The historian Alan Brinkley, writing in Time, scoffed at that. It is the same with Clinton. The risks he allegedly took in private have no counterparts in his public life. Clinton has his own checks and balances. The urge to be bold is checked by the need to be loved.
Television makes historic that which it can show.
The green revolution was not historic because it made for boring pictures. But the visit of an old pope to an old dictator was deemed historic because it promised swell pictures. The visit, though, changed little. Fidel Castro is making a slow exit anyway, the church will be restored in Cuba, and Donald Trump or somebody will develop the Havana waterfront. Something similar happened with the State of the Union.