But it does remind me of that speech that Clinton gave last year.  He said, there may come a time in the near future when you have to make a choice about two candidates.  Candidate X agrees with you about everything but you don't think he can deliver anything.  Candidate Y agrees with you only half the time but he can deliver the goods.  Who will you choose?  

When he was sworn in, it was "mission accomplished" for him.

Major makeover of Wall Street regs passes House By Jim Kuhnhenn, AP, Dec 11 2009

WASHINGTON - The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession.

The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators.

The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it.

While a victory for the administration, the legislation dilutes some of President Barack Obama's recommendations, carving out exceptions to some of its toughest provision. The burden now shifts to the Senate, which is not expected to act on its version of a regulatory overhaul until early next year.

The president praised the House action Friday, and called on Congress to act swiftly to get the bill to the White House for his signature.

"The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington," Obama said. "We have a responsibility to learn from it and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again. "

The legislation would govern the simplest payday loan and the most complicated high-finance trades. In its breadth, the measure seeks to impose restrictions on every house of finance, from two-teller neighborhood thrifts to huge interconnected conglomerates.

Democratic leaders had to fend off a last-minute attempt to kill a proposed consumer agency, a central element of the legislation and one the features pushed by the White House. The agency would take over consumer protection powers from current banking regulators, and big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vigorously opposed the idea.

Democrats said the broad legislation would help address problems that led to last year's calamitous financial crisis. Republicans argued that it overreached and would institutionalize bailouts for the financial industry.

"Let's put it to the American people: Do you prefer the Republican position of doing literally nothing to rein in these abuses or should we try to rein them in?" Rep. Barney Frank, who led the Democratic effort on the bill, asked moments before the final vote. [...]

I imagine that no one in the administration will ever admit this, even off the record, but the main reason for inaction is almost certainly because they believe there's zero chance of getting any of this stuff done. Politically, then, there's nothing but downside here: yet another long, bruising battle with both Congress and the Fed, ending in total defeat. If everyone in the administration were utterly convinced that the economy was completely sunk otherwise, they might risk that. But no one in his right mind will risk it for anything less.

Of course, had Obama taken that attitude toward running for President, he wouldn't have ran.

Please don't forget the giant whoosh of jobs from the United States to Asia and a massive destruction of our engineering and manufacturing base during the Clinton years. I can see the debris of the "economic expansion" during the Clinton Presidency (along with that of 3 Republican Presidencies) all around me. Many in the middle-class believed the sales pitch of a "post manufacturing" economy (manufacturing will only be done in "3rd world countries") in the 1990s. Many even cheered as CEOs shed manufacturing jobs to "reduce costs" because their 401Ks made healthy gains as Wall Street soared. Many thought that "housing bubbles" were the imagination of the weak  of heart. Some even thought that they could retire by the time they were 50 by "playing the stock market"!
Instant gratification economics may seem great in the short term, however it can bring a lifetime of misery. Huge parts of critical industries like steel, auto and semiconductors moved offshore during the last 4 presidencies owing to politics of the short term. If we do not rectify course, the day is not far away when we will even have to buy our airplanes from Europe, Brazil and China. The "service economy" centered around sales and marketing, financial engineering, home construction and hospitality industry, entertainment and trial lawyers that was sold in the 1990s was a sham!