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In the midst of the Pope's visit to Washington last week, we missed a less publicized ceremony in the East Room in which President and Mrs. Bush invited Professor Wilfred McClay to offer a commemoration of Thomas Jefferson in honor of his 265th birthday.

As our good friend is much too modest in his accomplishments, we admit sheepishly that we learned of this event via Powerline. Nevertheless, we offer our belated kudos to the President for his good taste in historians, and kudos to Professor McClay for his insightful and provocative remarks.

With a big hat tip to Powerline, we offer the lecture in full below:

Thank you, Mr. President and Mrs. Bush, for your warm welcome, and for the great honor of taking part in this celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s life.

Usually, when a greatly revered figure turns a year older, we feel older too, and the world feels a little colder and more fragile. But it’s a little different when a man turns 265. Remembering Thomas Jefferson makes us feel young. And not just by comparison. It’s because Thomas Jefferson embodies so much of the promise of American life. It’s because there is so much about him that is still vibrantly alive.

And living not only in America. Thomas Jefferson deserves to be remembered and revered as a man of worldwide influence, whose name is known and loved and invoked by men and women from Beijing to Lhasa to Kiev to Prague. His belief in the dignity and unrealized potential in the minds and hearts of ordinary people is at the core of what is greatest in the American experiment. It is in this sense that James Parton, his early biographer, was right in making the following proclamation: "If Jefferson is wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right.” But the cause of Jefferson was always more than just that of America. It is the cause of all humankind.

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The Okie Gardener wrote today:

"I see [Hillary] conceding and withdrawing from the race only if she is convinced that Obama will lose to McCain, that McCain because of age will serve only one term, and that she then will be well-placed for 2012."

Some revised and extended comments in response to that assertion, which strikes me as plausible but uncharitable.

Hillary is, in fact, laboring under two reasonable assumptions:

1. It ain't over until the Fat Lady sings (nothing is more American than that). If you are not in it, you cannot win it. One thing we can say for sure: Barack Obama will NOT arrive in Denver with a sewn-up nomination--unless Mrs. Clinton steps aside (or the superdelegates come together earlier to preempt the "impending crisis"). Hillary is hoping for a late-round knock-out, which is not unfathomable. Do we really think we have heard the last Obama revelation? The bottom could drop out of the Obama market between now and mid-summer. Not likely, but certainly not impossible.

2. Mrs. Clinton honestly believes (and I agree) that she is a much more formidable general election candidate than Obama. Are we not more and more persuaded with each passing week that her primary opponent has some seriously inviting weak spots? We are increasingly optimistic about running against this "young man in a hurry." Bring him on. As I have said repeatedly, this is a bad year to run as a Republican--but Barack Obama's dedication to liberal orthodoxy, and his tin ear for Red-State culture, gives me some hope for victory.

And, one more factor, Mrs. Clinton is also laboring under the not so reasonable (but, nevertheless, absolutely essential) delusion of all presidential aspirants: "I am the very best candidate for the job."

In other words, Mrs. Clinton believes with all her soul that she is exactly what America needs right now, and she must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and go the distance to save us. For this reason she should not quit, just as Ronald Reagan did not quit in 1976.

In that vein, the Gardener asserts that she is attempting to secure the defeat of her opponent to position herself for the next campaign. While I concede that thought may be a variable, I tend to believe it is way down the list of important considerations. And, if that is her plan, it is awfully risky and probably too clever by half.

I am more inclined to believe that she sees this present opportunity as her one and only chance--which strikes me as a much more compelling explanation for her refusal to throw in the towel. She is fighting like there is no tomorrow--and she is most likely correct.

There is no doubt that she does damage to Obama by staying in. Of the three remaining candidates, he is the most vulnerable to extended close scrutiny. What more are we going to learn about Hillary or John McCain? On the other hand, each day brings another facet to our perception of Barack Obama.

Why would she do that?

