When 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.
Awards and Recognition
- A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
"Dazzlingly impressive in its scope and depth. . . . A Fabulous Failure serves as an indispensable resource to anyone, providing fresh insight into topics like the health care debacle (including a careful discussion of why Obama succeeded where Clinton failed), the NAFTA debate, and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, all of which have been covered elsewhere. At the same time, it spotlights issues such as trade policy with Japan and workplace management that have been given short shrift by other historians."—Lily Geismer, American Prospect
"In demonstrating both the internal and external limits on the Clinton administration’s ability to strengthen the welfare state, Lichtenstein and Stein have not only provided a singularly useful analysis of global capitalism at the end of the twentieth century — they have also shown how popular movements are crucial in realizing meaningful social change. . . . And in dissecting the passion play that was the Clinton administration, A Fabulous Failure provides an immensely usable history. Because the problems with which Clinton struggled — how to create growth and redistribute it in the context of a world characterized by strong economic competition — remain with us."—Jason Resnikoff, Jacobin
"Splendid."—James K. Galbraith, EH.net
"A progressive perspective on why the Clinton administration delivered so little."—Kirkus Reviews
"A Fabulous Failure does a marvelous job delivering on both [Clinton’s] policy and politics in a highly readable narrative."—Paul A. Myers, Myersbooks History
"[A] very persuasive read."—David Marx, David Marx Book Reviews
"The most comprehensive and scholarly account of the administration of President Bill Clinton focused on domestic policy that one could hope to read. . . . An excellent work."—Choice
"Timely and valuable. . . .An intricate account of the Clinton administration’s indeed many failures, as judged in retrospect."—Grit Grigoleit-Richter, H-Soz-Kult
“A Fabulous Failure is a brilliant analysis of how Bill Clinton fell short in delivering to average Americans. Deeply researched, it takes a fresh look at the way Clinton’s policies, whether on free trade, financial deregulation, or other matters, often favored corporate America and Wall Street over working Americans, fueling income inequality and harming blue-collar communities.”—Steven Greenhouse, author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor
“A major and much-needed reconsideration of the Clinton years. A Fabulous Failure provides an original take on why this president moved the American political economy in the post–New Deal direction that he did, and offers essential insights into why the Clinton era was so pivotal to our world today. This book is a must-read for understanding why the Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working class.”—Meg Jacobs, Princeton University
“Equipped with a profound knowledge of political economy and policymaking, Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein brilliantly explain how the liberal ambitions of the Clinton administration gave way to a dubious agenda of neoliberalism. Their book is the wisest history of the 1990s that has yet been written. Crafted with authority and graceful prose, A Fabulous Failure is a splendid success.”—Michael Kazin, author of What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party
“Lichtenstein and Stein have written the definitive account of the Democratic Party’s descent from FDR’s New Deal into neoliberal captivity and its political result—Trump and Trumpism. Their prodigious research informs this superb historical narrative of ideological seduction and political corruption. Clinton’s fabulous failure was a huge success for the financial elite. The rest of us are still paying the price.”—Robert Kuttner, founding coeditor of The American Prospect, author of Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy
