Bill Clinton was one of the better presidents this country has had. He
kept what was good about Republican agenda - free trade, global
economy and ending welfare dependency - while bringing fiscal solvency
to the country, making the government work efficiently, cutting down
crime and bringing empowerment to groups that had been alienated and
disenfranchised before.

So what that he was a horndog. As a poster at the Howard Dean campaign
office said, "What's worse: screwing an intern or screwing a country?"
Bill Clinton cared about people. He thought about everyone, even the
idiots who started militias, said that he killed Vincent Foster and
claimed, while their states were getting huge subsidies, to want the
government off their backs. You do not often see that level of
compassion and patience in a leader. Even after leaving office, he
worked to fight AIDS - a cause from which he could in no way benefit,
but which is very important for the world. Like Nixon and Carter
before him, Clinton received better reviews out of office than in
office. In his case, it is a case of delayed gratitude.

For the people who voted for Nader, I hold nothing but contempt. If you
do not see the difference between Bush and Gore, then you must be
blind; and if you do not see the difference between Bush and Kerry,
then you must be blinder. So what that Gore lost his native Tennessee.
I have a certain familiarity with the way people from Tennessee think.
They are a bunch of wife-beaters and child molesters, and Democratic
Party is better off - more honorable, more pure, more upright, more
true to its principles - without Tennessee or West Virginia among its
constituents. Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico - these are legitimate battleground
states, and I wish Kerry the best in getting them to vote for him. Just
as I will be voting for him in Virginia.

The global economy, under leaders both Republican and Democratic, has
raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty all over the
world. Following economic empowerment came improvement in human rights
and treatment of women. The media keeps focusing on disasters, but the
fact is that the world has improved tremendously over the last twenty-
five years. In East Asia, poverty went down from 32% to 16%; in South
Asia, from 41% to 31%. With reduction in poverty came options for
people - options that allow them to get away from people who commit
atrocities against them and get in control of their destinies. And
that, I believe, is a result that justifies having some of our jobs go
overseas even while others are created here or come here from other
countries. Even as American businesses, through creating these jobs,
bring home profits which through taxation are invested in public
sector and go to create domestic jobs.

I stand to say this as someone who, as a computer professional, lost
my place in the economy over the last three years and am having to
change professions. Like manufacturing workers in Great Lakes states
in 1980s, I have experienced much of my industry go overseas. I still
stand strong in favor of international trade, because I see the
improvements that it has made in people's lives around the world. And I
am willing to go through things I never thought I would go through in
order to make it possible.

What people who knock global economy don't understand is that it is an
arrangement for creating wealth everywhere, and not only in the
countries that get our jobs. As Chinese, Indians, Mexicans, etc., get
wealthier, they buy more goods and create jobs all over the world,
including (and especially) in this country. The creation of jobs
overseas leads to creation of better jobs in America; it benefits
people all over the world, including here.

The people who want to protect jobs that Americans cannot honestly
compete in at the expense of the American consumer and at the expense
of workers in the Third World are not compassionate or liberal; they
are selfish. The true little man is not in America but in the Third
World, and the true policies that benefit the little man are ones that
let him rise through his honest efforts, with access to the world's
markets, out of poverty. For this reason I campaigned against Gephardt
in the primaries; he tried to destroy an arrangement that has allowed
hundreds of millions of people around the world better life than
they've ever had. Right now, Edwards has been saying some of what
Gephardt had been saying, but in much less strident tones. I certainly
don't believe in giving tax breaks to companies that move their jobs
overseas; but neither do I believe in tariffs that keep people in other
countries who can do the job better than Americans from being able to
have access to American markets.

Nor do I believe in subsidies for farmers and oilmen who have been
nothing but ingrates, claiming to want the government off their backs
while receiving huge subsidies from the government. If they are men,
as they claim to be, then they would be able to compete without aid
from the rest of us, whom they despise. Let's get some honesty here.

Ilya Shambat
http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket

Bill Clinton was one of the better presidents this country has had.