Question

- How would you characterize relations between President Clinton and Congress?

Answer 1

There were signs of trouble even before Clinton came to Washington. In his 1992 campaign, he blasted the then Democratic House's "midnight pay raise," and even ran ads about it in New Hampshire. He railed against the 1992 House banking scandal and promised to cut congressional staffs by a quarter. Nor did the Democratic Congress have much experience working as a team with the Chief Executive. When Clinton took office, more than two-thirds of House Democrats and half of Senate Democrats had never served under a President of their party. Clinton aides called the relationship an "impossible embrace."


A combination of factors including the mass mobilization of capital markets through neoliberalism, the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world, and within countries.