Clinton may be the best President since Reagan, but that's not exactly a high threshold, either. I would further argue that the best thing that happened to Clinton was his party losing both houses in 1994. I don't know the level of accuracy to the claims but - more than one pundit who was familiar with Clinton said that the 'real Clinton' was the moderate President of 1995-2001, not the dart far to the left nutbag who oversaw 1993-94. I think Clinton came to Washington without any REAL political experience in the sense of dealing with the opposition. He was in basically a one party state and never had to compromise if he didn't want to do so. He shows up in DC and looks at the 57-43 Senate and the House his party had owned since 1955 and figures, "This is gonna be easy."
Dick Morris claimed in 1997 that he had literally told Clinton that he needed to immediately reach out to the GOP conservatives and include them in some of his budget planning. The claim is that Clinton basically snorted back to him that the GOP regarded him as 'an accident in a three-man race' and 'an illegitimate President' - but Morris then warned him (so he claims for what that's worth) 'if you go running to that Left crowd, you won't even recognize yourself in 30 days.' When Morris came in after the 1994 blowout, he told Clinton he needed to negotiate with Newt and (later on) Trent Lott, saying that as Southern-raised men they had more in common than they had different.
But I think Clinton benefited from being pulled back to the center - he was a generally popular President through the rest of his term although a lot of folks really were disgusted at that personal issue.
Reagan, too, benefited from the fact that the Democrats owned the House - he had dealt with the opposition in California as well, plus he had been a union President as well. When the same party owns it top to bottom, there seems to be no stop valve on the nonsense. Bush Jr got a free pass because of 9/11 that lasted five years.
