From: borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: THE CLINTON CABINET
Date: 15 Dec 92 17:21:24 GMT
Reply-To: borden@m5.harvard.edu
Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

In article <665@blue.cis.pitt.edu> psg+@pitt.edu (Paul S Galvanek) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.181017.3115@m5.harvard.edu> borden@m5.harvard.edu writes:
>>In article <641@blue.cis.pitt.edu> psg+@pitt.edu (Paul S Galvanek) writes:

>>Also, I think 43 percent is a pretty good showing in a three-way race.

>And I think it's pretty poor showing when one considers the the two candidates
>that collected the 57 % were both more conservative that the man elected.

I don't see where this comes from, and I don't think it's based on logic.
Most Americans are neither extreme leftists nor extreme rightists, but are
somewhere in between.  Clinton won by positioning himself as a moderate.  He
conducted his governorship in a moderate way, and it's likely that his
presidency will also be moderate.

>Mind you I'm not saying either Bush or Perot were the rightful winners. 
>Clearly the numbers give Clinton a technical victory.  The numbers do not
>however, give Clinton what he claims.  There was no moral victory for liberals
>this November, quite the contrary, conservative candidates garnered the 
>majority of the support, the consensus of the voters was clearly that 
>traditional liberal democratic solutions were not the desire of the majority.

Clinton is pretty conservative as Democrats go - the truth is he's pretty
middle of the road.  The consensus among voters, over sixty percent of them,
was that George Bush is not the man for the job.  Those sixty plus had a
number of different reasons for that, but they agreed on it.  They rejected
Reaganomics, they rejected the hate-mongering of the far right that Bush was
catering to, they rejected international arms scandals, they rejected a lot of
things.  Most of all, they rejected the lack of leadership which George Bush
has shown overall, Gulf War notwithstanding.  This election was about a lack
of "trust" in George Bush to lead the nation effectively, and it was about
embracing the middle of the road approach to government.

>Unfortunately though, the will of the majority got caught in a numbers 
>squeeze and the ideas that most Americans voted against are the very 
>ones well have to endure, until 1996 8^)  Which is more than enough time
>for Bill to crush the economic growth we're seeing and possibly involve
>us in a protracted war in Bosnia. 

The evidence is that among Perot supporters, about fifty percent preferred
Clinton to Bush, and about fifty percent preferred Bush to Clinton.  This
shows that in a two-way race, Clinton would have still defeated Bush in the
popular vote, albeit not by a landslide.  As for "crushing economic growth"
and "a protracted war in Bosnia", why don't you give the guy a chance?  He
hasn't even been sworn in yet, for god's sake (pardon the expression :)).
Clinton is extremely intelligent and politically savvy; he knows that he'll
have to win the support of more than the 43 percent who voted for him, and
that he'll have to work to keep many of them, too.  If you made your comments
constructive rather than defamatory, maybe some people in Washington might
listen.  As of now, they're of little use to anyone.

One final, related point.  The Republicans tried their best to assault
Clinton's character with regard to his personal life.  I don't remember any
attacks on his ethics as a public official, however.  Could it be that they
couldn't find any ethical problems in his public record?  You know they would
have used them if they had them.

Whereas the attacks on George Bush's character were completely in regard to
his actions as a high-level public official (vice-president, to be precise),
and seriously call into question his credibility with regard to public service.

    - Dave Borden
      borden@m5.harvard.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton