By Edwin Cooney
Although I was very hopeful that Joe Biden would prevail in the 2020 election, I wasn't much disturbed by or resentful of President Trump's hostility to the result announced on Saturday, November 6th, 2020. After all, it takes men and women of large egos to risk their reputations in the public's service. I wasn't even bothered by the determination of Trump’s cabinet to stand behind the boss. What was disturbing was Congress's willingness to go over the water's edge once the election was past and there was no indication of the fraud President Trump was proclaiming in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Even more painful was the unwillingness on the part of those who had served alongside Joe Biden in the Senate for 37 years to publicly congratulate him thereby allowing him the satisfaction of having the support of his colleagues who themselves would appreciate his support were they about to take on high executive responsibility. Another way to say it is that partisanship was sadly replacing political collegiality, the political and emotional membrane that makes our system work.
Of course, 2021 wasn't the first time an outgoing president refused to celebrate the success of his opponent. (Note: Scores of losing presidential candidates in American history including such notorious names as Aaron Burr, Strom Thurman, Henry Wallace and George Wallace have been disappointed for themselves and for their causes, but until President Trump, they've all maintained their dignity and their patriotism.) John Adams refused to attend Thomas Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural. John Quincy Adams refused to attend Andrew Jackson's 1829 swearing in. President Andrew Johnson stayed away from Ulysses S. Grant's 1869 Inauguration. Herbert Hoover, although he attended Franklin Roosevelt’s March 4th, 1933 Inauguration, sought to punish FDR's refusal to cooperate with him after the 1932 election by deliberately forcing the crippled president-elect to stand for an extended period of time while waiting for a Friday, March 3rd meeting at the White House to begin. (FDR'S eldest son James tells the story in his 1959 book entitled "Affectionately FDR.”)
The current crisis took on meaning in late December when President Trump began twisting arms and encouraging his angry and disappointed followers to disrupt Congress as it sought to certify Joe Biden's election. A comparison of President Trump's response to defeat with those of the two Adams's, Andrew Jackson, and especially Grover Cleveland is instructive.
Although John Adams did his best to fill open positions with his fellow Federalists before Democrat Thomas Jefferson took office, he eventually patched his and Jefferson's friendship in the coming years by resuming their once cordial correspondence .
John Quincy Adams, although he never personally reconciled with Old Hickory, nevertheless served in Congress and was at Harvard when President Jackson visited Adam's old alma mater in 1833.
Grover Cleveland cheerfully attended the 1889 Inauguration of Republican Benjamin Harrison asserting that it wasn't any good being president if you didn't stand for something and put it on the line. There was fraud during the 1888 election, but Cleveland was willing to wait for the 1892 election to get even and that's exactly what he did.
Additionally, there were protests on the part of 1960 Republicans when John Kennedy won. Many of them believed that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley rigged the Chicago vote in such a way as to deny Richard Nixon victory over Jack Kennedy. The irony is that it was Vice President Nixon who officially certified John Kennedy's election on January 3rd, 1961.
Lyndon Johnson insisted that Richard Nixon's behavior at the close of the 1968 presidential campaign was pretty close to treasonous when it turned out that the Nixon campaign convinced the widow of the late General Claire Chennault to influence the leaders of the South Vietnamese government to hold off endorsing LBJ's October 31st, 1968 peace effort which might have benefitted Hubert Humphrey's presidential effort. Still, LBJ was there as Nixon was sworn in on Inauguration Day 1969.
Without a doubt, pure politics has, more than is always comfortable, sloshed over the ragged shoreline that separates good taste from bad taste and political chicanery from good old-fashioned patriotism, but former President Trump's encouragement of Americans to disrupt the peaceful transition of power is beyond the pale. Even worse is the willingness of many Republicans to forego the peoples' sense of political security to avoid the political vulnerability they fear within their own party.
When he lost the presidency in 1888, Grover Cleveland picked himself off the floor and won the office four years later becoming the only president to have separate presidential terms: Steven Grover Cleveland was our 22nd and 24th president. Al Gore didn't kick and scream about his 2000 defeat by George W. Bush; he simply went on to a new career.
Donald J. Trump, we're assured, has both the money and the popularity within the Republican Party to go on and claim his prize at the 2024 GOP Convention. Had he chosen to go ahead and claim his future rather than trying to spoil Joe Biden's presidency, he might well have been another Grover Cleveland.
Lyndon Johnson is said to have observed that it was wiser to retain J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director on the grounds that it was better to have Hoover "...on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in."
Whatever you think of LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon or just about any historical American figure you can name, they may have been narrow and self-centered at times, but they never stepped on what keeps us truly free — our mutual trust in our system and in ourselves.
Therein lies the real poisonous root of Wednesday, January 6th, 2021!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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