Call Adm. McRaven to higher office

The tawdry mediocrity of Clinton culture plays on endlessly in the mainstream press, weighing down the republic, if it can still be called that, with the ballast of what is left of the 45 million war babies, all of us born apparently within 45 minutes of each other. They will vote for their own and Hillary is theirs. She, the official wife of the icon of the generation; he of the loquacious tongue and ethics of a toad whose shining moment of countercultural destiny came in an act of sexual dominance dramatically executed in the ultimate citadel of the post-war West, the Oval Office. It was the culmination of a generation. That which began when ’60s anarchist Jerry Rubin told the children to go home and kill their parents, when presidential friend Bill Ayers founded the Weather Underground, when black nationalist H. Rap Brown declared that “violence is as American as apple pie,” when Bob Dylan demanded that “everybody must get stoned” found full consummation in Clinton’s Nietzschean act of American descent. Bill Clinton then was no longer just a president. To his generation and world supporters, he had become a god.

According to reports in The Washington Post, former Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) says of the fateful vote on the invasion of Iraq in 2002: “I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.” But “I wasn’t alone,” she adds. It is the exact answer we would expect as we do not know her — them — by their works. The works are irrelevant as family, friend, generation — Clinton, Bush, Kennedy — mark the American descent to populist monarchy. (Houston Chronicle headline on the Drudge Report today: “‘New generation Bush’ wows the crowd at GOP convention.”) I will predict here that we will be back with Britain within the second generation ahead if monarchy is where we are heading, and that is where tribal and generational politics lead us. But if we want monarchy, Prince William and Kate Middleton seem to have more mettle and poise and the baby, George, the greater life force.

{mosads}But soon it will be too late. “Pentagon claims Beijing’s defence budget close to $145 billion” reads the headline today in Financial Times. In times ahead, we won’t need a Clinton, Bush, Kennedy or even a Windsor if that is really their name. We will need an Eisenhower. Worth recalling on this date when Ike began the world for us in 1944.

We should look again to Texas as he who gave us one of our very best days since June 6, 1944, gave a commencement speech there at University of Texas at Austin last week: Adm. William McRaven, who led the brigade to Osama Bin Laden. It was the best commencement speech I have ever heard by one of the best men to have come to us in our blessed American destiny.

“If you want to change the world,” he told the students, “you must be your very best in the darkest moments.”

I have no idea what political party he belongs to. That was one of the nice things about it. He is perhaps the antidote to that which has brought us to the end of things to potentially begin again in 2016 or beyond. Military men like Presidents Washington, Grant and Eisenhower brought out of the end of things in past eras. Perhaps we should begin to look today to Adm. McRaven before fate brings us to him in a panic.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.