Review: Back to Work – Why We Need Smart Government For A Strong Economy

by Bill Clinton (Random House Struik)

When he wasn’t playing with cigars and giving Saddam Hussein a tough time, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton was actually leading the US on a road to prosperity.

He had a “Third Way” philosophy which saw him preside over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history between 1993 and 2001.

But now, after watching his fellow Democrat Barack Obama taking plenty of heat on the domestic front while trying to correct the “wrongs” of the George W Bush era, Clinton claims to be deeply concerned about his country’s future and offers solutions – and an argument for Democrats to lead the process.

Though the easy-to-read book is aimed at American folk and designed to sway them away from Republican “anti-government” thinking, the issues raised in it could be used to judge our own leaders’ performance, and one also deduces that modern politics is virtually macro-economics with a lawmaking bite.

Clinton, who survived an impeachment attempt over the notorious Monica Lewinsky affair, goes on a major Republican-bashing exercise in the 192-page publication and stresses that Obama inherited the problems that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Clinton uses lots of statistics to support his case and show up economic blunders of the Bush era, which followed his. In a fairly simple manner, he prescribes his own medicine for the country’s ills, focusing much on the energy sector.

His countrymen, he says, have a bad history of blaming the government for their problems, but what is needed to put the heavily-indebted superpower “back in the future business” is a strong private sector and smart government working together to put people back in work, restore the manufacturing base and create new businesses, among other ways. – Carl Peters