A Fabulous Failure : : The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism / / / Nelson Lichtenstein, Judith Stein.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Lichtenstein, Nelson,; Stein, Judith,
• Author: Stein, Judith,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : : Princeton University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Politics and Society in Modern America ; ; 155
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (544 p.) :; 12 b/w illus.

How the Clinton administration betrayed its progressive principles and capitulated to the rightWhen Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he ended twelve years of Republican rule and seemed poised to enact a progressive transformation of the US economy, touching everything from health care to trade to labor relations. Yet by the time he left office, the nation's economic and social policies had instead lurched dramatically rightward, exacerbating the inequalities so troubling in our own time. This book reveals why Clinton's expansive agenda was a fabulous failure, and why its demise still haunts us today.Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein show how the administration's progressive reformers-people like Robert Reich, Ira Magaziner, Laura Tyson, and Joseph Stiglitz-were stymied by a new world of global capitalism that heightened Wall Street influence, undermined domestic manufacturing, and eviscerated the labor movement. Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Al Gore proved champions of this financialized world. Meanwhile, Clinton divided his own party when he relied on Republican votes to overhaul welfare, liberalize trade, and deregulate the banking and telecommunications industries. Even the economic boom Clinton ushered in-which tamed unemployment and sent the stock market soaring in what Alan Blinder and Janet Yellen termed a "fabulous decade"-ended with a series of exploding asset bubbles that his neoliberal economic advisors neither foresaw nor prevented.A Fabulous Failure is a study of ideas in action, some powerfully persuasive, others illusionary and self-defeating. It explains why and how the Clinton presidency's progressive statecraft floundered in a world where the labor movement was weak, civil rights forces quiescent, and corporate America ever more powerful.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART I . "THE ECONOMY, STUPID" -- 1 How Arkansas Educated Bill Clinton -- 2 "The Cold War Is Over: Germany and Japan Won" -- 3 Winning the Presidency -- PART II. MARKET MANAGERS -- 4 Managing Health Care Capitalism -- 5 Health Care Corporatism in Failure and Success -- 6 Opening Japan: A Detour on the Road to Neoliberalism -- PART III. MARKET CHAMPIONS -- 7 Budget and Boom -- 8 NAFTA and Its Discontents -- 9 Grand Illusions: Reinventing the American Workplace -- PART IV. THE NEW DEAL IN ECLIPSE -- 10 Underclass Men and Welfare Mothers -- 11 The China Price -- 12 The Committee to Save the World -- 13 Deregulating Finance -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index