HOW RONALD REAGAN RESCUED BILL CLINTON’S PRESIDENCY:

When Hillary Clinton ran for the presidency in 2016, she vowed to put her husband in charge of the economy because Democrats and most Americans knew it was flourishing when he was in the White House. This columnist acknowledged the point in The Washington Times. But voters, I cautioned, “need to be constantly reminded” that the prosperity materialized because Bill Clinton capitulated to Republicans who had politically pressured him into accepting policies that drove Ronald Reagan’s successful presidency.

Clinton’s first two years in office, [William Galston, deputy assistant to Bill Clinton for domestic policy] fails to tell his readers, ended in an electoral disaster for the Democrats. Determined to go on a high-tax, big-spend binge after winning the Oval Office in 1992, Clinton narrowly won a major income tax increase in the Democratic-controlled Congress. But congressional Republicans blocked his other important initiatives, including a big-spending “stimulus” program, a major energy tax, and Hillary Clinton’s national health care plan.

When 1994 rolled around and with Newt Gingrich leading the Republican off-year election charge from the House with his Reaganized “Contract With America” proposal, the GOP swept both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The consequence: Bill Clinton executed a policy somersault worthy of the Flying Wallendas. He quickly abandoned many of his first-term proposals, including his wife’s health care plan, informing us that “the era of big government is over.” He now favored balanced budgets and apologized for having “raised [taxes] too much.” With the Republicans calling the shots, he enacted significant tax breaks for business and the middle class, including a 30% cut in the capital gains tax for individuals.

And don’t get ’90s era Clinton started on illegal immigration: