A Clinton in power will not bring back the good times

Bill Clinton became president at a golden moment for the US

Back in 1992 I was watching from the balcony of Madison Square Garden as Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic party nomination for the presidency. On stage with him was his wife, Hillary, and their young daughter, Chelsea. The music that blared from the loudspeakers as the Clintons took their bow was Fleetwood Mac singing “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”. It was a quintessentially American message – optimistic and forward-looking.

By contrast, if and when Hillary Clinton bids for the presidency in 2016, her unofficial campaign anthem might as well be “Yesterday”. The most powerful appeal of the Clinton name is nostalgia for the good old days of the 1990s, when all America’s troubles seemed so far away.

ON THIS STORY

Obituary Richard Mellon Scaife, 1932-2014
Global Insight Neocons alone in arguing for war
Edward Luce Obama’s White House legacy
Edward Luce ‘Hard Choices’, by Hillary Clinton

GIDEON RACHMAN

Opinion polls show that Mr Clinton is now easily the most well-regarded president of the past 25 years. Mrs Clinton has her own formidable résumé – as a senator and as secretary of state. But a large part of her appeal still lies in the warm glow of the Clinton brand. As Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, a long-time chronicler of the foibles of the Clintons, pointed out in a recent column, even their bitter enemies seem to be succumbing to nostalgia. Ms Dowd quoted Bill O’Reilly, the conservative television star: “With Hillary you get Bill. And Bill knows what’s going on.”

But while Mr Clinton may yet return to the White House as First Man, the Clinton years are never coming back. Mr Clinton had his strengths as president – intelligence, shrewdness, empathy – but he was, above all, lucky in his timing. He came to power at a golden moment for the US in both economics and in geopolitics.

The Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991, just a year before Mr Clinton was first elected. Throughout his eight years as president, there was no serious competitor to the US for the role of global superpower. The Japanese, who had haunted the dreams of Americans in the 1980s, entered a prolonged slump at the start of the 1990s, from which they have yet to pull out. China had been knocked sideways by the student uprising of 1989 and its violent suppression. The Chinese economy grew rapidly in the 1990s but it was still only 12 per cent the size of the US economy by the time Mr Clinton left office.

The name Osama bin Laden had yet to impinge on the public consciousness. Al-Qaeda struck New York and Washington nine months after Mr Clinton left the Oval office. The foreign-policy preoccupations of the Clinton years presented themselves as moral dilemmas – such as Bosnia or Rwanda – rather than as threats to national security.

Hillary has her own formidable résumé. But a large part of her appeal still lies in the warm glow of the family brand

Mr Clinton’s economic inheritance was similarly golden. The frightening deficits of the Reagan years disappeared in the 1990s, partly because of sensible fiscal decisions taken by President George HW Bush. By the time Mr Clinton took office, the US economy was already recovering strongly. He was the lucky beneficiary of a surge in American productivity, following the transformation of the workplace by computers. With unemployment at just 4 per cent and inflation under control, there was exuberant talk of a “New Economy”.

Given this fortunate combination of circumstances, is it any wonder that the president had time for dalliances in the Oval Office?

Now compare Mr Clinton’s inheritance, with the America that faced Barack Obama. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, just two months before the 2008 presidential election, meant that Mr Obama and his team took office facing an acute financial and economic crisis – which continues to overshadow his presidency, six years after the event. (Despite that, Mr Obama was able to push through the comprehensive healthcare reform that had eluded Mr Clinton and his wife, who was placed in charge of the first effort to secure universal coverage.)

The international picture that Mr Obama faced was similarly bleak. The “unipolar moment” Mr Clinton enjoyed was already drawing to a close by the time Mr Obama came to power. The US was struggling to extricate itself from draining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Mr Obama leaves office in January 2017, perhaps to give way to President Hillary Clinton, China will – at least measured in terms of purchasing power – already have displaced the US as the world’s largest economy. Conservative commentators, such as Mr O’Reilly, often blame these setbacks on Mr Obama’s “weakness” or failures of leadership. In truth, he was dealt a much weaker hand than any of his recent predecessors.

The nostalgia for the Clinton years also extends to matters of style. Mr Obama, once praised for his cool, is now condemned for his “coldness”. Mr Clinton, once attacked for his ill-discipline, is now lauded for his humanity. It is true that Mr Clinton brought a warmth to the presidency that Mr Obama lacks. On the other hand, Mr Obama has conducted himself with a dignity that eluded Mr Clinton.

As Mrs Clinton prepares to run for the ultimate prize – with the publication of a worthy book and numerous television appearances – she will be hoping that Americans remember the good bits of the Clinton years and forget the icky parts. The real contrast between the Obama and the Clinton presidencies, however, is not between personalities but between eras.

It would be nice to believe that another Clinton in the White House could somehow magically recreate the golden economic and geopolitical circumstances of the 1990s. But, as Fleetwood Mac once put it: “Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.”

gideon.rachman@ft.com