PUBLIC NUISANCES: When They're 64/Judgment and Character
Tyrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. When They're 64 WASHINGTON ORD THAT BILL CLINTON was headed to the hospital for bypass surgery must have caught a lot of 1960s youth—as the phrase had...
...The vast majority of those who served with him in Vietnam do not...
...Do we really want a reckless self-promoter governing us in time of war...
...I even recall his appearance before a Senate committee where he accused his fellowans of "war crimes"—or, as he said then: "Crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...
...Soon he will again be appearing in one of his silly beach shirts and wearing shorts...
...He dramatically comes down on both sides of issues such as the war in Iraq...
...Jean-Francois Kerry is doing badly in this campaign because he is displaying all the excesses of his 1960s left-wing contemporaries...
...The knees creak...
...Any sensible observer has by now perceived that Kerry's opponents among the Swift boat veterans have proven that Kerry wildly exaggerated his service in Vietnam...
...That is how Bill Clinton got his many passes in the 1992 election where he lied about dodging the draft, about demonstrating against his country in London, about smoking marijuana, about Gennifer Flowers and general philandering...
...What about all that jogging he did...
...They still dress like youth, at least during leisure hours...
...Surely he should have had the self-awareness to recognize possible dispute arising over his medals and that obvious lie that he spent a faraway Christmas in Cambodia...
...You can be sure that the absurd controversy over his Vietnam record will not be his last...
...I rather doubt that he did, but here is still more evidence that Kerry is a fraud...
...Rush ran the risible tape more than once and doubtless his audience got the joke...
...He will be smiling 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2004 and quoting from rock 'n' roll songs...
...He will be the president who institutionalized the Reagan Revolution...
...Paul Johnson, the venerable British historian, recently remarked that he could not think of any other generation in history that had had so many baleful effects on so many institutions...
...Now he is in the running to be president...
...I hope that they are not surprised or offended if President Kerry presides over another presidency of self-inflicted controversies...
...Oh, one fellow has shown a proper sense of the absurdity of it all...
...Cosmetic ministrations and hair coloring can deceive the public but not the physiology...
...As the waggish Taranto knows, I have never doubted that Kerry served in Vietnam, for I remember with the utmost clarity his return from Vietnam whereupon he played a star role in opposing the war, often disloyally...
...When They're 64 WASHINGTON ORD THAT BILL CLINTON was headed to the hospital for bypass surgery must have caught a lot of 1960s youth—as the phrase had it—off guard...
...And, alas, they act like youths, at least socially...
...And are you finally ready to admit I was right about John Kerry serving in Vietnam...
...Yet who will conduct our war on terror while President Kerry schemes to disentangle himself from one scrape after another...
...Well, my 1960s compeers, we are all getting on in years and in artery blockage...
...He plays the role of the 1960s arrested adolescent, fuming at his opponents, proclaiming bathos, and bewildering the electorate...
...They listen to the same 1960s music—for four decades...
...He will be telling us whoppers again that only an adolescent would bother with...
...In nominating Kerry as their presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated another fantasist...
...My guess is that in a decade historians will be looking back and seeing someone else as the greatest politician of the 1960s generation...
...George W. Bush is a 1960s youth and he has risen to the challenges of adulthood...
...Rush Limbaugh, the Will Rogers of our time, jokingly ran a tape of one of Clinton's surgeons announcing to the world that the former president was sedated but capable of "arousal...
...James Taranto, editor of the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," has for months made a running joke of Kerry's reckless boasts about his service in Vietnam...
...OCTOBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63...
...Now comes word that one of the 1960s' most famous arrested adolescents had four arteries almost completely blocked by fatty materials...
...Now, as a growing number of Vietnam veterans file their objections to Kerry's boasts, the suave Taranto e-mails me, "Have you been following the news the past couple of weeks...
...The skin sags...
...They have convinced themselves that Clinton is the greatest politician of his generation, though he never won a majority in either presidential campaign and only succeeded in his presidency when he adopted Republican policies...
...They came to dominate the Democratic Party, and as we can see in watching the megalomania of the Kerry campaign, they have proved to be political incompetents when faced with the real challenges of history...
...Yet this megalomaniac blundered on, boasting of an episode in his life that had best be referred to only in passing...
...No, Johnson is thinking (as I am) of the left-wing students of the 1960s who rebelled against authority and promised to "reform" all the hoary institutions of their parents...
...He beat alcoholism, became a good father and husband, did not flinch from the challenges facing his presidency...
...Those in the media who continue to give him a pass do...
...Jug and Character WASHINGTON IS IT NOT CURIOUS that in major media there is not a trace of humor or even irony perceptible in the hullabaloo over Senator John Kerry's latest self-inflicted wound, to wit: the controversy over his Vietnam record...
...No one is likely to call Bill Clinton a wise old man...
...I wish him well, but as he heads off into old age I would be remiss if I did not note that he and his champions of eternal youth have for years denied old age its achievements and now they will be living out an old age that they themselves have created, an old age bereft of the respect old age once commanded...
...He was, of course, not talking about the whole 1960s generation...
...The 1960s generation celebrated youth more noisily and enduringly than any other generation in American history, and now its Boy President is recovering from quadruple bypass surgery...
...Whenever he introduces this insufferable braggart into his column, Taranto is wont to write "who by the way served in Vietnam" or "whom I am told served in Vietnam...
...Character was the issue never weighed in the 1992 campaign...
...Surely he remembered the dishonorable and untrue things he said about Vietnam...
...Its engineers, scientists, and many of its leaders in commerce have contributed constructively to society...
...Now who might that fellow be...
...Character and judgment are the issues that ought to be weighed in this campaign...
...He will be the president who revised American foreign policy to meet the challenge of our time, terrorism, with a policy of preemption...
...What about his superior knowledge of healthcare...
...In politics they thrived from campus politics to national politics...
...What about the "all-nighters" he famously "pulled" at the White House and in finishing his memoirs, memoirs that have all the defects of youth and none of the attributes of maturity...
...What does it tell you about this fantastico that he has made his controversial service of 35 years ago the fulcrum on which he wages his campaign for the presidency...
...Clinton's two terms may not be remembered for thwarting terrorism or making any geopolitical leaps, but they will be remembered for transforming the White House into Animal House, just the kind of achievement one would expect from 1960s youth...
...Do we want a man with so little judgment and regard for the truth overseeing American foreign and domestic policy...
...Many of the aging 1960s youth had no idea that they were aging...
...He is another of the politicians visited on us recently who lie flagrantly, get caught in their lies, and are given a dispensation in the media because the media's journalists somehow believe that the liars are preferable to their opponents...
...Many in the press corps are themselves from the ranks of the 1960s left-wing students...
...The more important question is not his veracity but his judgment, and that word has not even been mentioned in the media's debate...
...He even said on Meet the Press that he had committed war crimes...
...Now from the press corps emits the alarm that his peer, Bill Clinton, will not be able to campaign for him...
...He windsurfs, rides motorcycles, tosses footballs, all for the narcissistic photo-ops that he first learned about in his youth when he filmed his service in Vietnam and heaved PUBLIC NU "ACES E S medals in street demonstrations...
...No one will note his dignity or sage advice...
Vol. 37 • October 2004 • No. 8
