PPI President Will Marshall was quoted in a piece by Al Jazeera America regarding the influence of Bill Clinton’s legacy as President on Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
Others said that Hillary Clinton, facing a far different country from the one Bill Clinton governed in 1990s, will have to stand on her own merits. For those who remember the era, his record is on balance an asset.
“I don’t think she’s going to have to relitigate the goods and bads of her husband’s legacy. I think generally it’s going to help her with boomers who remember the Clintons’ years as positive ones — years of growth, prosperity and peace and shared prosperity, at that. The ’90s were a great decade for the country for both upward mobility and for sharing the fruits of growth,” said Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., that promotes center-left policy proposals and worked with the Clinton White House.
He added that it was unfair to judge the policies of the past by the much-evolved standards of the present, particularly on social issues.
“If you went back to 1972, I wouldn’t expect the Democratic policies to hold up in the 1990s any more than I expect the policies of the 1990s to hold up now,” he said. “People have to be judged by the standards and reference points of their time.”
Read the piece in its entirety at Al Jazeera America.
