CONTROLLING HISTORY….For those who are surprised at the fervor conservatives have brought in recent years to resuscitating Joe McCarthy’s reputation, or, in recent days, to resuscitating Richard Nixon’s, Mike Tomasky explains that conservatives understand how important historical revisionism is. That’s why they continue to produce so many hit pieces against Bill Clinton more than four years after he left the Oval Office:
There is [a] reason these anti-Clinton tomes still appear with regularity, and liberals who criticize the Clintons from the left need to recognize it: The right knows that if its historical interpretation of Clintonism can prevail, liberalism as a project can be killed for decades. That is, if they can convince America over the next few crucial years (crucial because historical interpretations of Clintonism are just really beginning) that the Clinton era was not one of prosperity, peace, and a demonstration that government can deliver common goods but was, instead, one of corruption, turpitude, and a fat and happy people discarding moral values for the sake of higher mutual-fund values, they will have won an extremely important argument with serious long-term ramifications.
Orwell would have been proud.
