Monday, July 30, 2012

SO, NOW THAT YOU’RE PRESIDENT…?


By Edwin Cooney

A few weeks ago, contemplating the upcoming November election, a reader asked me, “What can a president do or what power does a president have to promote the general welfare of the American people?”

Of course, Republicans, Conservatives, Democrats, and Liberals always respond to that question by asserting that all that any patriotic and responsible Chief Executive has to do to cure our ills is to apply their own particular set of principles and priorities to every problem.  So imagine, just for a moment, that you, not Barack Obama, are President.  You’re sitting in the oval office at the close of the first full day of your presidency.  Throughout the day, you’ve conversed with the most powerful and influential experts representing all parties and all points on the political compass.

Some insist you cut taxes and regulations governing business and commerce and the free market will be energized to handle the rest.  Government, they insist, is no different than business, and every businessman knows you can’t tax and spend your way into prosperity.  Others insist just as vigorously that government is very different from business.  Business ultimately makes a profit by selling a product to others.  Governments have constituents not customers.  Good government serves rather than sells.  After all, a free government is of and by the very people it serves.  Good government isn’t about profit, it’s about equity.  Your task is to set the national agenda that puts enough sound money in people’s pockets so they will be energized to grow the economy for themselves and the national posterity.

You realize that one thousand four hundred and sixty days are ahead of you now that your first 24 hours are behind you.  You have as your allies your upbringing, your education, your religion, your family, your friends and the engine of a mighty nation.  However, that nation is faltering and you’ve been chosen to turn everything around.

Under the Constitution, you are the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. You can propose laws to Congress and veto bad bills.  You can sign executive orders that direct government departments in some cases to take certain actions with money that’s already been approved, but only Congress can appropriate any new spending.  The media is available to you, but it is also very available and in many cases even owned by your most powerful political opponents.

As you sit all by your lonesome self in the mightiest office in the history of all humanity, a frightening thought occurs to you.  Your capacity to do good ultimately requires the cooperation of others, but you alone with a few short taps on the code keys of the nuclear football could engulf all humanity in a sudden short conflict that would end, if not solve, all human problems.  Of course, you dismiss that and get back to the task of problem solving -- after all, you are the President of the United States of America.

You lean back in your presidential chair and the images of our three greatest presidents -- Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt -- flash into your mind.

In 1788, America was new and its people looked almost solely to the President personally for direction.  No one, regardless of experience or intellect, was equal to George Washington.  Washington was elected and, under guidelines proscribed in the Constitution, put together the entire Executive Branch of the federal government in his very first year.

Next into your mind strolls the tall bearded figure of Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln was handed a broken nation to mend, but his bitterest political opponents, from the South, had seceded from the Union and couldn’t counter his mandates.  Hence he passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and freed the slaves without them.

FDR’s jaunty image -- the jutting chin, the cigarette in its long ivory holder, the glasses and that rich tenor voice -- reminds you that on that cold Saturday in March of 1933 when he became President, the banks were almost broke.  People’s homes and businesses were being foreclosed almost every hour of the day. Even the Congress looked with desperation to the President for help.

Next, you lean forward to consider presidential near-greats named Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Reagan, Eisenhower, Polk, Jackson, Jefferson and, perhaps, Grover Cleveland and you realize that their collective near-greatness had largely to do with a combination of circumstances and very special talents.  Those talents included Truman’s decision-making prowess, LBJ’s mastery of men, Wilson’s willfulness, TR’s energetic intellect, Reagan’s eloquence, Ike’s steadiness, Jackson’s plain straightforwardness, Polk’s doggedness, Jefferson’s intelligence, and Cleveland’s honesty.

Suddenly, for the very first time, you see what’s uniquely different about today’s America. You know what you must do about it, but dare you?  Can you publicly “just say no” to America’s talk show establishment, its professional politicians, its tax cutters, its tax eaters, its professional teachers and preachers, its expectant consumers, and its self-satisfied moneyed elite?

Yes, indeed, you can -- and you can do it alone.  After all, you’ve just decided that when today’s opinion makers decide to become consensus builders, when critics turn into creators, when the possible rather than the impossible becomes probable, you’ll say “yes, but until then -- it’s no!”  Your presidential power to say no is nearly absolute.  No one, not the media, not the Congress, not even the military can legally block -- let alone veto -- your veto.  After all, to override your veto requires consensus -- and when consensus occurs, you win.

