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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.