Who knows, she may actually favor McCain over Obama (and for reasons wholly apart from her electoral chances in 2012). Not that I am predicting that she will endorse McCain in any way. Hill and Bill will line up behind Barack like good soldiers (Joe Lieberman supported John Kerry in 2004). But I think Hillary might see a McCain win over Barack Obama as more than just good politics for her personally, and even more than merely just desserts for a disloyal party. I think she might actually believe in her heart of hearts (or even sub-consciously) that Barack Obama is too much of a "dice roll."

One last thought: why my sympathetic conjecture in defense of Hillary's motives?

I suspect Hillary is no more evil-minded and selfish than Andrew Jackson or Henry Clay. Politics tends to make us see the worst in our opponents. Certainly, Jackson and Clay partisans saw the other side as unscrupulous, diabolical, and traitorous. We tend to see the opposition in the same light today.

This fits a basic pattern in American politics in which we tend to lionize their current party champions, demonize their contemporary political foes, and then canonize them all in a non-partisan burst of patriotic ardor once they have been dead long enough.

Clay and Jackson were fallible men with great qualities and serious faults. Their greatness was partly the product of ambition, self delusion, and an ability and willingness to deliver and suffer vicious blows in the public arena. Their darker sides drew from the same pool of personal traits. Bill Clinton has it right: politics is not for the faint of heart. Hillary is in the tradition of those multi-faceted characters from the past.
Last week, Kenneth T. Walsh reported in the US News & World Report, "98 percent of 109 professional historians, recently surveyed by the History News Network, believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure." In fact, according to the new poll, 61 percent of the historians judge Bush the worst president in American history.

Presidential rankings fluctuate over time. Each generation struggles to understand themselves and find consensus and community by reinterpreting their collective past, which is a productive function of history. On the downside, our historical figures ascend or diminish as a result of how we view their actions through the lens of our experience and culture rather than viewing their actions in their own time and place. Taken to an extreme, this is the trap of presentism.

If all presidential rankings are slightly deceptive and self indulgent, then attempting to rank contemporary presidents is pure folly. For example, see the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. poll (circa 1996), which ranked Ronald Reagan in the thirties, which apparently rested on the political views of Schlesinger and his cronies much more than sober historical judgment. Although I greatly admire Schlesinger's legacy as a scholar, his dismissal of Reagan as an "average" president of little note was petty, embarrassing, and tended to reinforce his reputation as a partisan.

Other “conservative” polls have come along since then that tried to place Reagan much closer to the top of the list, but many of them have suffered from the same disease in reverse. The inherent problem with rating presidents on whom we voted (for or against) is that we seek to push our objectivity beyond normal human limits. History is best understood and cataloged and interpreted by dispassionate and disinterested practitioners of the art.

An Aside: Gordon Wood noted recently that any new history of the American distant past that mentions the current Bush administration in the preface automatically merits suspicion, suggesting that politically driven historians are too likely to allow contemporary partisanship to overwhelm training and academic integrity.

Having said all that (and mindful of my hypocrisy), let me indulge in some speculation in terms of ranking President George W. Bush.

Back in the spring of 2006, I asserted:

"All observers agree that Bush will rise or fall on the success of Iraq. Obviously, Iraq today [2006] is not what the Bush brain trust was hoping for in the spring of 2003. Notwithstanding, the manifest fact that the Bushies were naïve and sanguine about the Iraq aftermath does not necessarily preclude ultimate success. Being there has a momentum and imperative all its own."

Back then I believed that "Iraq remain[ed] an open question, a 50-50 proposition." Success meant a modicum of vindication. Regional instability equaled "a gigantic error with myriad horrific ramifications."

Today, the Iraq question remains extremely tenuous--and likely not to be resolved (or even put on a steady path to positive resolution) during Bush's watch. Things got much worse after the spring of 2006--and then they got a lot better. But Iraq continues to hang in the balance, draining the collective reservoir of optimism, resources, and will necessary for eventual victory.