Now comes the really fun part: writing the speech!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Monday, July 23, 2012

THE ROOT OF A VITAL HUMAN MATTER!


By Edwin Cooney

I don’t know about you, but I’m often confused as to what makes you or me lovable or, for that matter, unlovable!  Just when I think I’ve got a handle on it, someone throws me a curve that screws everything up.  So, as I often do, I turned this puzzle over to my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead the other night at my local watering hole.

“Hey, you guys!” I exclaimed as I took my usual place between them at the bar. “Since you almost never agree on anything, what makes you love each other as much as you obviously do?  Now, before you start denying that you love one another, keep in mind that you’re always together and seldom, if ever, do you let what one of you thinks or believes go unacknowledged.  That spells L.O.V.E. in my book,” I said, taking a large sip of my favorite Irish ale.

“Okay,” said Dunderhead as he swallowed a handful of peanuts. "I’ll admit that I love Lunkhead, self-righteous, arrogant and sharp-tongued as he is, in the same way I love the poor he always denigrates.  They can’t help it if they’re poor and he can hardly help it if he’s what I’ve just described.  I’m just a bleeding heart do-gooder as he’ll tell you!”

“Bull-puckey!” sneered Lunkhead. “You love me because deep in your heart you realize how politically, sociologically and spiritually screwed up you really are, and somewhere in your subconscious you’re looking for wise guidance,” he growled, biting down on the dead cigar in his teeth.

“Ah!" I put in, “So you both admit that you love each other out of an inbred desire to assist one another.  Is that really it?”

“I didn’t say that I love Dunderhead,” insisted Lunkhead. “I only acknowledged that he loves me because even Dunderhead has to occasionally be sensible. I’m certainly fond of him but I can’t say I love him.  Just because I bailed him out of jail during the recent “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in Oakland, just because I have him over to my house for all major holidays and for his birthday, just because I named my new dog "Dunderhead," just because I choke up sometimes when he gets so many political, social, and spiritual matters backwards -- it doesn’t mean that I love him.” Lunkhead glanced the other way so neither of us could see the expression on his face.

“Nuts,” Dunderhead shot back, "you love me because you know I’ll save your bacon when you’re in trouble with your wife.  After all, who came over to your house and helped you with the housework when you lost that college basketball bet you had with her?  Who took pity on you and paid for all your drinks when she made you wear those donkey ears four years ago when Obama won the election?  Who furnished you with an alibi when some of your right-wing friends were pressuring you to join their assault weapons club?”

“Okay, Lunkhead,” I challenged, “What force from within you lies at the root of all the sharing and caring you demonstrate on behalf of Dunderhead?”

Nearly a full minute passed as Lunkhead’s swizzle stick toyed with the ice in his newly poured scotch.  Then he said, almost reluctantly but with considerable gravity, “What’s always drawn me to Dunderhead is his capacity to really listen to me or anyone else he is talking to.  You can almost see him listening.  He seldom interrupts anyone regardless of the acidity of his eventual reply.  He makes me feel powerful even when he disagrees with me and he disagrees with me most of the time just as I do with him.  I don’t know anybody quite like Dunderhead when it comes to acknowledging people.  His way of comprehending my messages at least temporarily bridges our differences often enough so that my message seems to hit home with him.”

“Ah,” I asked, “but isn’t your realization that he hears what you are saying and acknowledges your sincerity overshadowed by the fact that he doesn’t endorse your way of looking at things?”

“Sometimes, but not usually,” Lunkhead said. “If there were only one absolute truth in our society or in the world, there’d be no need for human liberty since there’d be no fundamental differences between people.  Arguing with Dunderhead is far more pleasurable than sitting around agreeing with my conservative friends.  Dunderhead offers argument and that usually energizes my thoughts -- and since my thoughts are usually superior to Dunderhead’s, I automatically am powerful enough to do my own reinforcing.   Dunderhead merely proclaims his liberal nonsense which is wonderful fodder for argument -- and God knows I love to argue!” Lunkhead asserted.

Suddenly, Lunkhead motioned the bartender for his bill rather than for another drink.

