Jonah Goldberg at The National Review mentioned something on Tuesday over at The Corner that I wanted to address. Goldberg was discussing the President role at the Memorial Day service at Arlington National Cemetery.
I think Obama played things pretty much perfectly at Arlington yesterday, continuing the tradition of laying a wreath at the memorial to the Confederate dead and starting a new one of leaving a presidential wreath at the monument to African-American soldiers who fought against the confederacy.
From a political standpoint the president did the right thing, but I think he should have stopped the practice that President Wilson started. Wilson was the first Democrat from the South to be elected after the Civil War and despite the adulation from “progressives” he was pretty dispicable.
Many Southern Democrats hoped — and had good reason to expect — an all-out Dixiecrat revival with Wilson in the Oval Office. But they had to settle for Wilson’s re-segregation of Washington D.C. and the federal bureaucracy and screenings of Birth of a Nation in the White House.
If the president took my suggestion he would face the backlash of many southerners who still have a great deal of pride in their “confederate past;” however, it’s been 140 years and it’s time to get over it. We shouldn’t be honoring a succession movement; especially when the main issue of slavery was so evil. Hopefully a president in the future goes back to the single wreath to honor all Americans who have given their lives to the United States.
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