Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 9

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:

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

There’s still no economic prosperity in the Big Apple, 420 days after the Clintons’ inauguration. Nor is there any health care insurance program yet established for people who lack health insurance. And an adequately-financed federal crash research program to find a cure for AIDS is also still not in existence.

But the threat of World War III breaking out in the Balkans or the Middle East appears to be greater these days. As the German poet Bertolt Brecht once wrote:

“When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming.

“When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.”

Ironically, World War I also was triggered when “The Austrian statesmen in 1914 decided that the time had come when it would be necessary to control the Serbian menace, and they consciously planned an ultimatum to Serbia of such severity that it would be practically impossible for Serbia to concede all of their demands” (Genesis of the World War by Harry Barnes), although “Serbia felt a natural and justifiable impulse to do what so many other countries had done in the 19th Century—bring under one nation’s Government all the discontented Serb people” (Origins Of The World War by Sidney Fay).

Yet the Clintons’ Administration still apparently regards Europe as a chessboard on which to play a 19th-Century game of power politics, in apparent support of the special interests of German, French and British imperialism, the transnational oil corporations and the CIA’s military-industrial-media complex. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

(Downtown 3/16/94)

434 Days After The Clinton’s Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

Like Richard Nixon, Bill “Whitewater” Clinton should be able to land a multi-million dollar contract from one of the book-publishing media conglomerates to write his memoirs, if he decides to resign his post soon. He also stands to make big bucks and have more time to play golf and jog if he decides to get a job as a lawyer-lobbyist for some Washington, D.C. corporate law firm or some Japanese transnational corporation. On March 11, 1994, the Times noted that “the financial markets were worried that the investigation of the president and first lady’s various Arkansas business and political dealings, known collectively as the Whitewater affair, would turn more serious" and “overseas metals markets were shaken briefly in the morning by rumors that Mr. Clinton would resign over the affair.”

Perhaps the CIA and its mass media have decided—434 days after the Clintons’ inauguration—that they won’t be able to market the Clintons again as “agents of change” during the 1996 U.S. presidential election [or in the 2008 U.S. presidential election]?

(Downtown 3/30/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 10