And if you think you can wave Tom Brokaw goodbye with a smile, you ought to consider his farewell “Eyewitness to History” special from Friday night. Get how he described Reagan vs. his take on Clinton.

“Ronald Reagan put a sunny disposition on conservatism. He is the Godfather of the modern political conservative movement in this country. It drove liberals crazy that he could be as successful as he was. Even Ronald Reagan’s close friends and advisors will say on the issue of race, for example, he was stuck in the late 1930s, early 1940s. [What does this mean, he loved Amos and Andy??] He could be stubborn, sometimes to a fault. He was much too slow to respond to the AIDS crisis. But on balance, if you look at how the nation responded to Ronald Reagan’s death, an entire week of celebration and mourning, that tells you a lot about what you need to know about Ronald Reagan’s place in our contemporary history.”

That’s classic. I thought he was a disaster, but somehow the people think otherwise, so I’ll just leave it at that. Notice how there’s nothing there about the Reagan recovery? Oh, then Brokaw described the Clinton era. He devoted several minutes to the Lewinsky scandal, but having skipped Reagan’s economic boom, he offset the Clinton scandals with this vintage news clip of himself: “There was some very good news out of Washington and the American economy.”

Bill Clinton at Rose Garden event: “The budget surplus will be $39 billion this year.”

Brokaw: “That’s the result of record low unemployment, and the tax revenue that goes with it.”

On screen, a 1998 graphic with a picture of Bill Clinton beside these statements:

– Fiscal Year 1998 surplus: $39 billion

– First since 1969

– Record Low Unemployment