From: mulac@daystrom.lerc.nasa.gov (Richard Mulac)
Subject: Re: The big flaw in Clinton's Vietnam scenario
Followup-To: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center [Cleveland, Ohio]
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 06:19:15 GMT

In article <1992Sep5.232708.1@violet.ccit.arizona.edu> f67700241@violet.ccit.arizona.edu (Greg Franklin) writes:
>In article <1992Sep6.045247.5649@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>, mulac@daystrom.lerc.nasa.gov (Richard Mulac) writes:
>>     It's not the fact that Clinton was reluctant to serve that will turn
>> some voters against him, but instead will be what he did while not serving.
>> In Clinton you have a man who boasts proudly that he already had as a goal
>> becoming President while in his teens, a man who claims to have more
>> qualities of leadership than Bush, a man who says he firmly believes in his
>> principles, and a man who eloquently wrote of how he could not morally justify
>> fighting in the Vietnam war.  If all these things are true, wouldn't such a
>> man have thrown himself into the forefront of the anti-war movement and
>> demonstrated what a great leader he was?
>
>Maybe he would have.  I don't know.  But if he did, you'd be branding him
>now as a scum-sucking anti-war LIBERAL (eewwwww!), or worse, a peacenik,
>All because he was in "the forefront of the anti-war movement" in 1968.

  No, actually as long as he would have articulated himself without
resorting to violence I would have had no problems with him representing
the anti-war movement.  Great leaders, whether it be Martin Luther King or
Randall Terry, have gone as far as letting themselves be put in jail for
practicing civil disobedience in fighting for what they believe.  In my
opinion Clinton did not want to 'interrupt' his career path to power.
He could have at least given a few years of his life to something like the
Peace Corp, like Tsongas did.

>Clinton was what, 22 in 1968?  It seems you presume that he should've acted
>consistently in accordance with his world view, not to mention developed a
>detailed philosophy of war at age 22 (as you would have done :-).

   How come when it suits them Clinton's defenders trot out that letter he
wrote explaining his actions regarding Vietnam as proof that even at 22
Clinton had a mature detailed world philosophy, but at other times want to
excuse his actions as those of an inexperienced kid.

>His association with the DLC began in the early 1980s.  The Dem leadership
>considered Mondale/Cuomo/Kennedy/Dukakis/Jackson their heroes, and considered 
>Clinton's membership in a moderate Democratic group vaguely disloyal.
>Clinton stuck with the DLC, and so was shut out of the Pres. candidate
>selection process that put out subpar candidates in 1984 and 1988.
>
>He finally decided to go forward in 1991 while Cuomo and Co. ran and hid
>from Bush, and captured the nomination espousing the same moderate agenda
>the Dem leadership tried to shunt off so many years before.  Cuomo, Jesse,
>and Ted Kennedy were for all intents and purposes put out to pasture.
>I'd count this as standing fast for what he believes.  He's fortunate to
>have been rewarded for it.

   He could just as easily have moved to a moderate position because of the
move to the right by the majority of the US since the beginning of the
eighties.  I don't doubt that Clinton is a very smart man, just a bad
candidate for president.  Why is it that in their eagerness to get rid of
Bush, people are willing to elect the ultimate car salesman?  Tsongas would
have been the best Democratic candidate (I would have voted for him and I
voted for Bush in '88).

-- 
Richard Mulac                                     mulac@daystrom.lerc.nasa.gov
NASA Lewis Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, MS 5-9, Cleveland, OH  44135
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"The question is - who do you trust to make change work | These pontifications
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