HILLARY’S POLITICAL NUKE!

By Edwin Cooney

Of course, Bill Clinton is her husband and his support is both natural and expected. Incredibly, she moved to Arkansas to be with Bill -- accepting a teaching position at the Fayetteville campus law school of the University of Arkansas in 1974 -- before she and Bill Clinton had entirely committed themselves to one another. They were married on October 11^th, 1975—which just happened to be the ninety-first anniversary of the birth of Eleanor Roosevelt—a woman with whom Hillary has always been very delighted to be associated.

Like Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman who ran a private school and wrote a daily column, Hillary Clinton has been involved in her own profession (law). Both women traveled widely and, of course, both experienced marital infidelity. However, unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, it’s Hillary who is the politically needy one. After all, Eleanor Roosevelt never ran for president. She didn’t need to: in the minds of millions, Eleanor Roosevelt was “First Lady of the World”.

In comparison to “the ugly duckling” -- her own mother called young Anna Eleanor Roosevelt “Granny” -- Mrs. Clinton is almost “Snow White” if not “Sleeping Beauty”. She’s smart, energetic, knowledgeable, and quick on her feet in debate, sensitive to the legitimate needs of the less fortunate, and possesses many other laudable traits. However, Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton needs to be President of the United States of America as much as her husband did. In order to realize this legitimate ambition, she, like most all successful candidates, would be lucky to have a potent politically nuclear incendiary—and she appears to have one in the person of William Jefferson Clinton.

Throughout most of 2007, the Clinton campaign kept the candidate, rather than her famous husband, before the public eye. Their message seemed to be that Hillary Clinton, after all, was woman enough to stand on her own. That strategy was working until she stepped all over it by complaining about the piling on by her male presidential candidate colleagues during an October 2007 debate. Suddenly, Hillary was caught trying to be both the victim as well as the heroine at the same time. It didn’t fly.

Throughout November and into December, it became increasingly clear that Hillary’s old friends, members of “the vast right wing conspiracy”, were just licking their political chops, openly spoiling to run against the lifelong Cubs/Yankee fan from Park Ridge, Illinois.

As the Iowa vote drew near, Barack Obama was joined on the campaign stage by Oprah Winfrey, whose wishes constitute a personal command to millions, and suddenly there was an unanticipated groundswell for the native Hawaiian who now lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Next came New Hampshire. Through a combination of attentive answers to questions and well-placed tears, the woman Senator and perhaps future President snatched victory from the jaws of the audacious and ambitious rookie Illinois senator. Then came Nevada. Suddenly, someone else was leading the anti-Obama attack. It was none other than William Jefferson Clinton. After all, it takes a President -- not a mere presidential candidate -- to take on Senator Barack Hussein Obama.

With America’s forty-second president on the campaign trail, Barack Obama got a healthy lesson in what it would take to bring about political and historic bridge-building, the noble goal of an Obama presidency. First, Senator Obama’s sincerity as a consistent anti-war senator was labeled a “fairy tale” by the former president. Then came another brickbat from the Clinton camp when the Senator herself reminded Americans (after one of Barack Obama’s eloquent addresses about Dr. King and the dream) that it took LBJ to bring about Dr. King’s dreams.

Then there followed the flap over the Culinary Workers Union’s ineffective endorsement of Senator Obama which caused the ex-president to tear into a San Francisco television reporter who had asked Clinton about the lawsuit he’d supposedly just filed against that union.

Finally, the former president criticized Obama for supposedly endorsing Ronald Reagan’s “politically transforming ideas” which had launched Conservative America well on its way to electoral and financial success throughout the 1980’s and much of the 90’s as well as most of what we’ve experienced at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The plan was to put Senator Obama on the defensive and it might have worked except for three factors:

First, Obama hadn’t said that Ronald Reagan’s ideas were good, only that they were “politically transforming ideas” in that they differed from the then conventional political wisdom of the establishment. Second, Senator Obama was able to point out that Mrs. Clinton had herself written laudable things about Ronald Reagan for a book that is about to be published. Finally, without complaining that he’d been attacked, Barack Obama was able to focus attention to Hillary’s “political nuke” by wondering out loud who he is running against. Therein lies the potential Achilles heel of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential quest.