“Sorry, fellows,” Lunkhead said, “I’ve gotta get home to feed Dunderhead.  Unlike this Dunderhead, my dog Dunderhead acknowledges only one thing -- and that’s food!”

As Lunkhead proceeded toward the door, Dunderhead observed largely to himself, “Food, love, love, food.  How about that? The ultimate source of all power!  I wonder what makes that so significant?!"

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Monday, July 16, 2012

WHAT SHOULD I WRITE?


By Edwin Cooney

I dropped into my favorite watering hole the other night and, low and behold, there was my friend Chuck finishing his pizza and beer.

Chuck, aside from being a devoted husband and a very competent professional structural engineer, is one of you -- a reader of these weekly musings.

“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to write about this week, Chuck,” I moaned.

“Well,” said Chuck, “if you don’t know what you’re going to write about this week, why not write about what you’d be doing if you didn’t have a column to write!”

My response was absolutely brilliant.  It was “hmmm, what an idea!”

I once knew a preacher, Pastor Mark, who, when he’d get a case of "sermon block," would write an “open letter” to God as his sermon in search for divine guidance.  That’s not an option for me, not because I don’t believe in God, but because I strongly believe that God expects me to do my own work, just as God does God’s work.  However, I was born with something of an imagination as well as with a capacity for creativity that I like to believe is God-given, so here’s what I imagine!

I generously fly to Boston to lend GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney a hand. After all, Mitt’s problems are only beginning.

“It’s mighty non-partisan and even patriotic of you to drop in like this, Edwin, as I’m at the end of my rope with respect to two issues,” the handsome and articulate governor would greet me.  "First, what can I say about those ugly stories the Obama camp is passing around about my overseas bank accounts?  Second, who should I choose as my running mate?  Chris Christie of New Jersey is too fat and too sharp-tongued.  Marco Rubio of Florida is as inexperienced as Barack Obama was four years ago.  Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is a solid enough citizen, but the last guy from Minnesota to run for Vice President, Walter Mondale, lost.  I’d like to nominate Condi Rice because she’d get me the 2008 Hillary Clinton vote better than Sarah Palin did for McCain.  However, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin would spend the rest of the campaign calling me names my wife Ann would never get over.  Who should I pick?”

“Well, sir,” I’d respond, "as for your bank accounts, simply admit that they exist and that your goal as president will be to see to it that everyone in America has one of those accounts by the end of your first term.”

“Come on, Edwin, do you really think the American people would swallow that?” Governor Romney would respond with considerable incredulity.

“Certainly,” I’d assure Bain Capital’s former chief executive. "Didn‘t the people believe that Ronald Reagan would balance the national budget in 1980?  Weren’t the American people sure that it was “morning in America” in 1984?  Didn’t America accurately read George Herbert Walker Bush’s lips on raising taxes in 1988?  Didn’t Americans buy Bill Clinton’s fundamental marital fidelity in 1992?  Didn’t Americans swallow the story about hanging chads in Florida and believe in a nonpartisan Supreme Court in 2000?  Didn’t the American people believe that George Walker Bush would likely get Osama bin Laden in 2004?  Finally, didn’t Americans fall for President Obama’s promises for significant change in 2008?

“Yes, indeed,” I imagine the governor saying while flicking a bit of dust from the sleeve of his impeccably pressed suit and gazing down at his mirror image in those highly polished shoes.

“Hey,” the governor would say to me after a moment’s reflection, “you’re quite a problem solver!  I think I’d like to have you on my team!  How would you like to be my running mate?  There aren’t any skeletons in your closet, are there?”

“Only a few,” I’d concede in a near whisper.  “They’re hardly worth mentioning, but since you asked, I voted for Nixon in 1968, Carter in 1976 and 1980, Mondale in 1984, Dukakis in 1988, Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. I plan to vote for Obama this time, too.  Also, Governor, I write a weekly column.”

“All of those skeletons are easily forgivable and even explainable,” I imagine Governor Romney saying. “After all, if I can explain away my Massachusetts health care law, I can easily explain your voting record as well as your voting intentions.  Unfortunately, however, if you’re a budding columnist, it’s likely that you’ll leak like an old tent, especially during the campaign.  I guess you just won’t do,” I imagine Mr. Romney saying with much disappointment and resignation in his voice.

