For a start, a lot of things happened during the Clinton administration. I don’t recall, however, any examples of displayed “discipline” anywhere.

Tom. Maybe I’m reading this wrong:
Gore aide Jano Cabrera defended the 2000 campaign saying it embraced New Democratic values and got more votes than any other Democrat had ever received.
...Would this imply there have been no presidents elected through the Democratic Party? I mean, if the statement were true, then previous Democratic hopefuls would have received fewer votes than Gore received...? Right?

And you said:
One wonders where the "corporate accounting legislation" was during eight years of Clinton. I find it hard to believe all these CEOs suddenly became crooks in January of 2001.
;^)

It’s possible that the team of Bernie Ebbers/Scott Sullivan did just that. Looking over the past records, the shades appeared to be drawing downward in early 2001 -- in fact, with the start of the new fiscal year.

(just a quick reminder that nobody “caught” these goobers, as they were turned over to the authorities by the members of the WorldCom board of directors, and our new CEO)

Something else, Tom:
To listen to Daschle, one might think that he believes in the trickle-down theory, since there were certainly a lot of millionaires and billionaires generated during the 1990s. Their taxes helped create a surplus.

The overnight success, and the later overnight flop, of the .Coms in the mid thru late 90s comes readily to mind.

Dan