We Forget What It Was Really Like Under the Clintons

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted January 7, 2008.

Twelve days before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times Magazine cover, in large white letters on a deep black background, carried the single word title of its lead article: Clintonism. In the article Matt Bai, the Times reporter on all things Democratic, with a big D, made one undeniable assertion and two highly debatable ones.

Bai's contention that Bill Clinton's "wife's fortunes are bound up with his, and vice versa" is incontestable. The primaries and even more so the general election, if Hillary is the nominee, will be a referendum less on Hillary than on Clintonism, the philosophy and strategy that guided the White House for eight years. Hillary clearly welcomes such a prospect, as demonstrated by her constantly reminding voters that she was "deeply involved in being part of the Clinton team."

Bai's much more problematic assertions involve his evaluation of the nature and impact of Clintonism. Bai begins by mocking "Clinton's critics on the left" for displaying "a stunning lack of historical perspective." Yet it is Bai, who demonstrates a remarkable lack of historical knowledge, a dangerous shortcoming for a reporter with his portfolio.

The most glaring example is Bai's bizarre assertion that Clinton "almost single-handedly pulled the Democratic Party back from its slide into irrelevance." The historical fact is that when Clinton took office, the Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress and a majority of state governorships. By the time he left office, the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and two-thirds of the governorships. By the numbers, it was Clintonism that relegated the Democratic Party to the shadows.

Bai's other dubious assertions is that Clintonism was good not only for the Democratic Party but for the nation as well. He applauds Clinton's "courage, at the end of the Reagan era, to argue inside the Democratic Party that the liberal orthodoxies of the New Deal and the Great Society, as well as the culture of the anti-war and civil rights movements, had become excessive and inflexible. Not only were Democratic attitudes toward government electorally problematic, Clinton argued; they were just plain wrong for the time."

But then, astonishingly, in his 7,000-word piece, Bai does not describe the many legislative initiatives Clinton undertook to reverse the New Deal and the Great Society.

Clinton himself summed up the principle guiding his initiatives in his famous declaration, "The era of big government is over."

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years. The broadcasting industry couldn't get the legislation through under Reagan or George H.W. Bush, but it succeeded under Clinton. The day he signed the bill into law, Clinton boasted, "Landmark legislation fulfills my administration's promise to reform our telecommunications laws in a manner that leads to competition and private investment, promotes universal service and provides for flexible government regulation."

The Act removed the legal barriers to local and long distance phone companies acquiring each other. The results were immediate and massive. In 1996 there were eight major U.S. companies providing local telephone service and five significant long-distance companies. By 1999, these 13 companies had merged into five telecommunications giants, in a series of record-breaking merger deals.

Prior to this law, tightly regulated broadcasters could own just 40 stations nationally, and only two in a given market. Suddenly, without the FCC's input or any public hearings, ownership limits on radio stations was eliminated and a feeding frenzy took place.

By 2001, there were 10,000 radio station transactions worth approximately $100 billion. As a result, 1,100 fewer station owners were in the business, down nearly 30 percent since 1996. Two companies -- Clear Channel and Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting -- controlled one-third of all radio advertising revenue; in some individual markets their stations commanded nearly 90 percent of the ad dollars. Clear Channel alone owned nearly 1,200 stations, the result of buying up 70 separate broadcast companies.

In 1999, the Financial Services Modernization Act overturned the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Act effectively barred banks, brokerages and insurance companies from entering each others' industries, and separated investment banking and commercial banking. The law was enacted in response to revelations of gross corruption and manipulation of the market by giant banking houses that organized huge corporate mergers for their own profit, leading to the collapse of the stock market in 1929.

The Wall Street Journal celebrated the agreement to end such restrictions with an editorial declaring that the banks had been unfairly scapegoated for the Great Depression. The headline of one Journal article declared, "Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade."

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David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.

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