Bill Clinton: overrated

Toff Doctrine Monetary Policy From Alan Greenspan to Mario Draghi by Yglesias

Read the whole thing. Specifically about Clinton, Yglesias writes

A dangerous and telling precedent comes from the United States where it's widely believed that Alan Greenspan communicated to the Clinton administration that an agenda of deficit reduction would be rewarded with loose monetary policy while a non-approved agenda would be punished with tight money. This worked out well enough in the end because Clinton committed himself to Greenspanism, congressional Democrats more or less went along, and then Greenspan delivered the goods. As a result, Greenspan got to become the "maestro" and we enjoyed solid growth years. But imagine congress had balked, the deficit reduction package had failed, and then Greenspan tried to punish Congress with tight money. How would that have helped...

If Clinton's Economic Record Is Viewed Positively, Then It Speaks to the Horrible State of Economic Reporting by Dean Baker

The Post told readers that Bill Clinton is an effective spokesperson for President Obama in part because:

"Clinton himself presided over an economic boom and a balanced budget gives him credibility to make the case against Romney and the Republicans."

Actually, the seeds of the current disaster were put in place by the policies of the Clinton administration. President Clinton did nothing to try to check the rise of the stock bubble. Its collapse in 2000-2002 led to the longest period without job creation since the Great Depression, until the current downturn.
The economy only recovered from this downturn and began creating jobs again with the rise of the housing bubble. The burst of that bubble of course gave us our current downturn.