Bill Clinton Was a Good President

Argument: Not only did constant scandals take Clinton's focus off running the country he lost credibility in the eye of the public every time. When Paula Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment, he became the first sitting president to testify before a grand jury investigating his own conduct. His affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky culminated in Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives on Dec. 19, 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton cut NASA's budget by $715 million in 1995 (about 5%) and did not restore the bulk of the money until three months before he left office. The result was a space program struggling to operate with less money for most of Clinton's time in office. Some blame the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia explosion on Clinton's decision to slash NASA's budget by an aggregate of $56 million over his presidency. Clinton was unable to fulfill his campaign promise to repeal the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. Faced with strong opposition from conservatives early in his presidency, Clinton settled on a compromise policy referred to as "don't ask, don't tell," which allowed gays to serve in the military if they did not disclose their sexual orientation. Neither conservatives nor liberals were satisfied by the outcome. Clinton's gun law backfired terribly, because the number of federal prisoners doubled under Clinton, and 58 percent of them were serving time for drug-related offenses. Resources were geared towards incarceration instead of rehabilitation or crime prevention. Clinton's 1994 Crime Bill was filled with "pork spending" that distributed $10 billion to states and special interest groups. In rebuttal towards your "And, the Bill banned the manufacture of 19 specific types of deadly assault weapons," the bill was repealed 10 years ago on 9/13/2004. As seen at www.nbcnews.com it says "The expiration Monday of a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons means firearms like AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s can now be legally bought " a development that has critics upset and gun owners pleased. The 1994 ban, signed by then President Clinton, outlawed 19 types of military-style assault weapons. A clause directed that the ban expire unless Congress specifically reauthorized it, which it did not." This shows that this bill may have succeeded for his term but in the long run, it did not. Clinton's Goals 2000 program did not ensure uniform quality of standards among all the states because he compromised on oversight to get the program passed. The impact therefore varied by state and Clinton never fulfilled his goal of equalizing education standards and improving results for all students. By 2000, six years after IASA was implemented, only 17 states were in full compliance with the standards. Clinton gets too much credit for the economy boom in in the 1990"s, which was already growing at a rapid pace before he became president. It was the republican controlled congress which made the economy that it was. Clinton failure to regulate the financial-services markets enabled the bad lending and Wall Street scams that led to the 2007 banking crisis. Citations- http://www.nbcnews.com... For gun laws http://clinton.procon.org...- For everything else Sincerely PM