On decorations and promotions, and why Hillary is the only safe choice
A drill sergeant once told me, "a soldier never remembers his first battalion commander, but he always remembers his drill sergeant."
That drill sergeant never worked for the larger-than-life Lieutenant Colonel "Cactus Jack" McGuinness. I could tell McGuinness stories all day long, but one will suffice for now.
Cactus Jack worked behind a 200-year-old desk that had been in his family all its life. In one of its drawers were two file folders. One contained award recommendations, the other promotion recommendations. No one else in the battalion had either form; if you needed one, you had to visit the colonel. Before you got a form, he'd always ask, "are you recognizing the past or the future?" If you were thanking a soldier for something great he did, you always got an award recommendation. If you were recognizing his future potential, you got a promotion recommendation...and occasionally, you'd get both.
The Bernie brigade is telling the Democratic party, "choose Bernie because he was a leader in the 1960s civil rights struggle." Okay, we could do that...but his grand history in that conflict comes with a guy who wants to fight, right now, for a program that has absolutely no hope of being enacted. Just the fact he needs to raise taxes by a substantial sum to fund his programs is, alone, enough to derail his plans. (That he needs to raise them by a LOT more than he claims is even worse.)
Hillary doesn't have the civil rights struggle background Bernie does, but the program she lays out is more likely to be enactable.
Bernie deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his civil rights activities. Those activities, by themselves, don't justify giving him the White House.
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