Jonah, Jonah, Jonah...

As I've mentioned several times before, I love virtually everything National Review's Jonah Goldberg writes. So I was surprised the other day to find him pining for the presidency of Bill Clinton.

To be fair to Jonah, his nostalgia for Clinton is a result, chiefly, of comparing him to Obama, not to Reagan. But still.... His most egregious paragraph:

Clinton, a political prodigy of the first order, loved the human side of politics. He listened to the hoi polloi more than he listened to the Harvard faculty. It made him a less consequential but more democratic president.

First of all, Clinton is not now and was never a political prodigy. The stars were aligned in both 1992 and 1996 and he was lucky. He stumbled into the Oval Office with nothing more than plurality victories in both elections. Once there, his overreaching was a large part of the Democrats losing both Houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Secondly, he loved mostly the female side of the human side of politics. If his attention was directed at the hoi polloi rather than the Harvard faculty, it was because he knew he was more likely to find a cute face and a short skirt in the former crowd.

Finally, he was a less consequential president because he is a less consequential man.

C'mon Jonah, and all of you over at National Review! Please stop with this effort to rehabilitate the Clown Prince of the Presidency. That task seems to lie with the Bush family, let them do it.