' Bob Tyrell
Jewish World Review Sept. 9, 2004 / 23 Elul, 5764

Bob Tyrrell

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When They're 64


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Word 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.


Many of the aging 1960s youth had no idea that they were aging. They still dress like youth, at least during leisure hours. They listen to the same 1960s music — for four decades! And, alas, they act like youths, at least socially. Now comes word that one of the 1960s' most famous arrested adolescents had four arteries almost completely blocked by fatty materials. What about all that jogging he did? What about his superior knowledge of healthcare? 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?


Well, my 1960s compeers, we are all getting on in years and in artery blockage. The knees creak. The skin sags. Cosmetic ministrations and hair coloring can deceive the public but not the physiology. 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. 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. No one is likely to call Bill Clinton a wise old man. No one will note his dignity or sage advice.


Soon he will again be appearing in one of his silly beach shirts and wearing shorts. He will be smiling and quoting from rock and roll songs. He will be telling us whoppers again that only an adolescent would bother with. 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." Rush ran the risible tape more than once, and doubtless his audience got the joke. 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.

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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.


He was, of course, not talking about the whole 1960s generation. Its engineers, scientists and many of its leaders in commerce have contributed constructively to society. George W. Bush is a 1960s youth, and he has risen to the challenges of adulthood. He beat alcoholism, became a good father and husband, did not flinch from the challenges facing his presidency.


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. They thrived from campus politics to national politics. 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.


Jean-Francois Kerry is doing badly in this campaign because he is displaying all the excesses of his 1960s left-wing contemporaries. 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 medals in street demonstrations. He dramatically comes down on both sides of issues such as the war in Iraq. He plays the role of the 1960s arrested adolescent, fuming at his opponents, proclaiming bathos and bewildering the electorate.


Now from the press corps emits the alarm that his peer, Bill Clinton, will not be able to campaign for him. Many in the press corps are themselves from the ranks of the 1960 left-wing students. 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.


My guess is that in a decade historians will be looking back and see someone else as the greatest politician of the 1960s generation. He will be the president who revised American foreign policy to meet the challenge of our time, terrorism, with a policy of pre-emption. He will be the president who institutionalized the Reagan Revolution. Now who might that fellow be?

