Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 11

In their current campaign to secure a third term in the White House, in violation of the spirit of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which limits U.S. Establishment politicians who become the U.S. president to two terms in office), the Clintons are claiming that a third Clinton Administration in Washington, D.C. will bring democratic political “change” to U.S. society. Yet as the following historical column items from Downtown indicate, when Bill Clinton was the U.S. President during the 1990s the Clintons failed to bring democratic political change to U.S. society:

476 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

As we approach the 500th day of 1996 [and 2008] presidential candidate Clinton’s administration, the Clintons still appear more interested in issuing ultimatums to people in foreign countries (unless they used to work for the CIA in Haiti) than they are in democratizing the political, economic and Big Media decision-making process in the United States. If anti-war people in the U.S. don’t eventually mobilize against the CIA’s government and its Big Media, it still looks—476 days after former American Legion youth leader Bill Clinton and his wife’s inauguration—as if another escalating war in the 1990s [and in the 21st century] is possible.

Richard Nixon is now gone [in 1994]. But, unfortunately, Nixon’s spirit of ruthless power-tripping and macho power-grabbing apparently lives on in Washington, D.C. and in the Virginia offices of the Central Intelligence Agency.

(Downtown 5/11/94)

504 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

Former Georgetown University student government politico Bill Clinton recently [in 1994] made a 1996 re-election campaign speech before UCLA’s graduating class in California, in part, because “the president’s emphasis on value-based themes—may serve to distract attention from more sensitive subjects, including efforts by Mr. Clinton and his lawyers to devise a strategy to fend off a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment” (NY Times 5/21/94). The Times also noted that “Mr. Clinton also planned to use his trip to California to raise at least $2.5 million for Democratic candidates for Congress.”

Voters in the U.S. have received a lot in the way of platitudes from the Clintons, but very little in the way of actual positive change—504 days after the Clintons’ inauguration. There’s still no federal gay rights bill, no adequate response to the AIDS epidemic, no legalization of marijuana, no peace treaty with Iraq, no economic prosperity in New York City, no end to institutionalized racism, sexism and classism and no free health care insurance for all U.S. citizens. And the CIA has still not been abolished by the Clintons’ Administration—despite the Cold War being over.

Downtown has not learned whether Al Sharpton plans to challenge the Clintons for the 1996 Democratic presidential nomination, but perhaps the former Arkansas governor should now allow an African-American candidate to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party in 1996—before arranging for Hillary Rodham-Clinton to succeed him in the Oval office in 2001 [or in 2009]?

(Downtown 6/8/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 12