I don’t think he governed so much as a “centrist” as he did as a Clintonist; the pay was good and the perks were better. And per Heritage, for instance, his early move in office was to raise taxes; it wasn’t until 1997 that the Republicans (and as I remember, Newt usually gets the credit for this) were able to get tax cuts pushed through, with good economic results.

https://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/tax-cuts-not-the-clinton-tax-hike-produced-the-1990s-boom

It’s always seemed to me that Clinton was a rascal and a scoundrel, but one with some brains and loaded with charisma: A trifecta for a professional con-man. Two qualities lacking in his Democratic successor, as far as I can see.

Full disclosure: I used to think Shrill was not so stupid as to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Now I just think she’s over the hill … though not the Shrill.

If I’m wrong in any of this, please feel free to disabuse me.

PS. I wouldn’t say the Sith was stupid, but such brains as he had were in the manipulation-opportunism areas; and he had a lot of help with those. He was a pretty good orator (provided the teleprompter was working), and he dressed nice & was the very picture of “hope & change” if you were reasonably foolish. And most definitely a Obamanist.

The enabling legislation under which Starr was appointed did not permit that. In the intervening years, case law has dramatically restricted the capacity of Congress to craft enabling legislation which grants tenure to executive branch employees.

Since Archibald Cox at least, a President firing someone who is investigating him has been considered a red line by both parties.

The special prosecutors appointed between 1972 and 1986 were the real deal. The Walsh and Starr investigations were roughly above-board at the beginning, but went off the rails. The Mueller investigation has been a fraud from the get go.

???????

Cox wasn’t in office long and neither he nor his two successors had a history of the sort of abusive behavior with defendants we’ve come to expect with federal prosecutors. The investigations undertaken by the U.S. Attorney’s office in DC and taken over by the special prosecutor’s office under Cox, Jaworski, and Ruth tackled three primary sets of defendants: those who perpetrated the Watergate burglary, a set of those involved in a conspiracy to pay them hush money and keep information from the Criminal Division and the U.S. Attorney who were wiling to negotiate plea bargains, and a set of those involved in that conspiracy who went to trial. Within 28 months of the beginning of the investigation, the 1st two sets of defendants had been processed and the trial of the 3d set had opened (and concluded in January 1975). There were ancillary defendants, appellate work, and reports to write, but the bulk of the work of that effort was concluded a little over 30 months after the burglary in June 1972. Positively brisk by the standards of succeeding special prosecutor investigations (especially this one).

There was no coup, and it’s a reasonable wager that ‘Deep Throat’ was a composite of several sources.

The Nixon administration had three sets of people engaged in illegal activities and a third set plotting them. One set was located at the White House and worked for Egil Krogh. Another was set up at the Committee to Re-Elect the President and worked for Gordon Liddy. A third consisted of one man (Donald Segretti) engaged in pranks of scant consequence. Another was at the White House and worked for Charles Colson (though they don’t seem to have actually executed much in the way of illegal activity). People implicated in their schemes or knowledgeable about them included the President’s chief of staff and his gopher, the chief of the Domestic Policy Staff, the Counsel to the President, the director of the Committee to Re-elect the President and the deputy director thereto.

The 1994 election did that. The impeachment, which I agree was a mistake, pushed him far left in his search for allies. Diane Feinstein suggested censure, which would have been a better option. It might have even been bipartisan.

I generally agree with you about the Clinton impeachment, but I think a reasonable argument can be made that the action, and the incidents that lead up to it, disabled Clinton’s ability to pursue his agenda. From that perspective it was a political success.

This is what I believe the Democrats are attempting to achieve with their promised investigations and potential impeachment – to neutralize Trump. He’s no Clinton and hasn’t done anything remotely in the category of high crimes, and doesn’t seem the type to be cowed by threats and intimidation, so I doubt it will achieve the goal.

Since Archibald Cox at least, a President firing someone who is investigating him has been considered a red line by both parties.

As far as I can tell, the only long-held principle that’s not being applied is that one.

The Republican majority in the Senate was too narrow to accomplish much even if that body had satisfactory leadership (it hasn’t for most of the last 30 years) and sensible parliamentary rules (it hasn’t, ever, with the last 40 years particularly bad). That having been said, Ryan is pretty much an advocate of open borders by conviction, as well as being a man without much of a chest (so unsuitable in any sort of leadership position); if you had any doubts, his dithering nincompoopery in the fall of 2016 should have cured you of them.