By Edwin Cooney
I know, you’ve always thought that baseball was America’s
national pastime – me, too. Unfortunately,
you and I are sadly mistaken! A new
breed of politics and politicians constitutes America’s real national game.
Up until the last two years of President George Washington’s
second term, he had governed without the use of political parties. Then in
1795, political partisanship began to take root and affect “the body politic”
of the new republic. Both his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and
his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, in addition to their other virtues and
talents, turned out to be dedicated, practical politicians. As early as April 11th, 1789,
nineteen days before General Washington took the presidential oath at Federal
Hall in New York City, Hamilton, one of Washington’s closest advisors, gave
John Fenno, owner of a newspaper called “The Gazette of the United States,” the
contract to print all government publications.
Additionally, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay and other believers in a strong
central government published political commentary in Fenno’s paper – sometimes
under their own names and sometimes under pseudonyms.
By 1793, Thomas Jefferson had hired Philip Freneau (a man
known as “the poet of the American Revolution”) as a French translator for the
State Department. Jefferson, who spoke fluent
French, needed no translator. Freneau, being of French descent and aligned
politically with Jefferson, published Jeffersonian and Madisonian
Democratic-Republican tracts in his “National Gazette” even as he was
compensated by all of the taxpayers, whether “Jeffersonian” or otherwise. Thus, long before Washington’s death on the
night of December 14th, 1799, some of the most negative elements of partisan
party politics were already national institutions.
From Washington’s time right up until that of Teddy
Roosevelt, politics was about meeting the needs of broad constituencies. Federalists, Whigs and early Republicans sought
to court and feed capitalism and commerce with federal favors -- it was called
“the American system.” On the other
hand, Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats (originally known as
Democratic-Republicans) courted and fed rich southern slaveholding planters and
small “yeoman farmers” or frontier settlers.
Today, 221 years after the founding of Hamilton’s Federalists
and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, we live amidst the complaints and self-righteous
justifications of two governmental doctrines. They are doctrinaire conservatism
and liberalism.
Conservatism, which has its roots in Hamilton’s Federalist Party
as well as in the Whig and very early Republican Party, articulates these five
basic guidelines: belief in the strict
interpretation (or strict construction) of the United States Constitution; belief
that human rights are the natural gift of property rights (in other words, that
property rights are superior to human rights); a strong belief in the freedom
to associate or disassociate with others without fear of government regulation
or regimentation; belief in the supremacy and morality of pure economic capitalism;
and, finally, belief that government that is separate from the influence of
religious faith is immoral government.
Modern doctrinaire liberalism, which is primarily the
offspring of early Twentieth Century progressivism, is compliant to the
following guidelines: belief in the
elasticity of the United States Constitution (in other words, if the Constitution
doesn’t specifically prohibit a law or policy it is automatically
constitutional); dedication to the supremacy of human rights over property
rights; insistence on the government’s obligation to oversee and regulate the
lawful activities that affect the public welfare even when employing private
profitmaking institutions; belief that the assurance of equal opportunity is a
public obligation and not a matter of private choice; and, finally, belief in the
absolute separation of church and state.
All these political guidelines (or, if you insist,
principles) have a new twist in Twenty-first Century America.
Back in 1789 at the dawn of our new republic, royalty, which
had dominated society since the beginning of time, was replaced by the most
fascinating, manipulative and maddening species of humankind imaginable: the politician. For most of the two centuries which followed,
this needy but useful being appealed to us from the perch of the successful
soldier, lawyer, or public official.
Many politicians served us well as inspirational teachers, jurists, and
statesmen. Then, something happened.
On the evening of Sunday, March 12th, 1933,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seated in a small metal wheelchair, rolled behind a
set of microphones in the East Room of the White House and began to talk calmly,
simply and directly to the American people about the banking crisis. His cultured Harvard/patrician accent was
like a balm to the nerves of a people who, even as he spoke, were in the midst
of losing their homes, their bank accounts and their confidence in our form of
government. Hence, beginning that Sabbath
March night, the president and the politician became a person to the American
people in a way never known before. In
other words, that night government actions truly became our personal business in
the starkest way imaginable. Since that
night, the motives and behaviors of men named Franklin, Harry, Ike, Jack, Lyndon,
Richard, Jerry, Jimmy, Ron, the two George Bushs, Bill, and Barack have become as
central to our concerns and to the evaluation of us as a people as almost any
public issue.
Like the movie stars, music performers, and sports figures
we’ve adopted as heroes in our personal lives and national games, it seems to
this observer that we have lately allowed ourselves to be entertained rather
than to be guided and served by politicians.
Even worse, we have allowed ourselves to be entertained by politics
itself. It may well be then that
politics -- like anything else that lulls or entertains us -- has become our
master!
I don’t know if that reality concerns you, but it sure does me!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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