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Bill Clinton came to the White House with a scant track record in science. But after taking some early swipes at research projects, he's going out to applause
For some scientists, the low point of Bill Clinton's presidency came on a January night in 1995. Delivering his annual State of the Union address to Congress, Clinton singled out a million-dollar study of "stress in plants" as he ridiculed lawmakers for concealing their "pet spending projects" in annual agency budget bills.
Watching the televised speech with colleagues, one academic plant biologist remembers the "groans of disgust" that filled the room. "It was an infuriating cheap shot [at] an important field of research," says the scientist.
These days, however, plant scientists are a lot happier with their one-time antagonist. Clinton will "leave behind a very solid legacy of support for plant research" when his 8 years in the White House end next month, says Brian Hyps of the American Society of Plant Physiologists in Rockville, Maryland. "This Administration has been good for us."
Such praise, Washington policy watchers say, illustrates how the science community has warmed to the man about to leave the White House. Once perceived to be at best ambivalent about science policy, Clinton is now credited with steering the U.S. government's $80 billion R&D enterprise through one of its most perilous and productive decades (see timeline below).
Along the way, supporters say, Clinton and his science-savvy vice president, Al Gore, have won respect from researchers. They did so by facing down Republican congressional leaders who tried to slash science budgets, pumping record amounts of cash into basic research, and promoting pace-setting government policies on everything from information technology to the use of human fetal tissue in research.
The reviews are not uniformly good, however. Some science advocates believe the Clinton Administration stumbled in a number of areas, from efforts to coordinate the government's farflung science bureaucracy to its bid to wring faster, cheaper, and better results from stagnating space and military research budgets. And they give mixed grades on international science issues, saying the Administration botched efforts to win Senate approval for a nuclear test ban treaty and abandoned a promising fusion power megaproject. Some advocates also question the Clinton role in obtaining...