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JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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06/24/04: If they only mastered the art of lying
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05/13/04: Loss of perspective
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04/29/04: It is 1992 all over again, and I rejoice
04/15/04: There seems to be two George W's
04/08/04: Kennedy & Kerry
04/01/04: Sen. Jean Francois' fun and games are only starting — poor Dems
03/25/04: What really explains the rancor arising in this election year?
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03/11/04: The understandably confused are confused
03/04/04: Hillary, the loyalest of the loyal
02/19/04: Hannity's optimism
02/12/04: The moron vote
02/05/04: At least Lieberman stood for something
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01/15/04: Eight Angry Men
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12/29/03: Alternative "Person of the Year"
12/18/03: Dean and me
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12/01/03: The Wright Stuff
11/13/03: How wrong the naysayers and the utopians have been
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10/24/03: "The Reagans" and the evidence of a historic life
10/17/03: The Moron Vote
10/09/03: The politics of groping and the groping of politics
10/03/03: Is there a witch doctor in the house?
09/26/03: Funny Girly-Boy
09/18/03: Send Arafat to Paris!
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09/05/03: Placating the carpers
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07/25/03: They underestimate not only the president, but the American people
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06/12/03: Rain(es)ing Clintoon myths
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05/22/03: End of the last great persecution of the 20th century?
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05/08/03: The only intellectual force in Western history to gain moral superiority by being wrong
05/01/03: Dinning with Tom Wolfe: More lessons in nusual aspects of American life, hitherto ignored
04/28/03: Ambuscade at scholarly frontier
04/21/03: Stars in search of a galaxy
04/10/03: Baghdad Bob and Tom Daschle
03/31/03: When the media itself becomes the story
03/20/03: Revealed! Estrada is a gifted linguist -- a Japanese-American fluent in Spanish
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03/05/03: They just cannot stomach a protracted alliance with the Bushies
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02/18/03: People calling Dean a fruitcake are underestimating his political savvy
02/13/03: The new political establishment
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01/27/03: Witnessing self-love by people completely incapable of self-criticism
01/21/03: Of course our kiddies are depressed
01/13/03: Why is it that Official Washington still believes that a tax reduction means a revenue reduction?
01/02/03: Missing Moi
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12/24/02: Uprooting Christianity in the Holy Land
12/20/02: Under fire, Lott showed an ignobleness that is embarrassing
11/26/02: Bartley's enemies have been routed
11/14/02: Clarence Thomas and the segregationist Mississippi sheriff
11/07/02: I muffed up
10/31/02: Is the American university turning its back on change, on progress?
10/24/02: So why aren't the Dems buoyant?
10/17/02: Mourning the loss of the "yellow-belly"
10/10/02: American politics at its most ignominious
10/03/02: A man above the law, a bully
09/26/02: Is Bob Greene a victim of an anti-Clinton backlash?
09/19/02: I knew Mafiosi and …
09/12/02: Chickens and poseurs
09/05/02: Sympathizing with the Europols
08/29/02: 9-11 did not change us forever
08/22/02: Public persons frivoling with serious matters
08/15/02: Beachcombing among the fat of the land
08/08/02: They pave the way for corruption, not personal responsibility
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07/25/02: The congressional posse comitatus
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07/11/02: What the prez actually knows
07/04/02: The vindication of a truly original thinker
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06/13/02: Daschle must begin to act like an adult
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05/30/02: Revealing a carefully guarded media secret
05/23/02: In these times, thank Heaven for Clinton!
05/16/02: Fast Times at the Church of the Nativity
05/09/02: "Name the Prettiest Suicide Bomber"
05/02/02: Vindication for the Boy Scouts
04/25/02: A topic almost no other columnist will touch
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04/11/02: Let the Sun shine in
04/05/02: Hooded men of color in sheets
04/01/02: A McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood
03/21/02: Yakkin' on Yates
03/15/02: No role for Paul Volcker in Enron: the movie
03/07/02: My membership in the Communist Party U.S.A.
02/27/02: This award is bestowed by 'contrarians'
02/21/02: Mike Tyson: Made for Washington?
02/14/02: Enron as underdog?
02/07/02: Freed from the presence of money -- hard or soft -- most politicians would be just as bad
01/31/02: Needed: Bush to make a preemptive strike against his enemies …. Ones who'd like to see him fail even during war
01/24/02: Hucksters will move on to make their next marks
01/17/02: Debonair prez should begin to do the High Life
01/10/02: Move over Twinkies --- "the acne medicine made him do it!"
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12/27/01: A "self-made journalist"
12/20/01: Calamities and unanticipated benefits
12/13/01: America's grief ought not to give comfort to those who caused it
12/06/01: Leahy, the strict civil libertarian!? A short-term exploiter of the Constitution is more like it
11/29/01: Welcome to Afghan, Maryland?
11/26/01: So, why don't more folks hate us?
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11/09/01: No longer the smug statists, the prodigal Keynesians?
11/01/01: The New Seriousness
10/25/01: Bright lights and the Taliban
10/18/01: Is bin-Laden propaganda from Western intelligence?
10/12/01: No yellow ribbons
10/05/01: Bubba's back --- again!
09/28/01: Exposing peacetime's frauds
09/21/01: So protected, we're vulnerable
09/14/01: At Barbara Olson's home
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08/10/01: Visiting the source of the White House braintrust
08/03/01: Morality and reality
07/31/01: Blinded by success?
07/24/01: The latest Kennedy capitulation in Massachusetts
07/13/01: Talk about tawdry
07/06/01: Delighting in the Dictator
06/29/01: The G-dphobes
06/21/01: Fashionable Washington is sempiternally in a stew
06/15/01: The limits of hypocrisy
06/08/01: Flagging our general apathy

© 2001, Creators Syndicate