Having endorsed Barack Obama, I am nevertheless aware that Mrs. Clinton still appears to have the inside track to the Democratic nomination. However, Bill Clinton (Hillary’s "political nuke”) has been dropping politically radioactive fallout all over his own party—including his very own candidate. According to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter -- writing recently in that publication’s Periscope column -- Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Rahm Emanuel found it necessary to chastise President Clinton during a recent heated telephone conference call. Reportedly they told Mr. Clinton that if racial division occurred within the Democratic party he would be largely to blame. Finally, they urged the former president to back off on Barack Obama. Consequently, Mrs. Clinton during a recent Democratic debate made a reference to the intensity of spousal support each of the candidates were getting and offered something of a political truce. Even so, Mrs. Clinton missed the mark and, perhaps, deliberately so.

As personally partisan as Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards may be, they are only spouses which is something Mrs. Clinton fully realizes. Neither Michelle Obama nor Elizabeth Edwards possess the authoritative political weight of a former president. That realization makes that observation and its truce offering blatantly misleading and opens the door even wider to the danger ahead.

Both Clintons represent exceedingly controversial pasts and personal reputations. Thus, both are capable of doing for the Republican party that which Richard Nixon alone once could do for the Democratic party—specifically, unite it.

With Iraq in the balance and the economy less than stable, it’s just possible that Americans will be sufficiently frustrated to politically “pile on” to the GOP next November. Otherwise, Hillary, along with the rest of us who would gladly follow her instead of suffering further under Republican rule, will need empowering rather than selfish and embittered sniping.

Some may lament Barack Obama’s use of a television personality as his “political nuke”, but even if Oprah Winfrey can be so characterized, at least she’s a controlled “political nuke”.

One of the issues during the forthcoming campaign, should Hillary Clinton be the nominee, will be:

“Senator Clinton,” how can the nation reasonably anticipate your use of your husband—our forty-second president--to its benefit?

That’ll be the public inquiry. The subliminal question may be:

“Mrs. Clinton, isn’t it a fact that you need him whether we do or not—and even more, can you control him? If you can’t, what else can’t you control?”

Note: When Theodore Roosevelt was President, he was once asked by a group of reporters why he couldn’t better control his lively daughter Alice. His response was “I can do only one of two things. I can either be President of the United States or I can control Alice. No man can be expected to do both.”

President Clinton’s very proximity to presidential power will rival three historic occurrences.

The first took place aboard the presidential yacht Potomac in early July 1940 when Franklin D. Roosevelt let his secretary Grace Tully and his chief speech writer Sam Rosenman know that he would definitely accept nomination to a third and unprecedented term.

The second historical occurrence took place at Potsdam, Germany when President Harry Truman offered (during a very private conversation) to make Dwight D. Eisenhower the 1948 Democratic nominee adding that he would accept nomination as Ike’s Vice Presidential running-mate.

The third occurrence took place at the 1980 GOP convention when Reagan forces let it be known that they were considering asking former President Gerald R. Ford to take second place on what was being advanced as “a dream ticket.”

Two of those historical occurrences never came to fruition; presidential power and authority are very touchy matters.

Touchy matters will surely be the basis of the 2008 GOP campaign regardless of who heads its ticket. Presidential control or restraint will inevitably be an issue and, with President Bush’s record of a “preemptive warfare policy”, the Republican candidate is going to have his hands full. However, the political advantage brought on by the question of the wisdom of “preemptive warfare” may well be overwhelmed if, come November, America has another question on its mind:

Who will really be running this country—-President Number Forty-two or would-be President Number Forty-four?”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

FEAR — MAKE IT YOUR SLAVE, NOT YOUR MASTER

By Edwin Cooney

As I was telling a friend recently, I’ve been thinking of making fear the subject of a column for quite some time.

