Joel Engel: Bill Clinton, Historian?
[Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.]
A MEMORIAL SERVICE for former senator Eugene J. McCarthy was held last Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, and former president Bill Clinton was there to eulogize him. This was not surprising: President Clinton will probably be present to eulogize every other boomer icon, whenever photographers are permitted, for as long as his health permits. What was surprising, though, was that Clinton credited the senator, who died last month, for turning the country against the Vietnam War--the operative word being "credited."
"It all started when Gene McCarthy was willing to stand alone and turn the tide of history," said the forty-second president of the United States.
But "to stand alone and turn the tide of history" is the kind of language generally reserved for the likes of Churchill's warnings about Hitler at a time when no one wanted to hear them. Or for Lincoln, risking everything to keep the United States united. Indeed, those could've been the words Clinton used for Rosa Parks, substituting "sit" for "stand" in his eulogy at her funeral. They're used for people whose actions are considered unambiguously good.
As far as I know, there has never been a national referendum in which America as a nation decided that President Kennedy's decision to send military "advisers" to South Vietnam as a bulwark against falling-dominoes communism was an error of historic proportions; that those who fought, and died, did so in vain; that the consequences of our leaving Vietnam without winning--millions slaughtered--were, at worst, morally neutral. That the war, in short, was unredeemable from first to last....
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A MEMORIAL SERVICE for former senator Eugene J. McCarthy was held last Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, and former president Bill Clinton was there to eulogize him. This was not surprising: President Clinton will probably be present to eulogize every other boomer icon, whenever photographers are permitted, for as long as his health permits. What was surprising, though, was that Clinton credited the senator, who died last month, for turning the country against the Vietnam War--the operative word being "credited."
"It all started when Gene McCarthy was willing to stand alone and turn the tide of history," said the forty-second president of the United States.
But "to stand alone and turn the tide of history" is the kind of language generally reserved for the likes of Churchill's warnings about Hitler at a time when no one wanted to hear them. Or for Lincoln, risking everything to keep the United States united. Indeed, those could've been the words Clinton used for Rosa Parks, substituting "sit" for "stand" in his eulogy at her funeral. They're used for people whose actions are considered unambiguously good.
As far as I know, there has never been a national referendum in which America as a nation decided that President Kennedy's decision to send military "advisers" to South Vietnam as a bulwark against falling-dominoes communism was an error of historic proportions; that those who fought, and died, did so in vain; that the consequences of our leaving Vietnam without winning--millions slaughtered--were, at worst, morally neutral. That the war, in short, was unredeemable from first to last....