[princess leah]

I for one plan on praying that Clinton is "too sick to attend" A headcold, appenticitis, cancer, whatever it takes to keep that @#$ from attending such a somber event!

[ChemistCat]

I have been thinking about it.

President Clinton attending is (sad to say) not inappropriate. I actually think he could behave himself for a couple of hours. I think he'd shut up and look somber and not say anything destructive, which is the best anyone could expect of the likes of him. He has some sense of the moment. He has a little bit of the social grace that allows even a venal slug like him to stand aside for a moment and let something more important than he is take center stage. I think he's so dissolute that not a bit of it would be authentic, but still I think he'd behave. I wouldn't like to see the camera focus again and again on him at a time like that but it wouldn't make me angry. Sad as the fact is, he will belong there, doing honor, if only token honor, to the truly great man whose office he literally soiled. He owes President Reagan that. Maybe he'd have the grace to be silent, or say only honorable things, and outwardly reverent.

His wife, however, could not be trusted to behave herself. She has absolutely no capacity to respect anything other than her own ambitions. If she attended this sad event, whenever it happens, she'll be unable to resist the temptation to say or do something ghoulishly inappropriate. She is the incarnate spirit of the Wellstone funeral.

[VOA]

I for one plan on praying that Clinton is "too sick to attend"...

I can second the emotion, but...
Having all living Presidents (in/out of office) attending the funeral/burial of one of their
colleagues is a powerful symbol of continuity.
As much as I disdain Bubba, having him, Papa Bush, Carter, Ford (I think that that was all?)
at the Nixon funeral was just a good sign of stability and being part of a civilized country.

I suspect this sort of tradition is lacking in a fair number of countries I would NOT
want to live in.