To bolster the idea, I went on to explain that I have come to realize that fear is the companion - or perhaps even the brother - of disappointment and despair and, most absolutely, the father of hatred. I next paused to receive her plaudits for my willingness to take on such a deep and enthralling subject.

“So,” she asked, a note of smugness creeping into her voice, “why haven’t you written about fear so far? Are you afraid of it?”

Of course, every American schoolboy and girl since March 4, 1933 knows that: “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…”; for those words came from that “man in the White House” who needed steel braces on his legs even to stand -- but who nevertheless had the strength to lift a paralyzed society to its feet so that it might walk and serve us once again.

While the medicine Franklin Delano Roosevelt prescribed may well have been debatable in-so-far as future generations are concerned, the fact is that it did alleviate much of our fears at the time of a serious national crisis. However, he only described the worst effects of fear rather than advising his national constituency as to how they themselves might grapple with and overcome it.

Fear has mastered me many times. I remember once--when I was twelve years old--standing at the edge of our school diving board screaming that I didn’t want to dive into the pool because I was afraid (despite the fact that there were two or three older kids standing alongside of me ready to dive into the water in case I experienced any trouble). Exactly why my gym teacher let me get away with that performance is beyond me, but he let me come back and try again on another occasion. Within a week or so, I’d worked up enough courage, and actually asked for the opportunity to try it again—with my “protection” of course—and this time I dived and dived –and some say I’ve been “taking dives” ever since. (Those who say that are, of course, my political opponents.)

More recently, I’ve experienced the fears brought on by romance and parenting and would gladly trade both in exchange for the fears of my youth. However, one of the things life has taught me more is how to recognize fear. Fear is a clever emotion and, like the chameleon, hides or blends in with other emotions and actions such as sorrow, sympathy, acquiescence, resolution, as well as bravery or courage.

Fear is applicable to incidents that are both personal and multi-personal. It’s also applicable to a variety of interests and conditions: fear of heights, fear of falling, fear of illness, disability and death, fear of discrimination, fear of integration, fear of losing, and even fear of success. Hence, fear is largely (although by no means entirely) a personal matter.

A few weeks ago, one of my friends and a reader of these columns -- a wise and sweet lady -- sent me what you see below:

You may notice that your close personal relationships might leave you feeling on edge today. It could be that you are reacting to the stress in their lives or to their expectations of you. Either way, today you might want to work on developing detachment. Being detached means that you extend your love to another person but you don't take on their emotions as if they were your own. As you go about your day today, you can imagine the people who are causing you to react. Picture them with all of their struggles and mentally send your love to them. You could then see yourself telling them that while you love them, they are responsible for their own affairs as you are for yours. You may notice that it becomes easier to separate your feelings from theirs and you may feel more at ease as a result.

Learning how to detach from the emotions of others lets us react to the feelings that are our own responsibility. When we are close to someone, we can let their problems or our reactions to them irritate us because the intensity of our love runs so deep. Detaching with love is a tool we can use to keep the level of our compassion for them without taking on their emotions. We give our loved ones the space to feel what they need to while creating a healthy place for ourselves. By detaching with love today you will discover the means to calm your own emotions while interacting with your loved ones.

These words from this very thoughtful lady don’t specifically address the subject of fear, however, her prescription of detachment is indeed a powerful antidote in the alleviation of fear. Her advice is even more powerful than was FDR’s historic assertion that our greatest fear was fear itself. (Move over Mr. President!). I can’t resist the observation that I’ve read and listened to FDR’s 1933 inaugural address many, many times and have never heard our thirty-second president assert that the key to fighting fear is “detachment with love”. Nor did he once during that historic address use the phrase “co-dependency” which is the phrase that defines our often described overly intense concern for the welfare of loved ones.

