Who was more statist--Bush43 or Clinton?

[Anarchist420]

I'm going to say Clinton, by a very slight margin. He was every bit as much of an interventionist and nation-builder as Bush, plus he raised taxes, while Bush allowed the lowest taxes in History after Calvin Coolidge.

Bush established the Dept. of Homeland Security and did the patriot act, but he didn't renew the Assault Weapons Ban, he wasn't the one who passed the Brady Bill, he didn't get the CounterTerrorism thing going (Clinton did with the Effective Death Penalty Act), and he didn't criminalize copyright violations. The War on Drugs also died down under Bush, or at least didn't go up as much as it did under Bush as it did under Clinton.

By looking at spending alone, Bush was far worse, but the statist things Clinton did didn't require spending.

 

[soundforbjt]

Are you using "statist" to refer to State capitalism? Statism or Statist is used sometimes to refer to State capitalism which is different.

 

[Jaskalas]

"Statist", as in big government type?

Bush did record spending which offset any tax cuts. This included the biggest expansion of entitlements.

He did the Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, two wars, department of homeland security.

Then at the end of his term he championed socialized losses on failures "too big to fail". Should the road he tread down continue at all, George W Bush should be remembered as the end of capitalism in the United States.

Clinton was a paper tiger in comparison, with the Republican congress keeping his ambition in check. It's criminal that they didn't do that to their own.

 

[KB]

Bush hands-down.
Under Bush, the state created industries like Blackwater and other mercenaries for hire. It put the national guard in our airports with machine guns. It added brand new departments into the government.

Clinton was fortunate in that he didn't have a 9/11 and he had a growing economy so severe actions weren't required on his part.

 

[Genx87]

Bush hands-down.
Under Bush, the state created industries like Blackwater and other mercenaries for hire. It put the national guard in our airports with machine guns. It added brand new departments into the government.

Clinton was fortunate in that he didn't have a 9/11 and he had a growing economy so severe actions weren't required on his part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide

Xe Services LLC (pronounced /ˈziː/ zee) is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark

 

[bamacre]

Bush, easily. It's not even close.

 

[Anarchist420]

Clinton was still pro-FBI and pro-CIA. I think Clinton was just more efficient when he spent. If what Clinton had wanted was more expensive, than he would've raised taxes further and spent it.

 

[Anarchist420]

I was wrong. I found an objective way to rate their statistness based upon something other than spending, and it comes out that Bush is like a 4% (2 out of 50 points) with my ratings and Clinton was a 14%.

What I did was I rated them as they did on this CSPAN feature:
Adherence to the Constitution/Respect for the Federalist System
Respect for Econ liberties
Respect for Civil liberties
Non-interventionist foreign policy
Honesty/integrity in office.
I rated on a scale of 0-10 for each and Clinton got 7 points and Bush got 2 points. So Bush IS 3.5x more statist based upon my own ratings.

 

[piasabird]

Bush was more of a socialist than Clinton. Bush enacted a socialist drug plan for seniors. Heaven forbid we actually try to just lower prices as a start. Bush was also more lenient toward illegal immigrants. Plus he was a war hawk.

 

[bamacre]

Bush was more of a socialist than Clinton. Bush enacted a socialist drug plan for seniors. Heaven forbid we actually try to just lower prices as a start. Bush was also more lenient toward illegal immigrants. Plus he was a war hawk.

I would definitely not call that socialism, I'd call that corporatism.