Bush Deregulation vs. Clinton Deregulation

[Kanastrous]

I'm presently in a conversation re:getting Republicans out of power, in which my interlocutor has pointed out that the securities deregulation underpinning the market's present troubles were initiated by the Clinton administration.

To what degree has the Bush administration over the last 8 years exacerbated the Clinton deregulation, and how?

I'm most interested in determining how to pin as much blame upon the Bushies, as is honestly possible.

[SirNitram]

The biggest brick lobbed in the Clinton Years was the 1999 bill by Phil Gramm, supported by McCain, which tore down Glass Seagalman. I think that was the December lame-duck session though.

[Ender]

The deregulation done in the Clinton years was done by Republican dominated congress, which continued it into the Bush years.

[Winston Blake]

I'm most interested in determining how to pin as much blame upon the Bushies, as is honestly possible.

That stinks of confirmation bias. The scientific approach would be to find out how much blame for what lies with whom.

[Kanastrous]

Since I didn't state it clearly in the OP: yes, I am biased. Didn't mean to give the impression, that I wasn't.

[Darth Wong]

Clinton was no liberal. He was only liberal compared to Bush, and he was an expert at staying in power by pandering to both sides' special interests. He's one of those statesmen who looks more like a statesman when he's not actually in a position of power or influence.

Clinton signed the "Defense of Marriage Act"; does this mean that we can put that whole Republican/Anti-Gay correlation to bed too?

[Big Orange]

Clinton signed the "Defense of Marriage Act"; does this mean that we can put that whole Republican/Anti-Gay correlation to bed too?

But at the same time he earned the undying hatred of rightwing loonies by merely not making sexual orientaton an automatic bar for US Military service. The Democrats and the Clintons were/are conservative enough by conventional political standards, but not by nutty Republican standards, what with the moderately pro-Nazi Pat Buchanan being a rather urbane, articulate, and reasonable maverick in comparison to many Neo-Conservatives. I get the impression of half-arsed compromise between the Clinton Administration and the hardlined conservatives in the 1990s.

CNN are somewhat similar in that they're rather conservative in the light of day, but seen as Commies and hippies by the Republican shills.

[ArcturusMengsk]

Clinton was no liberal.

Indeed; in every respect he was the Democratic Eisenhower (a moderate elected between two periods of rather intense opposition ideological control). He courted the racist and Good Ol' Boy vote with welfare reform, and essentially washed his hands of most progressive principles by the start of his second term. In many respects Clinton killed American liberalism, and left so little perceptible difference between parties in the minds of voters that a close election in 2000 was nearly inevitable - just as it was with Kennedy/Nixon forty years before.