During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the word “co-dependency” could be heard at almost every counseling and therapy session as well as in every twelve step meeting throughout America. I imagine that this is still true even though I haven’t attended such meetings in several years.

It’s almost as hard to hear such advice as it is to follow it. After all, our love and concern for people is something that we’re strongly encouraged to develop from almost the very instant we draw our first breath — and, even more, we’re usually proud of our individual love relationships. Therefore, it’s often very disconcerting when some therapist, clergyperson, or even a well-meaning friend suggests that we love too intensely.

Still, there is indeed substance and even wisdom in the possibility of detachment as a tool to make room for perspective in the solving of circumstances that tend to cause us to fear.

Incidental fear, even though it often blocks us, can also (of course!) keep us cautious and ultimately alive in dangerous situations. However, fear of one another or of other nations is invariably poisonous to the spirit. It more often than not breeds soul-destroying hatred. Thus our capacity to master our fear knowing when to heed it or ignore it is absolutely essential to our individual, national, and international fate.

An idea just occurred to me: since hatred of other people’s political and religious beliefs and practices may turn out to be the cause of humankind’s final war, how about changing the name of “The United Nations” to “The Society for International Detachment?”

Hmm! It does have a bit of a ring to it—don’t you think?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

MILLARD FILLMORE—THE PRESIDENT BETRAYED BY HIS JUDGMENT

By Edwin Cooney

He was America’s President between Wednesday, July 10, 1850 and Friday, March 4, 1853. He made one of the major decisions in our history, yet few Americans today even know his name.

There is a scene in a 1969 comedy album called “I Am the President” featuring comedian David Frye as President Richard Nixon where, out of the blue, we hear Millard Fillmore’s name and have a good laugh at it.

In this comedy scene, President Nixon is at his desk working on the nuclear proliferation agreement with the Soviet Union when he is interrupted by a White House maid. As she flits around the office dusting and straightening things, President Nixon engages her in conversation. He discovers that she has worked at the White House since the days of Calvin Coolidge. Acknowledging that she’s obviously known a lot of presidents, he naturally wants to know what people are saying about him in comparison to past chief executives. The maid obviously doesn’t want to be impolite or inappropriate, but eventually President Nixon forces her to be responsive.

“Well, they say you’re better than some and worse than others,” she says.

Pressed by the president to say who he’s better than, she blurts out “Millard Fillmore,” which, of course, draws a big laugh.

“Why,” you may well ask “was that answer funny?” Had she replied John Tyler or Andrew Johnson, it’s a good bet that the line wouldn’t have been nearly as humorous. Perhaps the response Rutherford B. Hayes would have been as amusing. After all, how many people do you know who are named either Rutherford or Millard?

Born, raised, largely self-educated, apprenticed to two sets of cloth makers, and drawn toward the practice of law, young Fillmore moved to East Aurora near Buffalo in 1821. Admitted to the bar in 1823, he began dabbling in politics in 1824 and by 1828 was elected to the state Assembly as an Anti-Mason. The Anti-Mason party was started in New York State in the wake of the 1826 kidnapping and murder of William Morgan, a bricklayer from Batavia, New York, who had left a local Masonic lodge and divulged the Masonic Order’s secrets in a subsequent publication. Ironically, Millard Fillmore entered public life opposed to secret societies of any sort.

Always a strong supporter of American commerce, Millard Fillmore supported measures to expand American enterprise as a State Assemblyman from 1829 until1832, as a Whig Party Congressman between 1833-35 and 1837-43 and, ultimately, as our thirteenth President. Between 1841 and 1843, Millard Fillmore was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. As such, he supported high protective tariffs to assist business’ recovery from the depression of 1837 and supported a federal grant to assist Samuel Morse in the development of his telegraph.

Suddenly without explanation, Congressman Fillmore decided to return to Buffalo and thus he did not seek election to a fifth term in Congress in 1842. Speculation has it that he desired to be elected to the U.S. Senate or perhaps to be the Whig Party Vice Presidential nominee in 1844.

