Bill's legacy on trade, gay rights, Wall Street and welfare under fresh scrutiny
Like the upcoming sequel to Hollywood's 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, this summer Bill Clinton is hoping to revive the spirit of the 1990s after two decades away from the White House.
Frailer and thinner, and now with a whispery stage voice, the 42nd president of the United States has captured attention by revealing a deal with his wife Hillary to serve as an economic adviser should she defeat Donald Trump in November's presidential election.
But just as the film's writers updated their script to put a woman in the Oval Office, much has moved on since the last time a Clinton was behind the Resolute desk. What worked in the 1990s is no guarantee of box office success this time.
Though his exact role in any future administration remains unclear - a cabinet post has been ruled out - the emergence of William Jefferson Clinton as a central cast member in his wife's 2016 campaign is prompting a major reinterpretation of past performances. From trade liberalisation and welfare reform, to gay rights and the war on drugs, the much-vaunted legislative successes of the first Clinton decade are being re-evaluated in a much-changed political context.
Trump has also begun to re-examine old scandals - claiming Bill's womanising as an antidote to his own alleged misogyny, and threatening to dredge up everything from the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the Whitewater property deals in an effort to smear his opponent in attack adverts.
"Nobody in this country was worse than Bill Clinton with women. He was a disaster," Trump claimed at a rally in Oregon, after his own record was challenged by his opponent's campaign. At least the Clintons have had time to develop a thick skin.
"You think the stuff they said about [Hillary] is bad? They accused me of murder," said Clinton last Friday, referring to the conspiracy theories that followed the suicide of White House aide Vince Foster.
For many Democrats, the "first dude" - as Hillary once joked he might have to be called if she wins - nonetheless remains an unparalleled electoral asset.
The centrist tenets of Third Way politics in the US emerged relatively unscathed from Clinton's eight years in office between 1993 and 2001.
The reputation of the political "big dog" for both growing the economy and bringing Republicans and Democrats together - though more fondly remembered on the left than the right - is particularly attractive at a time of partisan rancour and economic insecurity.
"There's been one time in 50 years when we all grew together and that's when I had the honour to serve and I would like to see it happen again," President Clinton told supporters in Kentucky as he revealed his offer to help his wife revitalise impoverished regions like Appalachia and the Rust Belt.
But while this focus on what former adviser James Carville once famously dubbed "the economy, stupid" makes just as much electoral sense now as back then, there is far less consensus that Clintonomics holds all the answers.
Both Trump's capture of the Republican party and the persistent challenge of Bernie Sanders to Clinton's Democratic nomination rest on their shared critique of Clinton-era free trade deals. Both opponents blame the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and permanent normalisation of trade relations with China in October 2000 for initiating a hollowing out of US manufacturing that accelerated under George W Bush and Barack Obama.
Sanders has singled out Clinton's reform of welfare entitlements for exacerbating poverty rates and removing a safety net once the economy turned sour.
The collapse in middle-class incomes since the banking crash of 2008 can also arguably be traced to Clinton's decision to remove some of the restraints on Wall Street.
Recently revealed documents show two separate attempts by bank-friendly advisers, in 1995 and 1997, to hurry Clinton into supporting a repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and allow investment banks, insurers and retail banks to merge.
A Financial Services Modernisation Act was passed by Congress in 1999, giving retrospective clearance to the 1998 merger of Citigroup and Travelers Group and unleashing a wave of Wall Street consolidation that was later blamed for forcing taxpayers to spend billions bailing out the enlarged banks after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Even Bill Clinton's own labour secretary, Robert Reich, has become a major critic of the administration's legacy.
As Sanders supporters come under pressure to rally around Clinton, Reich acknowledged last week that she would be preferable to Trump, but with words of faint praise only.
"Don't demonise or denigrate Hillary Clinton," he wrote, "... she'll be an excellent president for the system we now have, even though Bernie would be the best president for the system we need."
On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton has also become a magnet for critics of the criminal justice system, who claim his 1994 crime bill, passed during the "war on drugs", was responsible for the incarceration of a lost generation of African-American men.
