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WASHINGTON--In 2002, Rep.- elect Michael Michaud, D-Maine, was a genuine exception among Democratic House candidates: a blue-collar, dues-paying union member who had worked in the paper mill for 28 years, who is pro-life, and who, in a district previously represented by moderate Republicans--won.
All this after Michaud publicly embraced the Man Republicans Love to Hate, former president Bill Clinton.
Here, according to the estimable columnist E.J. Dionne, is what candidate Michaud had to say to Clinton in October before 2,500 Maine citizens in Augusta:
"The country's economy was in the ditch, and you made the hard decisions and turned things around. But the Republicans in Washington could never give you any credit. Oh no. They said it was not Bill Clinton who brought prosperity, it was the House Republicans and Alan Greenspan. Guess what? We still have the House Republicans. We still have Alan Greenspan. And where's the economy? Back in the ditch."
This Michaud fellow is clearly on to something.
For the past decade, there has been a conservative crusade to (a) deny Bill Clinton's policies any credit for the historic prosperity the nation enjoyed during his presidency or (b) deny that those good old Clinton days were really that good at all.
First, when Clinton won the White House, the federal budget deficit was at a historic high of $290 billion, 10 million Americans were out of work, and the nation's economic growth rate under the outgoing Republican administration was the lowest in more than half a century.
Clinton introduced his controversial economic plan that raised the income taxes of the richest 1.4 percent of Americans. We immediately heard from the Gloom and Doom congressional Republicans, every one of whom voted against the Clinton plan. House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich predicted, "This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable."
What followed is unarguable: creation of more than 22 million new jobs; the nation's lowest unemployment rate in 30 years; the lowest unemployment rate among women in 40 years; and the lowest Hispanic and African- American unemployment rates in history.
Faced with a recession that never appeared, Republicans went from assigning blame to denying the improving economic situation. In 1996, the GOP presidential nominee saw the dark side: "[Clinton's] big-government policies slammed on the brakes, starting with the largest tax increase in the history of America. His economic legacy is the Clinton crunch, slow growth, high taxes and stagnating wages."
That November, three out of four voters said they were better off economically than four years earlier, and Clinton became the first Democratic president since FDR in 1936 to win a second term.
Time to switch arguments for the GOP in the face of a booming economy. Former Vice President Dan Quayle spoke for many in his party: "We do have prosperity, but let's give credit where credit is due. Ronald Reagan started the prosperity we have today. George Bush continued it. And Bill Clinton inherited it."
After the federal budget deficit had gone down each of the Clinton years and the cascading tax revenues generated by the prosperity led in 1998 to the first balanced budget in 30 years, Clinton still got no credit.
"The federal government is balancing its budget, thanks to the Republican Congress," said Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.
Let's be blunt. Bill Clinton gave his political opponents a pistol loaded with his own reckless and unacceptable self-indugence, and then reloaded it on the way out the door with his pardon of the loathsome Marc Rich.
But Mike Michaud was right. Bill Gates is still there. Alan Greenspan is still there. The House Republicans are still there. Ronald Reagan's tax and budget policies are still honored in the White House. The only two things missing are a good economy and Bill Clinton.
MARK SHIELDS is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.