You Went Full McGovern, Barry. Never Go Full McGovern

“Obama: Ho Chi Minh Was Inspired by Our Founders,” Bridget Johnson writes at the PJ Tatler:

President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders.

Obama took a break from his jobs-pivot speeches to meet Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House. The pair held joint remarks in the Oval Office afterward.

Obama said their first bilateral meeting “represents the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries.”

* * * * * *

The visit by Sang, he said, “signifies the maturing and the next stage of the development between the United States and Vietnam.”

Obama said Sang concluded the meeting by sharing “a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman.”

“And we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson. Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the United States. And President Sang indicated that even if it’s 67 years later, it’s good that we’re still making progress.”

You went full McGovern, man. Never go full McGovern. As Steve Hayward noted in October of last year at Power Line, when McGovern passed away at age 90:

He said some truly stupid things over the years, such as his carelessly chosen words in a Playboy interview implying that Ho Chi Minh could rightly be compared to George Washington, or his blaming the Cold War chiefly on the United States and the West, writing in his autobiography that “Without excusing the aggressive behavior of the Soviets in Eastern Europe after 1945, I have always believed that we not only overreacted to it but indeed helped to trigger it by our own post-World War II fears.”  He added that “The challenge to the free world from Communism is no longer relevant,” and “I don’t like Communism, but I don’t think we have any great obligation to save the world from it.”  While Nixon and other Republicans wore American flag lapel pins, the McGovernites found appeals to patriotism repellent, and wore the flag—if at all—upside down.

What were their thoughts on the Pledge of Allegiance?

Update: “So is Obama the modern version of the cynical 60s rad who pretended that Ho Chi Minh was in the finest American tradition or of the frivolous 60s anti-war dupe who bought this line?”, ask Paul Mirengoff today at Power Line. Read the whole thing.