At first glance, Bill Clinton looks like a much luckier and hornier version of Jimmy Carter: both were southern governors whose limited enduring domestic accomplishments (welfare reform; deregulation) were GOP-friendly. Clinton, of course, had the good fortune to be president after the end of the Cold War and during an economic boom; Carter had no such luck.
One major difference between the two is that Clinton tried and failed to create a more or less universal health care system, while Carter didn’t even try. In fact, Carter’s lack of ambition, given the Democratic majorities that he enjoyed in Congress in the post-Watergate years, is quite striking. The key to this is the massive difference in the political climate between 1976 and 1992. In 1976, while the evolution of the GOP had begun, it was still more of a modest than a conservative party, while the Democrats still ruled the southern states. As a result, just having a Democratic majority didn’t necessarily mean much in terms of the likelihood of liberal reforms. By 1992, on the other hand, the evolution was close to being complete; the GOP had been transformed by Reagan into a swaggering, tax cutting party, and it controlled Congress throughout a substantial portion of the Clinton presidency.
The bottom line is that Reagan made a dramatic change in the political landscape of this country, and his cold hand is still being felt even in times that present completely different challenges.