I was enraged when all hope of paying off the debt was cut off at its knees by the Bush tax cuts.
He was truly our worst president, despite Obama claiming they're friends --what a sell-out.
The "Clinton surplus" was an accounting gimmick where money stored in various government "trust funds" was loaned to the Treasury in exchange for Treasuries, but was counted as normal revenue. If "intragovernmental debt" were properly accounted for, Clinton never had a surplus (indeed, the national debt increased every year of his presidency, just like his predecessors and successors).
No reason to want that in the absence of inflation. A country is not a household and a budget surplus is the same thing as the money supply getting smaller, which is bad business if the number of people in the world who want to use your currency is increasing.