The Secretary Hillary-> Clinton fans in my Facebook feed are giddy with schadenfreude over a New York Daily News interview with Senator Bernie Sanders that they're calling a "disaster."
The senator, or "BS" as they like to call Sanders, has been revealed as pandering to the "young people who believe this," the ones who "don't do their own research." Young people who will believe in lofty ideals but don't press for the details of how these dreams will actually be realized.
That's why the Hillary-> fans are urging young people to get behind a progressive who gets things done, like Secretary Clinton, who recognizes that people don't just rally behind leaders who "dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" That's why she's given up on universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, and breaking up big banks.
That's why it was so important for the Washington Post to cover the Daily News interview not once but twice.
Our leaders need to be realistic and pragmatic, not starry-eyed dreamers shooting for the moon. Speaking of which, this is not the first time the Daily News has taken a progressive dreamer to task for pushing unrealistic political fantasies.
Our crack research team* has discovered this long-lost Daily News interview from May 26, 1961, with President John F. Kennedy, who was just four months into office and delivering outlandish policy proposals to the Congress.
Daily News: President Kennedy, yesterday before Congress you said, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." You yourself said it would be difficult and expensive to accomplish, but that it "is a most important decision that we make as a nation."
Kennedy: Yes.
Daily News: Let's assume that you're correct on that point. How do you go about flying to the moon?
Kennedy: How you go about doing it is through scientific research and development, by giving the authority and resources to the National Space Council to undertake experiments in space travel.
Daily News: But do you think that the Council, now, has that authority?
Kennedy: Well, I don't know if the Council has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to these scientists, or have the Council turn to any of those scientists and say, "Now you must do X, Y and Z?"
Kennedy: What you would determine is that, if we are going to go to the moon, then we're going to have to do research in space. And then you have the National Space Council and some people who know a lot about this, designing those experiments. If the determination is that we need to launch a few more men into orbit to figure out how to get to the moon, you do it.
Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Gus Grissom and the Liberty Bell 7 in the Mercury program. There was an attempt to safely land a space capsule from lower earth orbit into the sea and the man nearly drowned. And what does that presage for your space program?
Kennedy: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the scientific implications of that.
Imagine all those young people in 1961, like a 15-year-old Hillary Rodham, who got all wound up at the unrealistic prospect of the United States landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. If only the columnists at the Washington Post had piped up about this Daily News interview back then, we could have put all that Apollo program money into something practical and pragmatic.
In our highly-researched piece*, we found more of the Daily News holding the idealistic president's feet to the fire.
Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular landing process or capsule improvements that an engineer could have or should have invoked to get Grissom out of the capsule safely?
Kennedy: I suspect that there are. Yes.
Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?
Kennedy: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, particular fixes? No, I don't. But if I would...yeah, that's what I believe, yes. When a country is able to successfully send a man into orbit and bring him back alive, regardless of any complications, yeah, I think we can make it to the moon and back safely.
Daily News: I'm only pressing because you've made it such a central part of your address to Congress. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.
But the most embarrassing part about President Kennedy's interview wasn't his boyish naivete about the ballistic calculus and technical engineering necessary to propel a human being in a hermetically-sealed life-support system to the moon and back using controlled explosions. It was this telling exchange with the Daily News about daily life in New York that showed how out-of-touch Kennedy was.
Daily News: I know you've got to go in a second. When was the last time you went to a ballpark? Are you gonna campaign for baseball fans?
Kennedy: Actually we went to a game, Mike, when we were here? About four years ago? But I know a bit about baseball. I've enjoyed a game once or twice.
Daily News: Do you really? Do you really? How do you enjoy a baseball game today?
Kennedy: What do you mean, "How do you enjoy a baseball game?"
Daily News: How do you get in to see a baseball game today?
Kennedy: You go to Ebbets Field and buy a ticket.
Daily News: Wrong.
Kennedy: You show your ticket and go in to watch the Dodgers play.
Daily News: We would like our photographer to be there when you go buy a ticket to watch the Dodgers play at Ebbets Field.
Can you believe President Kennedy didn't realize the Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles to play in 1958, three years prior? Ha! Thinking that he could buy a ticket to see the Dodgers at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field!
Once again, the Daily News has revealed a kooky left-wing politician making grand promises without fully understanding the details necessary to achieve those plans. Such politicians believe in crazy things like "vision" and "leadership" and expect that by mobilizing the hard-working and intelligent Americans to believe their "vision", they can accomplish such outlandish things as walking on the moon and guaranteeing healthcare and a living wage to all Americans.
Just don't ask them to get you some subway tokens for the Dodgers' next home game at Ebbets Field.
*Our team discovered the transcript after much research on crack. It might be a transcript of a hallucination.