Jequal, I hear what you say, but there's a problem.

Suppose you have you own business - a delivery service. And, suppose you have gross income of 500,000 in one year. But, there is a problem with the road near your establishment, and you are only shipping half of what you could ship. It would only cost $10,000 to repair, and only the city can do it. The city refuses to fix the road. You say to the city: But I could make 1,000,000 instead of 500,000. And the city says, well, the road is just fine because you are making enough money already.

Do you see the fallacy? I don't know if there is a formal name for it, but it goes like this: the mere existence of a success does not excuse unnecessary limitations of that success. Or, put another way, we should not gauge the success of a presidency by its magnitude, but rather by its potential.

Here's another example: suppose you have a child, nephew, sister, etc. who goes to a school. The school has many bright and capable students. The school puts in place a horrid cirriculum and students learn less than they could. The students do ok, maybe even above average for their state, but they don't do nearly as well or learn as much as they could have if they had a better cirriculum. Does their above average or putative success excuse an inferior cirriculum? No, of course not.

This is how I feel about Bill Clinton. The country did well while he was in office, but how much better would it have done if he would have made different personal choices or taken bolder positions on certain issues? How much BETTER off would we be today if he had not, through dishonesty and turpitude, cost Gore the 2000 election?

By your absolutist approach, Lincoln was a bad president because during his presidency the country suffered its worst calamity? No, he's measured relative to the circumstances of his presidency; he's measured by what he did with the cards he was dealt. Clinton was dealt a royal flush (a time of prosperity, and initially, a Democratic Congress) but took home the winnings of a pair of deuces.