Bill Clinton never treated his brutal criminal justice measures as some sort of morally queasy compromise with Republicans; he advocated for them himself and was unequivocal in his defense of them, treating them as a positive good rather than a necessary evil.

As a British newspaper observed at the time about the signing of the crime bill: “Mr. Clinton is couching his defense of the bill in punitive terms, praising its extensions of the death penalty, and its funds to increase prisons and police numbers by 20 percent, and mandatory life sentences for a third felony conviction.”

His support was not qualified by any serious doubts; he emphatically stated that the crime bill reflected the country’s “values.” At his signing ceremony, Clinton announced that in passing the bill, “[w]e together are taking a big step toward bringing the laws of our land in line with the values of our people.”