Couple things here. First, Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming into fiscal responsibility by the Republican Congress. Check his spending vetoes, they were only to demand higher spending. Second, I don't know we can read too much into Clinton's trade deals. I too very much dislike them, but no electable Pubby those cycles would have done differently. If something is the prevailing wisdom among both parties, I don't know that the winner deserves much more blame than the opposing party, which in this case might have done worse. I won't pretend I think they were wise, but they might well have been the lesser evil unless he was willing to sacrifice his second term.
Second point first ... the trade deals Clinton signed into law were deals that multinationals had been pushing for for years by Reagan/Bush but were blocked by Dems that argued the deals would hurt the middle class (workers).
During this time and into the 90's the Dems were in the wilderness in DC and being crushed by Repubs by being outspent in elections 2X, 3X, 4X and more -- the Dems could not compete at the national level. Clinton was part of a Democratic review team to understand how they could get back into the game and become relevant and he found the answer -- become Republicans and support business deals favored by the wealthy.
So, Clinton promised the wealthy that he'd be there guy and he was and they gave him the money needed to be relevant -- and he won -- twice.
And now for the first point ... Clinton raised taxes a bit and balanced the budget while the Repubs fought him tooth and nail all the way. In fact, the last three years of the Clinton admin they actually paid down the debt by about $400B. Bush/Cheney had DC all to themselves but never came close to balancing the budget. Reagan before him tripled the national debt. Obama inherited the banking and housing market crisis that cost the nation many trillions of dollars. In addition, millions of Americans lost there jobs as a consequence of the fuckup Bush/Cheney created and dug a hole so deep it took years for Obama to get us out of it.
Put simply ... the last thing you want running the economy is a Republican, sadly, the Dems are now a light version of them.
Brian