In his 1996 State of the Union address, Bill Clinton crowed that “for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there are no Russian missiles pointed at American children.” As if the fiends in the Kremlin targeted their ICBMs at the under-18 set next, well hear that ” they aimed their gravity bombs at our elderly, infirm, and pregnant.

With this histrionic rhetoric, Clinton apparently sought to claim some credit for ending the Cold War. In the 1992 campaign, President Bush had claimed such credit because he had presided over the Cold War’s denouement. In reality, Bush’s role was like that of a back-up quarterback sent in to run out the clock when the game is already securely in hand. But if Bush’s claim was an exaggeration, Clinton’s was absurd. He was not yet even on the team when that Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His newest book, The imperative other American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism, will be published by the AEI Press in April. victory was recorded.