Bush backers, who have their own reputations to think about, hope against all evidence to the contrary that the current 30-something approval ratings are Truman-like. We see the myriad mistakes. But we also cling to the hope that Bush's tough and unpopular foreign policy choices will prove ultimately correct and successful in the larger scheme. In the Truman mold, Bush is setting forth a bold, courageous, and transformative American policy that, like containment, will emerge triumphant at some point in the decades to come.

The President’s opponents see him more like Nixon, tangled in a web of secrecy and paranoia and shady dealings. Or like Johnson, fecklessly and tragically prosecuting an ill-conceived war that is draining the life blood out of his presidency and his credibility. Or like Warren G. Harding, who woke up one day to the realization that his clear-cut view of the world and his simple notions were not sophisticated enough to combat the problems of the modern presidency.

Time will tell.

Back then I also said: "[W]hile presidential legacies are generally not built on economic success, an economic collapse on Bush’s watch or immediately following would certainly injure his historical standing."

The President is still trying to dodge an economic meltdown. If Bush can avert economic catastrophe during his tenure, we will remember very little about Bush and taxes, mortgages, or even Katrina. If the Great Crash comes before January 20, 2009, the public consciousness will remember him as a latter-day Herbert Hoover.

An encouraging thought for the President: when he completes his second full term, he will join an exclusive club of eleven reelected-full-term presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). For the most part, history has been kind to these elite eleven.

Moreover, Bush is one of only twenty presidents to win election after serving as president. In addition to those listed above, four presidents won election while finishing the unexpired terms of their predecessors (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson). Grover Cleveland won back the presidency four years after having lost it as an incumbent. Richard Nixon won reelection after a full term but resigned before completion of his second term. Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley won reelection after a full term but fell to assassins in the second.

There are notable exceptions--but, once passions cooled, mostly historians came around eventually to confirming the wisdom of the voters in first nineteen cases. Bush retains a good chance of eventually climbng much higher than many highly partisan current historians expect.

Will he rise as high as Harry Truman? Tough to say. But, undoubtedly, he will not out-distance Franklin Pearce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the worst president ever.
The story is making the rounds of the blogosphere that Hillary was fired from her position on the Watergate Hearings. Or, in another variation, that she was not fired, but when the procedures ended her boss would not give her a letter of recommendation. Only one of the blogs I've read this information on linked to the actual source. The source is Jerry Zeifman, Former Counsel, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, who would have been Hillary's boss during the Watergate Hearings.

Here is his article in Accuracy in Media.

The essay opens:

I have just seen Hillary Clinton and her former Yale law professor both in tears at a campaign rally here in my home state of Connecticut. Her tearful professor said how proud he was that his former student was likely to become our next President. Hillary responded in tears.

My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.

Hillary as I knew her in 1974

At the time of Watergate I had overall supervisory authority over the House Judiciary Committee's Impeachment Inquiry staff that included Hillary Rodham-who was later to become First Lady in the Clinton White House.



Here is his website,

The article of interest is most of the way down the page and entitled

HILLARY'S WATERGATE SCANDAL

The opening paragraph reads:

In December 1974, as general counsel and chief of staff of the House
Judiciary Committee, I made a personal evaluation of Hillary Rodham
(now Senator Clinton), a member of the staff we had gathered for our
impeachment inquiry on President Richard Nixon. I decided that I could
not recommend her for any future position of public or private trust.


We'll see if this story develops further.
Sources today (4/1/08) are telling the AP that behind the scenes former president Jimmy Carter is offering himself to the Democratic Party as the presidential candidate for 2008. Carter operatives, reportedly are trying to convice Howard Dean and other party leaders that Obama and Clinton have polarized Democrats so badly that neither can unify the party in November. Carter is reported to have said that if he could bring Arabs and Israelis together at Camp David for an agreement, he can bring warring Democrats together.

Full story here.