In Sunday’s Times of London, Andrew Sullivan takes a look at the 2000 Census data and likes what he sees. Which means that Andrew Sullivan likes Clintonism (well, with qualifications, of course):

[…] the Census statistics show that the boom of the 1990s helped women more than men, and saw poverty among single, poor women, the elderly and children decline. Yes, inequality grew. But that’s simply because those at the very top did spectacularly well. Those at the bottom did very well too, and those in some previously doomed groups — such as welfare mothers with children — saw serious gains.

That’s the inevitable conclusion from the facts of the boom of the 1990s — as American government spending was restrained, as budgets were balanced, markets unleashed, welfare reformed, and taxes kept low. There is no contradiction between free market economics and the empowerment of the poor and minorities. In fact, there’s a highly beneficial correlation.

First off, women did better than men as a group. Male median incomes in America actually fell 2.3 percent in the 1990s (mainly because the median was dragged down by vast numbers of unskilled immigrants). Women’s median incomes, in contrast, rose 7.3 percent, and their average income rose to 73 percent of the male average. Second, the percentage of people in poverty in America dropped in the 1990s from 10 percent to 9.2 percent. That sounds like a trivial decline, but there are nuances. Those ten years also saw the largest immigrant flux in American history — 31 million new Americans in ten years — more than half from Latin America, and many of them unskilled and poor. If you take that into account, as the journalist Mickey Kaus has noted, the poverty rate among Americans already in the country in 1990 actually dropped considerably. Critically, the poverty rate among female-headed households with children under 18 — those welfare mothers beloved of the left — fell from 42.3 percent to 34.3 percent. Poverty among the old also dropped – from 13 percent to 10 percent. These are real declines in real poverty. And they came from restraining government, not expanding it.

In fact, as the Washington Post noted, five out of six Americans now live in counties in which the proportion of poor people is shrinking. In the 1990s, lower-income counties showed bigger gains in wealth than richer ones. The middle class didn’t miss out either. The median household income in America grew by almost 10 percent in the 1990s. And that, of course, under-estimates the real standard of living. The phenomenal technological gains — in health care, media, communication, travel and entertainment — helped each new dollar buy far more in quality than it did ten years ago. And many of those gains were made possible by the achievements and energy of the most successful.

Only if you see politics through the prism of class envy and resentment can this picture be seen as a failure. If you want a system in which everyone gains — including the poor — then the Clinton era is a pretty solid example of what works.

Clintonism wasn’t Thatcherism, of course. It added some critical elements: welfare reform, a small shift of the burden of taxation away from the working poor, tax credits to make work more profitable than welfare, and modest investments in education. But these useful correctives to the right were central parts of the New Democrat agenda, often resisted by the left, and Clinton, to his credit, stuck with them.

[…] Clinton had a critical ally in keeping him to the center: for most of his term in office, he had to deal with a hardline Republican Congress. This made it easier for Clinton to pull off the trick of bringing a more liberal party into more conservative territory. ‘Look,’ he could say, ‘I have no choice.’ […] the secret of delivering growth with social inclusion – it’s the ability to co-opt those elements of your opponents’ agenda that actually work. The perpetual issues of the global economy — immigration, terrorism — were equally absorbed into the center-left agenda.

[…] you do not make the weak strong by making the strong weak. You can siphon some of the wealth of the strong to invest in education, but your best bet is to allow free markets and free people find their own destinies themselves. Above all, you need to remove the disincentives for work and family that the old welfare state constructed. Clinton’s signal achievement was to end welfare as it was known AND reduce poverty at the same time. Last week’s data showed that achievement is no longer in doubt. And it wasn’t by reverting to old statist or redistributionist polices that he did it.

Of course, there was that whole penis thing…

Personally (and I know Rand Simberg will disagree with me on this), I’d rather see Dubya get a little on the side in lieu of, say, backing huge farm bills and levying tariffs on steel imports. But then, I’m a progressivist conservative.

I even watch “Sex in the City,” occasionally.