Perhaps it is a sign of the times, but it strikes me that the country has suddenly found itself bereft of former leaders that carry any kind of broad credibility to weigh in on the serious matters of the day. Whomever is sworn in as president in 2009 will not have much to lean on.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are obviously discredited and useless. They’ll never be ‘elder statesmen’ in any sense of the term. The elder Bush still retains a measure of credibility, although his name is tarnished along with his son’s. Dan Quayle long ago became a joke. Jimmy Carter has expended his ability to have broad credibility by taking on the highly charged cause of peace in the Middle East. Walter Mondale has never attained a national profile or broad respect. And Bill Clinton has lost his credibility with broad swaths of the left, and never had much cred with the right. The only former leader I can think of that has real clout and respect right now is Al Gore.
Compare this to the sixties, when Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, and even Herbert Hoover, were consulted on a regular basis by Kennedy, and the first two by Johnson. It’s appalling how badly our Establishment has failed us, from the media to our Congress to our elder statesmen. It’s a sad and dangerous state of affairs.
