Monday Morning Surplus Quarterbacking

Did Clinton make a mistake by running up a budget surplus in his second term because "all you ended up doing was just giving more money for George Bush to devote to tax cuts for the rich," as Jon Chait suggests here? It seems like a moot point when you consider that Al Gore could just as easily have become President, and NOT pissed away the surplus with top-heavy tax cuts, in which case Clinton's fiscal discipline wouldn't look like a waste but rather an act of statesmanship setting the stage for two decades of Democratic dominance.