One of the things I won’t miss when my AOL account converts itself into an AIM account will be those false-news headlines that appear on AOL’s welcome screen. Sometimes, it’s as if they were really hurting for something to talk about.

A recent one asked whether it was too early to judge Bill Clinton’s presidency from a historical perspective. I was curious about what this controversy was all about, since most people don’t think twice about attempting to judge George W. Bush’s presidency from a historical perspective before it’s even over.

The link took me to an article explaining that new text books are already including material from the Clinton presidency. Considering that he’s been out of office for five years now, that’s hardly a surprise. (Was there previously some mandatory waiting period before new text books could include events from past presidents?)

The article begins with the explanation that the Clinton years are in that gray area of being too far past to be “current” but too recent to be judged in perspective. It then adds this statement:

“Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him — textbooks.”

Judging how, exactly? The article goes on to explain:

“The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how Clinton handled the economy, crime and health care.”The most commonly used texts give straightforward recaps of Clinton’s toughest days, with some flavor of how it affected the nation. Absent are any the lurid details of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky that spiced up daily news reports and late-night talk shows as the scandal and impeachment played out in 1998 and early 1999.”

I don’t see anything particularly judgmental in that description. Particularly if the impeachment is mildly portrayed and not painted as the only thing that happened in Clinton’s second term. (There were more important things going on at the time, as I recall.)

One of the quoted text books includes this information about Clinton’s impeachment:

“Polls showed most Americans did not believe Clinton’s ‘tortured explanations of his behavior,’ the book says, but also did not think his offenses warranted his removal.”

That sounds pretty neutral to me. I wonder how the writer of this article, and more especially, the writer of the AOL tie-in poll considers this to be a real “judgment” of anyone. Maybe it was just a slow news day for AOL.

Reporting what happened isn’t judging. And no history class should exclude what happened during Clinton’s presidency (or any other).

I suspect that when the Clinton years are viewed from a historical perspective, one thing that will be said is this: the scandal turned enough attention and sympathy toward Hillary that it enabled her to receive enough support to successfully run for the senate, and, that because she was able to be elected and prove herself there, she became the nation’s first serious female contender for the White House.

Somehow, I doubt if that’s what Clinton’s critics at the time had in mind.