Consider, too, how history has treated Lyndon B. Johnson. The architect of military escalation in Vietnam, Johnson left the presidency in disgrace. He was so despised by the Left that his own party hounded him into surrendering the nomination in 1968. But many on the Left have lately forgiven LBJ for the sins of Vietnam, because he gave us the Great Society and the War on Poverty. So LBJ gets a pass. Instead, Richard Nixon gets blamed for Vietnam, when he isn’t taking heat for everything from the Clinton impeachment to the obesity epidemic. History hates the Republican Nixon, who got us out of Vietnam. History loves the Democrat LBJ, who gave us the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Funny how that works.

Think I’m exaggerating or cherry-picking? Compare the recent media commemorations of the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society with those of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Vietnam War. Actually, you won’t find many articles commemorating the start of the Vietnam War—possibly because those articles would have to acknowledge how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations entangled us in that bloody and controversial conflict. Best to wait until the Nixon-era anniversaries start rolling around for a full-color spread on Vietnam and its tragic legacy. History likes to keep things tidy.