I offer my last piece of advice as I step toward the door.  It’s about his vice presidential pick.  “You had two primary opponents named Rick—Perry and Santorum.  Pick the Rick who’ll most assure that conservatives stick, even if the Rick you pick makes the rest of the voters sick.  Moral principles are what ultimately must matter although your political ambitions deserve to shatter.”

“Hmmm,” I wonder, “was that the governor’s highly polished shoe I felt on my posterior as I quickly moved out the door?”

Maybe I’d better write a real column next week!  What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Monday, July 9, 2012

“….WHERE DO THEY ALL BELONG?”


By Edwin Cooney

“Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?"

Those questions, framed in the Lennon/McCartney 1966 ballad “Eleanor Rigby” came to mind recently as two friends and I were discussing the fates of various people, great and small, known and unknown.  To my mind then and now comes forth knowledge of too many people seemingly unacknowledged, and even worse, seemingly unloved -- not for what they’ve done, but for who they are.

Her name was Loretta.  She was deaf, blind, and nearly mute.   She could speak, but only in a whisper.  She was a contemporary of mine, a day student at my residential school.  I knew of her in class, but nowhere else.  Hopefully, her family adored and protected her, but my guess is that many of her contemporaries never knew her or weren’t sufficiently capable of allowing Loretta to share herself with them.  If Loretta wasn’t one of those “lonely people,” she certainly was isolated enough to be lonely!

Ronnie was a cottage mate while I was living in one of two orphanages.  Orphanages, like many institutions of asylum for the disabled or the unwanted, although far from being dens of misery, could be mighty cold places to live.  Ronnie, as I remember him, was more mischievous than he was bad, but he was almost constantly in trouble.  A bit of a runt, he was almost continually bullied -- not merely by us boys, but even by the staff.  You’ll never convince me that Ronnie wasn’t lonely, for no matter the situation, if it went wrong, Ronnie was invariably involved.  If someone’s slipper was missing, Ronnie had stolen it, hidden it, or possibly had eaten it.  If Ronnie’s baseball team lost due to an error, Ronnie surely made the error, because God knew he was incapable of hitting the winning home run.  I pray that Ronnie has grown into a wise, loving and reflective adult; otherwise he has plenty of legitimate rage to vent.  Of course, I should have befriended him, but I was too wrapped up in my own interests to take on his.  Hopefully, someone else was ultimately more noble than I!

John, an adult quadriplegic, wasn’t someone I knew.  John was someone whose voice I heard and whose anger took on public notice. I’d encounter John, a victim of cerebral palsy, on one of our local buses or at the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.  John got about in one of those electric wheelchairs.  His voice was sharp and angry sounding.  Bus drivers often complained about his cursing, rudeness, and general lack of gratitude for the help offered him.  Even with all that, I occasionally wondered about the harsh isolation he must have experienced every day.  I thought about the pain, the spasms, and the tremors that likely visited his body daily.  Finally, I wondered what I would be like were I required to suffer as John did. Sometimes I even wondered if anyone had ever put their arms around John at night because they were glad to be near to him.

Billy was a friend of mine.  He lived at the same orphanage as Ronnie and oh! how he longed to be free and to live in a real home!  Billy suffered from childhood diabetes. From the time he was three he knew only institutional living.  About the time Billy turned 16, an older sister was married and was willing to make a home for Billy.  At last, Billy was free of the often oppressive protectiveness of the orphanage.  Finally, he knew freedom -- finally he had a sense of home rather than institutional care giving.  Finally he was free to eat that which tasted so good because it was so sweet and…then, suddenly, Billy was lonely no more.  Suddenly, Billy was forever free of everything from pain to loneliness.  The freedom that had lifted his loneliness concealed his need for self-discipline and caused him to ignore the delicacy of his very mortality. 

As is often the case with people who are unfamiliar, we’re often prone to making assumptions about the lonely among us.  Lonely people must be homeless, poor, friendless, old, ill, disabled, have lots of time on their hands, and so on. Ah, but the lonely are often the creative, the productive, the busy, the popular, the devoted, the religious, the good and even the beautiful.  Their names can be Loretta, Ronnie, John, Billy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or even Lyndon Johnson.

So, what of  “….all the lonely people?  Where do they all come from?  Where do they all belong?”

Unlikely as it may seem, all the lonely people come from you and me.  They belong in our hearts and in our prayers.

