BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON want to extend their grip on the Executive Branch for four more years. I can give you 40 reasons to turn them down. In no particular order:
1. Joycelyn Elders.
2. According to the General Accounting Office, ethics investigations of the Clintons and their aides are costing taxpayers more than $1 million per month.
3. Eighty-six men, women, and children died in Waco, Texas, after FBI agents used grenade launchers to mount a CS gas attack on their compound.
4. "100,000 more police on the streets." Seen them yet?
5. "A tax cut for the middle class." Seen it yet?
6. Clinton went on national television and answered questions about his underwear.
7. The candidate: "We're going to end welfare as we know it." The president: Vetoed two welfare-reform bills before finally, reluctantly, signing a third.
8. His pet scheme -- AmeriCorps -- pays college-age "volunteers" more than $7 an hour.
9. Webster Hubbell.
10. "Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?" -- Democratic US Senator (and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient) Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
11. The candidate: "I think President Bush played racial politics with the Haitian refugees. I wouldn't be shipping those poor people back." The president: "The practice of returning those who fled Haiti by boat will continue. . . . Those who do leave Haiti . . . will be stopped and directly returned by the US Coast Guard."
12. His "Cabinet that looks like America" contained 14 lawyers and 10 millionaires.
13. Hillary's 1,342-page health care "reform" would have created 33 new federal boards and agencies and 200 regional alliances, added $70 billion to the federal budget deficit -- and taken away your right to choose your own doctor.
14. Terrorists at the White House I: Yasser Arafat.
15. Terrorists at the White House II: Gerry Adams.
16. George Bush was right: Clinton did turn the White House into the waffle house.
17. The candidate: "Bush hasn't fought a real war on crime and drugs. I will." The president: Slashed the Office of National Drug Control Policy; teen-age drug use doubled from 1992 to 1995.
18. First priority of his first week in office: gays in the military.
19. Hiked the tax on gasoline to its highest rate ever.
20. Shut down two of the four runways at Los Angeles International Airport so he could have his hair cut aboard Air Force One by Cristophe of Beverly Hills.
21. Cristophe's going rate: $200 per haircut.
22. George Stephanopoulos' explanation: "The president has to get his hair cut like everybody else."
23. Average per-capita federal tax burden, 1992: $4,153. 1996: $5,225. Increase: 25.8 percent.
24. Craig Livingstone.
25. Clinton calls the Defense of Marriage Act "gay baiting, pure and simple" -- and promises to sign it.
26. Midnight basketball: Your federal tax dollars at work.
27. Hillary's chats with Eleanor Roosevelt.
28. Clinton's 1996 budget proposal forecast $200-billion-plus deficits for the next seven years.
29. "North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb" -- Clinton administration, November 1993. "North Korea already has as many as two nuclear bombs and is continuing to develop atomic weapons" -- Clinton administration, April 1994.
30. Sent Jimmy Carter to cut a deal with the North Koreans: Washington agreed to give Pyongyang free oil, two free nuclear reactors, diplomatic ties, and increased trade -- and Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its bomb-making facilities in 10 years.
31. The Clinton tax increase on Social Security recipients hit 5.5 million retirees.
32. At the first sign of controversy, he walked away from Zoe Baird.
33. And from Kimba Wood.
34. And from Lani Guinier.
35. He chose to celebrate the 50th anniversary of V-E Day in Moscow -- Berlin's ally in invading Poland and starting World War II.
36. "The Arkansas state troopers said they were often called upon to act as intermediaries to arrange and conceal Clinton's extramarital encounters. They say they frequently picked up and delivered gifts from Clinton to various women, and often drove Clinton . . . to meetings with women. 'We were more than bodyguards. We had to lie, cheat and cover up for that man,' said Larry G. Patterson, a 26-year veteran state trooper" -- Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1993.
37. Hazel O'Leary.
38. Key Clinton adviser on "family values": Dick Morris.
39. The candidate: "We should not reward China with improved trade status when it has . . . failed to make sufficient progress on human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre." The president: "I am moving, therefore, to delink human rights from the annual extension of most-favored-nation trading status."
40. Clinton argued in court that Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit should be postponed until he leaves office because he is on "active duty" as commander in chief.
There. Forty reasons to turn out the Clintons, and I didn't even get to Warren Christopher. Did I omit your favorite grounds for chanting "No More Years"? Just send them to me in care of The Boston Globe ([email protected] or Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107). I'll supply another Top 40 list before the election.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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