----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>I am talking about the policies they did in fact
>enact or advocate. I don't much care what politicians want, just what they
>do.
Which would make sense as a standard if the Presidency was a dictatorship.
But the policies advocated or enacted are dependent on a Presidenct's opponents in Congress. Essentially, you are judging Nixon highly on the environment because he faced pro-environment legislator Edmund Muskie and trashing Clinton because he faced Ted Stevens and his ilk.
As I noted, the only standard should be not advocacy or results, but the results if you subtract the President in question from the political equation of their day. If subtracting Nixon and giving Congress a free hand would have made the country a more progressive place, then he is objectively a rightwing influence on history. Contrary wise, subtracting Clinton and giving Congress a free hand would probably have prevented NAFTA (assuming there was no GOP President to push passage as Bush has with fast track) and caused absolute devastion to every other progressive policy.
On that basis, Clinton is a progressive figure. And the rightwing and many of the poorest folks, especially african-americans, understand this and either hate or admire him for that fact.
-- Nathan Newman