Among those lonely people may even be…you and me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Monday, July 2, 2012

ONE SURPRISED DUDE!


By Edwin Cooney

Yep, that’s me!  I was more than pleasantly surprised -- I was both shocked and thrilled that the Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare” last Thursday, June 28th, 2012.

I’m not alone, of course. Even today, four days later, pundits, politicians and voters with far more knowledge or sophistication than myself are still either reeling or dancing from the shock of the court’s decision.

Some are asserting that the decision is the most significant Supreme Court ruling since Bush vs. Gore, a decision many still believe turned the 2000 presidential election around.  I’m told that many Republicans and Tea Party types are declaring it the most disastrous decision since Dred Scott which ruled in 1857 that blacks were property not citizens.

Most expected that if the vote went against the plaintiff (the ideologically and financially conservative among us), Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy would deliver that vote based on the liberal view of the commerce clause of the constitution.  Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the fee which will be charged to those who refused the law’s mandate to purchase insurance is in reality a tax and that is what won the day for Obamacare.  For as much as most Americans resent taxes, the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution authorizes Congress to “lay and collect taxes from whatever income source derived.”  Hence, even the most hated taxes are legal!

Okay, it’s confession time.  A few months after Obamacare was passed, I was visiting a home in Springfield, Missouri and the man of the house was opining against Obamacare as the president’s violation of his 2008 promise not to raise taxes on the income of citizens who make $250,000 or less.  Insisting, as the White House did, that the charge to those who refused to purchase insurance under Obamacare wasn’t a tax but a reasonable fee (since those who did purchase insurance wouldn’t have to pay it), I cheerfully denied that the president had broken his promise not to raise taxes on most Americans.  I didn’t carry the argument too far as I was a guest in his home and matters of a personal nature were far more important to me.  However, since arguments before the justices began in March, I’ve been hoping that if it were necessary to preserve the law by calling the charge a tax, then please God let it be called a tax!

The president did take a 7 to 2 drubbing on another aspect of Obamacare concerning Medicare funding.  In short, the federal government may not force states to accept Obamacare or otherwise lose Medicare funding.  Still, Thursday’s ruling was undoubtedly good for the president politically and perhaps, even more significantly, from the standpoint of his legacy.

Even if Obamacare has to be amended to increase its effectiveness, it will go down in history as a major presidential achievement.  Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton sought to get some form of national healthcare legislation passed without success. 

If you ask me, Barack Obama has increased his ranking in history among our presidents via the Supreme Court’s validation of Obamacare.  Presidents are usually considered good, or even great, if they achieve one piece of “landmark” or significant legislation and Obamacare has, as of last Thursday, achieved that ranking.  Obamacare now ranks right up there with Reagan’s tax indexing, LBJ’s Medicare and civil rights achievements, Ike’s interstate highway system, Truman’s desegregation of the Military and a whole string of FDR’s anti-Depression reforms.

Even more, coupled with the president’s successful mission against Osama Bin Laden which was a landmark foreign affairs achievement, Barack Obama will have left a significant mark on America’s standing both at home and abroad even if he is defeated in November.

Almost as intriguing as the decision itself were two observations in Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion.  First, he wrote that the decision wasn’t an endorsement of the wisdom of the law, but rather reflected the court's reticence to invalidate the acts of the nation’s elected leaders.  Even more interesting was his observation: “It isn’t our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” 

These observations might be seen by some Conservatives as reflecting the Chief Justices’s personal sympathy for their opposition to Obamacare . However, most Conservatives would have gladly regarded the court’s rejection of Obamacare as a much, much wiser decision.  Just like some houseguests, Conservatives also like to have things both ways when it suits them!

There’s little doubt that opponents of Obamacare believe deep in their souls that the Supreme Court last Thursday was guilty of a terrible injustice.  Yet many assert that the Supreme Court, populated as it is by nine personages called “justices,” is not a court of justice, but a court of law.  Laws, as everyone knows, reflect, but never govern, morality or immorality.

Law may be the legitimate business of our elected leadership, but morality is ultimately the people’s business!

One thing more. Now that Obamacare has been legally validated, the GOP is making national healthcare reform a party priority for the first time in its history.  If nothing else, the idea that the GOP considers any healthcare reform important leaves me one surprised dude indeed!

Lead on, Mr. President -- lead on!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY