William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President

Clinton was fondly remembered for many reasons:
The budget surplus
Economic prosperity during his tenure
Being a uniter (i.e. working across party lines)
A good communicator
Welfare reform
A good administrator
He preceded George W Bush

As for the budget surplus, he had the great fortune of timing. There was an economic boom during his time in office which allowed the possibility of the federal government having a huge influx of revenue from taxes. Where President Clinton should get credit is that he did not develop budgets to take advantage of the unexpectedly large tax revenues. Congress during that time gets credit as well. However, if not for Ross Perot running as a third party candidate in 1992 against President George WH Bush and soon-to-be President Clinton, I wonder how disciplined both President Clinton and Congress would have been. However, as some of Clinton's detractors say, he did not keep up adequate defense spending. That is an unfair critique. Defense cutbacks began under George WH Bush because of the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was no longer a threat and it was to that threat which almost all defense spending was allocated. Moreover, Newt Gingrich and his supporters of the Contract with America wanted a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and a line-item veto for the President in order to elimiate congressperson's pet projects being inserted into other pieces of legislation (i.e. pork).

The economic prosperity in his two terms should not rest alone solely Clinton's feet. He came to office during an economic recession ("It's the economy, stupid" being James Carville's campaign slogan). That recession I argue came about with the change in government spending at the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and with it the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union disentigrated in 1990. The central figure in America's defensive scheme was no longer a threat. Under Reagan, there was a huge defense spending run up. There was no rational reason for it to continue, so under President George WH Bush, defense spending was slashed. Defense spending went almost completely to the manufacturing sector. With that revenue stream gone, those defense contractors cut jobs. That cutting of jobs had an effect throughout the national economy and thus the recession was born.

I will give his administration credit for lengthening the economic prosperity. I'm certain that he made policy decisions that added to it, but I couldn't list any myself. I'm not schooled in the matter. Alan Greenspan was a rave fan of Clinton's and I'm sure that his administration's policies working in concert with the Federal Reserve did play a positive role in the economy. The subject itself is embroiled in debate as to its origins. Fiscal conservatives argue that Reaganomics (i.e. President Reagan's policy of supply-side/trickle down economics) was the fountainhead of this economic prosperity and there was a lag time to it which placed in Clinton's administration instead of Reagan's. However, my judgement says that the source of economic prosperity lay in the technological revolution that the internet unleashed. It was a new frontier and speculators dumped money into the tech field. Home computers were becoming common place. I'm sure that there were other factors to it, but the internet and personal computers allowed for an explosion of small businesses starting up and small business is one of the major pistons to the American economy. It should be remembered though that at the end of Clinton's tenure that the bubble burst and the nation had a dotcom bust. There was talk of recession during the 2000 campaign.

I really do not remember much of Clinton's ability to work with others across the aisle (ability to be a uniter). Probably because in 1994 Newt Gingrich's Contract with America swept in a conservative majority into both houses of Congress, the election being dubbed the conservative revolution. I will give him the Welfare Reform legistlation 1996 where he did work with a Republican Congress, but that was one of the tenents of the Contract...

Bill Clinton was a good communicator and the Great Empathizer. That latter role is what beheld him to so many female voters. He was the candidate for soccer moms (a term used to explain why he did so well in 1992 and 1996 among middle- to upper-income female voters with younger children). He is reportedly a very likable fellow. I've read in the past that Republicans could leave meetings with him thinking that they had reached a favorable agreement with him over legislation only to discover later he was simply an agreeable man. Thus "Slicky Willy" gained traction among his conservative enemies... well that and the affairs, both purported and real.

I have no clue about President Clinton being a good administrator. I don't remember any debacles in federal agencies on his watch.

Which I guess is as natural enough a segueway to President Clinton being like because he isn't President George W Bush. Bush has two strikes against him: the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. That makes many people nostalgic. Detractors argue that President Clinton let al Qaida fester into 9/11 attacks, not adequately dealing with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the debacle of military intervention in Somolia in 1993, the double embassy bomings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. All had Islamic militant extremism in common (Bush would later dub it Islamic Fascism). Yet to counter, it's hard to fight a non-state entity... as Bush would later find out in both Iraq and Afghanistan--but al Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan probably better makes the point.

In summary, my take on the Clinton years are that it was an economically prosporous time in which he served as an adequate president, albeit impeached in the House. I believe that is how history will remember him... unless Hillary Clinton is elected president. Then he'll be more remembered as being the president who later became the first First Gentleman (or First Laddie, if you prefer).