"I don't know how you would characterise the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack, sent them out on to the street to murder other African-American children," he angrily told protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement last month, "... you are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter."
Though the language sounded as dated as the policy, some of it can be excused by the changing attitudes. Both Clintons have also been criticised by gay rights campaigners for supporting the Defence of Marriage Act in 1996, a decision perhaps partially excused by the fact that public support for same sex unions was far less evolved back then. Ultimately, however, such issues reveal the limits of relying on nostalgia to help the Clintons. Like grunge music, electronic pagers and tamagotchis, the world has moved on since then.
"Nobody in this country was worse than Bill Clinton with women. He was a disaster," Trump claimed at a rally in Oregon, after his own record was challenged by his opponent's campaign. At least the Clintons have had time to develop a thick skin.
"You think the stuff they said about [Hillary] is bad? They accused me of murder," said Clinton last Friday, referring to the conspiracy theories that followed the suicide of White House aide Vince Foster.
For many Democrats, the "first dude" - as Hillary once joked he might have to be called if she wins - nonetheless remains an unparalleled electoral asset.
The centrist tenets of Third Way politics in the US emerged relatively unscathed from Clinton's eight years in office between 1993 and 2001.
The reputation of the political "big dog" for both growing the economy and bringing Republicans and Democrats together - though more fondly remembered on the left than the right - is particularly attractive at a time of partisan rancour and economic insecurity.
"There's been one time in 50 years when we all grew together and that's when I had the honour to serve and I would like to see it happen again," President Clinton told supporters in Kentucky as he revealed his offer to help his wife revitalise impoverished regions like Appalachia and the Rust Belt.
But while this focus on what former adviser James Carville once famously dubbed "the economy, stupid" makes just as much electoral sense now as back then, there is far less consensus that Clintonomics holds all the answers.
Both Trump's capture of the Republican party and the persistent challenge of Bernie Sanders to Clinton's Democratic nomination rest on their shared critique of Clinton-era free trade deals. Both opponents blame the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and permanent normalisation of trade relations with China in October 2000 for initiating a hollowing out of US manufacturing that accelerated under George W Bush and Barack Obama.
Sanders has singled out Clinton's reform of welfare entitlements for exacerbating poverty rates and removing a safety net once the economy turned sour.
The collapse in middle-class incomes since the banking crash of 2008 can also arguably be traced to Clinton's decision to remove some of the restraints on Wall Street.
Recently revealed documents show two separate attempts by bank-friendly advisers, in 1995 and 1997, to hurry Clinton into supporting a repeal of the Glass Steagall Act and allow investment banks, insurers and retail banks to merge.
A Financial Services Modernisation Act was passed by Congress in 1999, giving retrospective clearance to the 1998 merger of Citigroup and Travelers Group and unleashing a wave of Wall Street consolidation that was later blamed for forcing taxpayers to spend billions bailing out the enlarged banks after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Even Bill Clinton's own labour secretary, Robert Reich, has become a major critic of the administration's legacy.
As Sanders supporters come under pressure to rally around Clinton, Reich acknowledged last week that she would be preferable to Trump, but with words of faint praise only.
"Don't demonise or denigrate Hillary Clinton," he wrote, "... she'll be an excellent president for the system we now have, even though Bernie would be the best president for the system we need."
On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton has also become a magnet for critics of the criminal justice system, who claim his 1994 crime bill, passed during the "war on drugs", was responsible for the incarceration of a lost generation of African-American men.
"I don't know how you would characterise the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack, sent them out on to the street to murder other African-American children," he angrily told protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement last month, "... you are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter."
Though the language sounded as dated as the policy, some of it can be excused by the changing attitudes. Both Clintons have also been criticised by gay rights campaigners for supporting the Defence of Marriage Act in 1996, a decision perhaps partially excused by the fact that public support for same sex unions was far less evolved back then. Ultimately, however, such issues reveal the limits of relying on nostalgia to help the Clintons. Like grunge music, electronic pagers and tamagotchis, the world has moved on since then.
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