Upsy-Daisy

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

What could Hillary Clinton have been thinking when she decided to feature in one of her campaign videos the “daisy ad”? That’s the video used in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson in his reelection campaign against Senator Goldwater. It’s one of the most famous political ads in history. It shows a little girl plucking petals from a daisy and counting. It elides into the countdown of a nuclear bomb, while LBJ talks about how these are the stakes. Now the little girl, named Monique Corzilius and all grown up, appears for Mrs. Clinton.

How many people here think Barry Goldwater was unfit to have his finger on the nuclear button? Is that what the grown up little girl thinks? Is that what is thought by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who makes an appearance in Mrs. Clinton’s version of the ad? Is that what Mrs. Clinton thinks? They all seem oblivious to the fact that, in the event, it turned out to be the Democrats, first JFK and then Lyndon Johnson, who, at least by their own terms, turned out to have erroneous judgment and plunged us into war.

The war, of course, was Vietnam, which erupted after the plot JFK countenanced to assassinate President Diem of free Vietnam. LBJ escalated the war until he got tired of it and quit. Voters brought in a Republican, Richard Nixon, to clean up. While Nixon was scrambling for peace with honor, a Democratic Congress, in a betrayal of free Vietnam, voted against resupplying Vietnam’s military. It resigned America to the communist conquest that cast Indochina into the long dark night of communism.

Does that sound familiar? It’s not entirely analogous. But there are similarities between Vietnam and our current crisis. The vote to authorize the use of force against Islamist terror was overwhelming in the Congress, as was the vote to authorize the use of force in Vietnam, as was the vote to go into Iraq. It was, as now seems usual, the Democrats who quit the fight when the going got rough. Both betrayals starred John Kerry, first as a young Naval officer, then as senator and ultimately state secretary.

This is the context in which Hillary Clinton is reviving the ad used to mock the steady, patriotic Barry Goldwater. He himself is long gone. Maybe Mrs. Clinton thinks few Americans are around who will remember Vietnam and all that. Or that they’re so trapped without work and frustrated by ObamaCare that they’re going to vote for Donald Trump anyhow. She doesn’t think they’re counting down the years until, because of her pact, Iran is free to build an a-bomb. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three . . . two. . .


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