How about Clinton's emasculation of the FBI and CIA? He not only loathed the military, but our vital intelligence services as well. And, as Lowry details, he "refocused the CIA on humanitarian interventions, economic security, the environment, and a host of issues associated with global crime …" Terrorism was buried in a blizzard of other boutique, post-historical priorities."
Lowry shows that Clinton treated terrorism as a law enforcement matter, rather than warfare. At Clinton's direction, the FBI became the lead agency in the war on terror -- "a task for which it was inherently unfit." As a law enforcement agency, honor bound and structured to operate within the rules of evidence and the high standards of proof of American courtrooms, its hands were tied, and it was rendered ineffectual working against terrorism.
The Clintons brag about deficit reduction during their years, but they conveniently omit that they tried to bankrupt the federal government through Hillary's grandiose and clandestine scheme to socialize health care. They also forget to mention that the Republican Congress restrained their other efforts to spend during the last six of their eight years in office.
As Hillary is trying to recapture the White House in 2008, we will also need to be armed with Lowry's legacy corrections as to the Clinton economic record, which "benefited from two big lies. The first was the dishonest picture Clinton painted of the American economy in 1992. … The other lie is that his 1993 economic package transformed the federal budget, and hence the American economy." In fact "it didn't cause interest rates to fall, it didn't significantly reduce the deficit, and it didn't cause the economy to grow."
As you would expect from National Review's Rich Lowry, this is an intelligent book that not only chronicles the events, but trenchantly analyzes their historical significance.
Buy this book for yourself and a friend this Christmas. Read it, and put it in a safe place. Then bring it out for the 2008 campaign and spoil Hillary's plan to campaign on a revised version of the Clinton legacy.