Whether he did it as well as he should have, or whether his measures turned out well or not doesn’t outweigh the threshold debt the nation has to anyone who leads it.
Yep. No matter how much I loathed the guy, he was the President, and that’s a job I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
I get my avatar name from this time in history, when I truly became aware of national politics. I learned to classify my observations within the larger world, and to see what politicians were doing instead of just saying.
I also learned (not for the last time) that a democrat can get away with anything. these days, that includes the swamp dwellers in the GOPe.
Nonetheless, happy birthday to the man who put up with Hillary.
Happy birthday, Mr. former President Clinton. Many happy returns.
I give then-Budget Committee Chair John Kasich the credit for the “balanced budget”, not President Clinton. Clinton was opposing it right up until the 1994 Republican-controlled House passed it, at which point he got out in front of it and did his best to take credit.
The real tragedy of it was that it never actually happened. That “balanced budget” was really a 10-year plan to gradually reduce the deficit at a pace that would eliminate it after 10 years. But one Congress cannot bind the actions of a subsequent Congress, so the plan got soon scrapped and there never WAS a balanced budget.
–Dwayne