Clinton's DNC Speech & Media Coverage

I feel dirty after reading the blogs - both left and right - and listening to NPR reporters give Bill Clinton a tongue bath after his speech at the DNC. If the media was wearing a giant blue dress, it would be permanently stained.

I am no fan of Bill Clinton. He makes good speeches, but not good policy. David Frum is correct here:

As Bill Clinton collects his accolades, let's recall: the key decisions that inflated the housing bubble of the 2000s - and that laid waste to the US economy in 2008 -- were taken under Bill Clinton's administration: the decision to leave derivative trading unregulated, the decision to allow deposit-taking institutions to engage in proprietary trading, the pressure on banks to relax mortgage lending standards, the decision to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow enormously large thanks to the implicit subsidy of the government guarantee of their bonds and borrowing.

In addition, I'd add that Bill Clinton reappointed, and thus legitimized, Alan Greenspan - in itself a tragedy. However, Frum is wrong in the very next sentence:

If President Obama inherited a mess not of his own making, it should be remembered of whose making the mess was.

If it was Clinton's mess, Bush had 8 years to clean it up, and in 6 of those years, Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. They didn't fix it because they didn't think it was a problem.