Robert Rubin, in an interview on the News Hour, suggested that the Clinton recovery was NOT good luck, that is WAS the result of good stewardship: attacking and actually defeating the deficit, that was presented for over a decade as a looming catastrophe. That action renewed the peoples faith in democratic financial institutions and gave them the confidence to build and invest. Besides that, interest rates were reasonable, goverment was actually effectively doing things. And the boom followed.
That really could have "changed everything." In an Uncertain World , by Robert Rubin