Clinton Had a Rough Time, Too

Bill Clinton doesn't get enough credit for what he achieved as president in spite of his fierce right-wing opposition. Just ask him.

Charlie Rose on PBS asked him last month what the single biggest misconception about his presidency was. The former president responded like a lot of poverty snobs I have known, eager to tell you how much they had to overcome in order to get what they have achieved:

"I think that most people under-appreciate the level of extreme partisanship that took hold in '94."

Indeed. Clinton's remarks may sound more than a lee-tle bit self-serving, especially with his wife poised to make what I am certain will be a run for the presidency.

But he raises an important point that I, too, have often raised whenever I hear someone complain that President Barack Obama has had to put up with more abuse from his opponents than any other president. Hey, I point out, remember the Clinton years?

Or as Clinton said to Rose, "Nobody's accused him of murder yet, as far as I know."

True that. Bill and Hillary Clinton, by contrast, were accused by their political enemies inside and outside of government with a breathtaking variety of offenses and conspiracy theories, often inflamed by such rising media as talk radio, cable television news and the Internet.

Ridiculous birther skepticism about Obama's birth certificate pales on the scandal scale next to various attempts to link the Clintons to the death of their long-time friend, Vincent W. "Vince" Foster Jr., a deputy White House counsel, even after multiple investigations ruled it to be a suicide.

Even more public dollars and work hours were devoted to the Whitewater investigation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and -- lest we forget -- Bill Clinton's impeachment, which failed in the Senate.

Yet, after his acquittal in the Senate, his job approval rating went up. Helped by a booming economy, his party gained seats in the 1998 midterm elections, a first for the party of a sitting president in decades.

Obama, by contrast, faces the midterms with the prospect of massive losses for his party, possibly including its Senate majority. Democrats in those close contests have respectfully rejected Obama's presence, since they're mostly in red-leaning states, although not his campaign dollars.

Yet as Obama faces his final two years in office, a new narrative has emerged: He could have gotten more out of his opponents if he approached the legislative log-rolling, back-patting and arm-twisting process with Clinton's happy-warrior enthusiasm.

Instead, the contrast between Obama's more cautious, reserved and hands-off approach to the activities over on Capitol Hill is stark.

Early in his presidency he showed a tendency to give away too much even before negotiations began, which frustrated many on his own side.

Obama seemed surprised by the tendency of legislators to want to legislate, meaning, no matter what he proposed, they pushed back and asked for more.

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is a good example. In a fruitless attempt to meet Republicans halfway, he proposed a national version of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's health-care law, which was based on a proposal by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Who knows? If he had instead proposed the single-payer system which many in his base wanted (such as extending Medicare to cover everybody, not just seniors), Republicans might well have responded with their own version of Romneycare as a conservative, market-based alternative.

Instead, they rejected Obama's version as a socialistic "government takeover of health care." Even Romney turned against his own plan after Obama seemed to take ownership of it as a national model.

That's how Washington works or, in recent times, doesn't work. Whether Republicans win both houses or not, Obama and his congressional opposition have two more years to show they can legislate.

Bill Clinton during Whitewater and Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra affair managed to get things done legislatively, even when scandal hung over their heads and their opposition parties controlled both houses of Congress.

Obama faces a similar challenge. After the dust settles from the midterm elections, Republican lawmakers will want to get things done, regardless of their personal or partisan objections to working with Obama. So will Obama. His legacy will be judged by how well he can make those mutual interests work on behalf of the country.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.