By almost any standard of comparison, the eight years during which William Jefferson Clinton served as President of the United States was a better time for most Americans than the eight years during which George W. Bush served in the same capacity. In fact, very few comparisons of the state of the union over the sixteen year period during which two Presidents completed both their four year terms offers such compelling evidence for declaring one administration to be a success and the other a failure. Since Bush directly followed Clinton into the White House, the most useful means of comparing the two are the differences in the states of the economy, foreign policy and the impact on the future from the point at which Bush inherited command of the country from Clinton and that comparison reveals a systemic failure on every point.
One of the most notorious legacies of the Clinton administration which Bush inherited and failed to maintain was a budget surplus. Every year of the Clinton Presidency saw either the deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decrease or the surplus as a percentage increase of DGP By contrast, each year of Bush’s first term in office saw the exact opposite. While this trend temporarily reversed itself during Bush’s second term, by the time he left office the, figure had returned almost to the low point which Clinton had inherited from Bush’s father. The 7.3% unemployment figure which Clinton inherited upon taking office had shrunk to 3.9% upon leaving office. In an almost eerie microcosm of the how the administration of George W. Bush became almost a reverse image of the Clinton Presidency, those numbers would be exactly reversed eight years later, thus essentially resetting the employment situation in America right back to where his father left things (“InsideGov.com”).
Although US troops were deployed as part of UN peacekeeping measures in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia and missile strikes were launched against several Middle East targets as part of anti-terrorism initiatives, the eight years during which Clinton served as President represent of most peaceful eras in recent American history. In fact, the second half of Clinton’s time in office represents the only sustained period in which US military casualties did not exceed 1,000 in any given year between 1980 and 2002 (DeBruyne). American military casualties would explode in the wake of Pres. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan in retaliation for the attacks of September 11, 2001 and his decision to invade Iraq for…well, no known justifiable reason other than wanting to do so (Fallows, 2015). Even if not a single US soldier had died as a result of Bush’s wars, the verdict would still ring loudly in the terms of the devastation both wars have wreaked on budget spending and the rise of terrorist groups never heard of before those invasions.
The ultimate judgment in determining the value of one President over another when they follow in succession is whether the country was better off when the succeeding Chief Executive took office or left office. When George W. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001 he was inheriting from Bill Clinton “the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history” (“InsideGov.com”). When Bush left office, the country was facing its greatest economic threat since the Great Depression with companies that had been in business for over a century forced to closed down, millions of homes being foreclosed, thousands of people losing their jobs and taxpayers forced to foot the bill required to keep the nation’s banking system from complete collapse (“InsideGov.com”).
The comparison of the relative success or failure of two Presidents is usually a difficult determination unless the comparison is between a legendary figure like Abraham Lincoln and a caretaker like Millard Fillmore. Rarely can two President be so inarguably separated into success and failure when one follows directly upon the other, especially when both served two full terms. In the case of comparison Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, however, the determination of who left American in a better state when they left office than it was when they arrived is as easy as choosing whether Babe Ruth was a better baseball player than Michael Jordan or whether 2001: A Space Odyssey is a better move than Plan 9 from Outer Space.
- DeBruyne, Nese, and Anne Leland. American War and Military Operations Casualties Lists and Statistics. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2015. 2 Jan. 2015. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.
- Fallows, James. “The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 19 May 2015. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.
- “Pres. Bill Clinton v. Pres. George W. Bush.” InsideGov.com. Graphiq.com. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.
