I think you missed the point. There was a sentence in there that you didn't cite: That's ironic in many ways and absurd in many other ways, but it's still true..
I didn't say that Clinton deserves to be remembered that way, or that it makes sense to remember him that way, only that regardless of what he deserves or what makes sense, that is what the prevailing memory will be.
You and I may take the time to look at the bubble and see it as a bubble, and to understand that it was ultimately not good for the economy or the country. We know that while Clinton didn't create it, there were things that could have been done to limit it that weren't done (not that the opposition ever pushed for them). The average American only remembers that bubbles are fun, and in those years there was plenty of work and lots of money and lots of fat happy people.
Clinton was lucky enough to preside during the window between the fall of Communism and the rise of terrorism as a threat to the US. That had nothing to do with him, but he will be remembered nonetheless as one who presided over a period without war.
Public memory, you see, isn't fair. Carter didn't create the messes in Iran and Nicaragua, and by the time he took over they were way beyond salvation, but he will forever be remembered as the one who "lost" them. Nixon, the commie-hater supreme, will be remembered as the one who disengaged from Vietnam and made overtures to China. Reagan was in power when the fundamentally flawed Russian economy reached the point where a shove would knock it down, and got to take credit for what any good capitalist knows would have happened sooner or later anyway. Kennedy dove into Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs, but he's still a liberal hero largely because of the way he looked on TV.
History dealt Clinton a lucky hand, and whether he deserves it or not, he will get the memories that go with that. If the bubble had burst and 9/11 had come down a bit earlier, all of that would be completely different. That's not the way it happened.
It's going to be forgotten that Clinton was the 2nd and most recent President to be impeached? Wanna bet?
Who remembers the first? Who remembers what it was for?
The few who care can shout until they are blue in the face about how it was not about sex, and they may be right, but 5 years from now the prevailing memory will be that it was all over a blow job. And people will laugh at that.
None of this has anything to do with my opinion of Clinton. It's just my reading of the mass psychology of the American people. |
