SO, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT!

By Edwin Cooney

I begin with a confession.  I’m a sucker for social, political, and sometimes occasionally even moral rogues!  Their backgrounds and motives are often most instructive.  The point of all this is that today, July 11th, 2016 is the 212th anniversary of the fatal duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.  Although like Burr, Hamilton was a political rogue, he died a hero.

Hamilton’s heroism comes not from the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey where, shortly after 7 a.m. that hot July morning of Tuesday, July 11th, 1804 the ball from Vice President Aaron Burr’s dueling pistol entered just above his right hip, traveled through his liver and lodged against his spine.  His heroism stemmed from his career as one of the Founding Fathers of our Constitution, as a designer of our monetary system while serving as George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, and as the mastermind who created a plan for paying off our Revolutionary War debt.

Vice President Aaron Burr was also a brilliant man.  The grandson of the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards, Aaron Burr was a first rate political practitioner.   It was Burr who helped bring New York State into the Jeffersonian electoral column in 1800.  Burr, a graduate of Princeton University, was ahead of his time on social issues such as women’s rights and municipal administration.  Both Burr and Hamilton were extremely ambitious and willful men thus making permanent enemies.  Both were manipulators and womanizers.  Hamilton publicly confessed to having an affair with Maria Reynolds, a married woman, while he was Secretary of the Treasury.  Both men were educated far and above most Americans of their time.  Hamilton was loved by George Washington but despised by both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Burr had the permanent enmity of President Jefferson after refusing to withdraw his name from consideration during the electoral vote tie with Jefferson during February of 1801.

Both Hamilton and Burr became distracted by the slings and arrows of political fortune and misfortune.  Frustrated by their pending political demises, both were ready to believe their honor was at stake at the slightest provocation. The conflict that led them to the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey was over a commentary by Dr. Charles Cooper in an Albany, New York newspaper.  Hamilton paid for his distraction with his life.  Burr paid for his with his reputation.  Although he would serve out the remaining months of his vice presidential term remarkably well, Burr would be arrested in 1807 and charged by the Jefferson administration with treason. The treason charge was about an alleged scheme designed to conquer western territory from Mexico and then to create a new empire with Aaron Burr as its president. Burr was acquitted of the charges in a trial adjudicated by Chief Justice John Marshall, a Jefferson cousin but a political opponent of the president.  The point of all this is the tone Hamilton and Burr inadvertently set for adversary politics in the centuries ahead.  (I’ll perhaps write more about the duel in the near future if readers are interested.)    

A hundred years ago when President Woodrow Wilson and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes faced each other, little was known about them in comparison to what we now think we know about our 2016 presidential candidates.  Wilson, the incumbent, ran on the slogan “he kept us out of war.”  Hughes ran as a progressive Republican and was only narrowly defeated.  As close and significant as the 1916 election was, the American voter chose between two men he barely knew. Not until FDR’s splendid radio voice became familiar to Americans during the 1930s did Americans experience the sound of a presidential voice.  Even then, most Americans didn’t know that FDR mostly used a wheelchair to get around and that it was his struggle with polio that was a motivator for his outlook and his accomplishments on behalf of the less fortunate among us.

Today we know (or think we know) a lot about the candidates, their backgrounds and their motives.  Yet, as much as we brag to the rest of the world about our liberties and our system, as often as we beg for God’s blessing on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day and Ronald Reagan’s birthday, we’ve become dangerously cynical of the electoral process.  (Note: Ronald Reagan shares a birthday with guess who?  That’s right, it’s Aaron Burr.  Burr was born Friday, February 6th, 1756.  Mr. Reagan was born Monday, February 6th 1911.  Alexander Hamilton was born Tuesday, January 11th, 1757.  That’s a little too close to Richard Nixon’s January 9th birthday, wouldn’t you say?)

The question is, who’s at fault?  The answer is “we, the people,” that’s who!

To begin with, too few people bother to educate themselves about what it takes for a bill before Congress to become a law.  How can we begin to repair a system that we’re not interested in enough to understand how it works? 

Second, we have come to judge practically every issue as to whether it is conservative or liberal and thus we depend on “ideological talking points” to sustain our conclusions.

Third, we make moral issues out of practical matters.

Fourth, we poison moral issues with social prejudices.

Fifth, we erect straw men and women to demonize.

Like Hamilton and Burr, we’ve distracted ourselves with irritants rather than seeking perspectives and solutions to really vital matters.  I can name you previous presidential Trump-like bullies and Clinton-like liars.

Of course, we will elect a political rogue next November!  If we didn’t elect a political rogue, it would be more difficult to feel superior to a genuinely capable leader.  Indeed, “the people” must rule!  After all, absent the scourge of royalty, it is from our ranks that come forth the presidential rogues!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY