The complicated legacy of Bill Clinton

What is the former president most remembered for today?

Back in February I wrote an article about the complexities of former President Ronald Reagan and the way that his record has been oversimplified by those on both sides of the political spectrum. Those on the left despise Reagan and blame him for his inaction during the HIV/AIDS crisis, as well as his shortcomings and failures on issues ranging from Iran Contra, to economic deregulation, as well as many others.

They ignore, based purely on partisan leanings, the positive elements of actions he took during his presidency. One that I didn’t mention in my previous piece that I think is interesting and thought provoking is that Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court; though he couldn’t have known it would lead to this outcome at the time, it is interesting and ironic that Reagan is inadvertently responsible for the legalization of gay marriage, given that it was Kennedy’s 1 vote margin in Obergefell v. Hodges back in 2015 that led to nationwide marriage equality.

It’s these sorts of nuances that led me to do a re-assessment of the presidency of Bill Clinton, a White House tenure that has also been the subject of much polarized and oversimplified debate. Clinton has been back in the news lately due to the release of his new memoir, Citizen, which centers around his post-presidency after he left the White House in 2001. Clinton has been doing a lot of press to promote the book, and I have been digesting a lot of his appearances as food for thought.

One of the most surreal experiences of my life was getting to meet Clinton in person at a health care centered event in Orange County, California back in 2019. I got to thank him for inspiring me, as a kid, to pursue politics and public service. He couldn’t have been more kind and gracious. It was beyond unreal getting to shake hands and look Clinton in the eyes, someone who I had been reading books about and watching old interviews of since I was a young political junkie. Clinton has had such an indelible mark on not just the politics of America and the world but also on our collective culture.

It goes without saying that Clinton was far from perfect; his personal conduct, which we don’t need to rehash here, left something to be desired. He also made a bunch of policy errors while in office, though I think most of them can be attributed to him doing the best he could given the times he was operating in. We often look at people’s actions in history through the prism of today; sure the Defense of Marriage Act was a big mistake, but the political environment in which he signed it into law was very, very different.

The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is today considered regressive, archaic and punitive in terms of it’s approach to LGBTQ+ members of the military, but it actually signified a lot of progress and positive change compared to what was in place before it was implemented in 1993. Clinton was overall a very pro-LGBTQ+ president- he appointed huge amounts of LGBTQ+ people into his administration, including James Hormel to be the first openly gay Ambassador in U.S. history. He signed executive orders prohibiting discrimination for gay and lesbian federal employees. He strengthened punishments for hate crimes in the 1994 Crime Act. He pushed for more funds for HIV/AIDS research and publicly spoke up against anti-gay bigotry in the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard killing.

A lot of “woke” activists today call out Clinton and say he should be “cancelled” for his behavior during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as well as for other alleged personal indiscretions relating to his conduct with women. However I think it’s hard to make this argument when it was Clinton who appointed feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, and Janet Reno to be the first female Attorney General. He also fought hard to protect a woman’s right to choose and obviously helped elevate his wife, Hillary Clinton, who later became the trailblazing first woman major party presidential nominee and winner of the popular vote.

It just serves as more evidence that these kind of blanket demonizations we see in our culture today are often way too black and white when the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, in the gray area. Nuance is lacking generally in our public discourse, and it’s a particularly critical component whenever we are looking at history.

A touching moment that I think speaks to Clinton’s good intentions was a recent interview he did at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit. He was asked about his attempts to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine in 2000, right before he left the presidency. During the interview he got visibly emotional, saying “I’m an old guy and I have regrets- this is one of them”. He got incredibly close to getting a deal in place which would’ve prevented the last 25 years of violence and conflict we have seen in the region, but it was Yasser Arafat who walked away from the negotiating table.

Whether about Reagan, Clinton or other presidents, people are often quick to be cynical and assume the worst. The reality, however, is that they often really are trying to do the best they can given the circumstances they are in. That’s not always the case, but I do think we would be well served by not always jumping to the worse case scenario and immediately vilifying people. We live in a caustic, unstable, polarized political environment, and it doesn’t just affect our interpretations of the past, it also prevents us from coming together and making progress for the future.