''It all started when Gene McCarthy was willing to stand alone and turn the tide of history.''Huh? The anti-war movement started with Gene McCarthy? As one of the folks out there getting tear-gassed well before McCarthy made his move, I know better.
This is not to detract anything from McCarthy, who has been overestimated but deserves a kind word all the same. I can't help speculating, though, about the precise psychic process going inside Clinton's brain. It's gotta be some kind of reflex -- no way this particular lie could do Clinton any good.
Is it that he just can't help overselling whatever he's selling? If it's a used car -- Einstein once owned it. If it's real estate -- there's oil under it. Does he feel obliged to keep gilding the lily, even after he's made the sale? Such personalities are not uncommon.
If you were a kind person -- which I am not -- and wanted to cut Clinton some slack -- as I do not -- then you might say he's just expressing the fundamental theorem of the liberal view of history -- a view in which history is made from the top down, by thinkers, writers, professors, experts, politicians, and other folk who stand out, in some way, from the common herd. According to this view, it was of course the Bobby Kennedys and the Gene McCarthys who ended the Vietnam War -- not us poor slobs burning our draft cards, or those fed-up grunts in-country fragging their gung-ho lieutenants.
