Clinton
is the first president who was actually born into the American state, and Unger
has high hopes for him. However, he quickly proves to be a major, major let
down and the victim of the most scathing chapter in Unger's arsenal.
"Armed with the leadership qualities of FDR, the global vision of Eisenhower and Nixon, and a Carter-like suspicion of the emergency state, Clinton nonetheless preferred “enlargement” to downsizing" (Greenberg). In other words, he had so much going for him, and then he just failed to meet any of anyone's expectations. Clinton took the "rouge state" enemy that H.W. Bush had introduced and ran with it, pushing the limits of emergency outward, and increasing the president's, and America's global power. Under the pretense of controlling "rouge states" he convinced the American people that it would be beneficial for the nation to intervene in countries around the world who held little to no interest for the US directly. Unger at least partially blames the people for this abuse of power, saying that "...by 1993 [Americans] were politically addicted to the role of leader of the free world". Unger is infuriated that Clinton would continue the abuse of presidential power (especially having grown up a victim to it) and would manipulate the misguided public opinion in his efforts to do so.
But Unger is not through with his criticism of Clinton, so let's move on to some economics. Unger claims that Clinton was somewhat careless with the domestic economy, which "hollowed out the remaining competitive strengths of American Industry" (Unger).
Clinton is just an all around disappointment for Unger, who credits him with doing literally nothing worthwhile. Greenberg seems to think that this is a harsh evaluation, allowing that while he didn't do what he should have done for the nation, he did not, at least, use the secretive, opaque methods that have characterized the Emergency state to this point. Either way, Clinton is not the friend of anti-emergency-state-americans.
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