The good old days weren’t so great.

The history of the Clinton White House is one of great ambition curtailed, of high hopes dashed on the rocks of partisanship, and of a great political messenger who shot his agenda in the foot, repeatedly. What the public remembers fondly from the 90’s has little to do with politics and more to do with the unchecked growth of American technology in a revolutionary decade, one that brought the internet and Britney Spears simultaneously into American homes. What we don’t remember is any significant activity from Washington other than the Lewinsky scandal. FDR had social security. Ike had the interstate highway system. Bill Clinton has, well, an acquittal from the senate.

The politics of the 90’s was marred by partisanship and cynicism. Though Bill Clinton remained popular up until he left office, he was a popular president because he was an interesting person and a great communicator, and not because he did anything remotely transformative. Our political system was the same when he left office as when he entered as was, for the most part, our societal makeup. His lasting achievement, in the eyes of most political scientists, is welfare reform. After eight years in office, the most interesting thing he accomplished was a bureaucratic reform of an entitlement system.

We reinvent our past to suit the political debates of the present. Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, a book seldom quoted and never actually read by anyone, was entitled “Living History”. This was the precursor to her current presidential campaign entitled “Manufacturing History” because this is what the ever-ambitious double duo is doing. They are creating a myth surrounding their time in office and encouraging a public nostalgia for their invention. This has to do with power and their strange belief that they’re entitled to it because they’re allegedly remarkable. There is no rational reason why a second Clinton presidency will be any more remarkable than the first.

It’s easy to be nostalgic about the pre-9-11 world because it didn’t phenomenally suck as bad as the world does now. Just because Mr. Bush has managed to dismember the constitution and destroy our chances of world peace for, say, another generation or two doesn’t mean that we should return to the past as a way to heal the future. Historically, this is folly, because the past in this case is an imagined myth by a desperate public who want, as desperate people do, for things to return to an easier time.

However, such a belief is marred in folly. We should remember the 90’s for what it was – a decade of political handsoffishness – signified by a substantially more libertarian Republican party on one side and an aging Boomer with his hands tied by Congress on the other. Clinton, the first time around, was harmless because we were at peace and in a period of economic growth. The world was not a safer place because of the Clinton presidency, no in fact, the seeds of our current war were sown in the dismantling of our intelligence apparatus under his watch. But it appeared safer and to Bill Clinton, appearance is everything.

He always looked and sounded good. He still does and this is why people like him, especially compared to the disaster that Bush is from a podium. It’s like comparing a Rolex to a sundial. However the Clinton veneer was thin and fragile in application and his presidency is an example of how an intelligent and personable individual with little intestinal fortitude can be repeatedly thwarted by a brutal and cunning opposition. This balance between Republican meanspiritness and Clintonian dreamy idealism was the perfect political balance in a trivial political age.

However, now our age is anything but trivial. Though it is a natural inclination to want to return to a seemingly easier time, we can’t, and we shouldn’t make our decisions based upon sentimentality for the past. We need to look to the future for a pragmatic leader. Pragmatism is a far different thing than the dreamy idealism of the hyper ambitious duo that just can’t stop thinking about tomorrow even when it was so yesterday.