Tall, ruggedly handsome with clear blue eyes, a high forehead, and somewhat thick unruly hair, he had a deep masculine voice. (It is said he spoke slowly in short sentences and could be humorous on occasion.) Fillmore -- with his attractive family and pristine personal reputation of constructive civic involvement and personal integrity -- was one of the most popular and desirable candidates for public office in 1844. Hence, he was urged by Thurlow Weed, a prominent Albany, New York newspaper editor and Whig Party boss, to run for Governor of the Empire State. A loyal party man, Millard Fillmore did run that fall, but lost the first election of his life by some ten thousand votes to a popular democrat Silas Wright.

In 1848, Millard Fillmore, who had been recently elected Conptroller of New York State, was nominated for Vice President on the Whig Party ticket headed by Mexican War hero General Zachary Taylor. Having accepted the vice presidential nomination against the wishes of Thurlow Weed and former New York Whig Governor William Seward, Vice President Fillmore was eased out of his position of influence during the Taylor Administration by those two powerful Whig leaders. (William Seward would ultimately serve as Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson from 1861 to 1869.)

In 1849, a border dispute broke out between Texas and New Mexico territory which had been acquired from Mexico as part of the spoils of the late war. Zachary Taylor, the stubby-legged, bushy-haired, tobacco-chewing, slave-holding but pro-Union President, announced his intention to have the Supreme Court settle the Texas-New Mexico border dispute which he would back with federal troops. This angered the South which threatened retaliation if one federal gun were fired against Texas.

Hence, as Vice President Fillmore presided over the Senate throughout the late winter and spring of 1850, he witnessed the efforts of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay to work out a compromise to keep the South in the Union and sufficiently mollify northern moderates to prevent a seemingly certain civil war. President Taylor let it be known that he opposed federal intervention in the moral question of slavery and that he would veto any legislation that dealt with the slavery issue pro or con.

Suddenly there arrived the three months that would forever change Millard Fillmore’s life. Just before the Vice President adjourned the Senate for the Fourth of July recess, he paid a visit to President Taylor and informed him that if the Senate vote became tied on the issue of what was being called “The Compromise of 1850,” he would vote in favor of its passage. He assured President Taylor that this decision in no way represented his hostility to the administration but rather represented what he regarded as being in the best interest of the country. Exactly what the plainspoken but nevertheless genial President Taylor had to say in response was not recorded.

The Fourth of July is always hot in Washington and Thursday, July 4th, 1850 was no exception. President Taylor attended the obligatory celebration at the unfinished Washington Monument and listened to patriotic speeches for two hours under the unrelenting sun. Returning hungry and thirsty to the White House after a stroll, “Old Rough and Ready” apparently wolfed down a large bowl of cherries and drank a pitcher of ice milk. Within hours he was ill. Throughout the next five days he rallied and then worsened. Doctors diagnosed cholera and he died about 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 1850.

Having visited President Taylor earlier that day, Millard Fillmore knew he would soon be President. Informed of the President’s passing, the Vice President sent a message to the seven cabinet members who had ignored or shown him only polite courtesy. He then locked himself in his room at the Willard Hotel and spent a sleepless night writing a long letter to his beloved Abigail back in Buffalo while contemplating the future.

At noon on Wednesday, July 10, Millard Fillmore became our thirteenth President. He was sworn in before a joint session of Congress by Judge William Cranch, Chief Justice of the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia. President Fillmore asked and got the resignation of President Taylor’s cabinet. He asked them to remain in their positions for a month. They agreed on a week.

The rest of July and part of August was largely taken up replacing Taylor administration, cabinet members and other personnel. President Fillmore’s major assistant in this necessary task was the veteran politician Senator Daniel Webster, who, for the second time in his long but now waning life, accepted the position of Secretary of State.

Then came September and time to sign or veto the Compromise of 1850. The final legislation had five acts:
(1.) The admission of California as a free state and the adoption of popular sovereignty for the remaining territories won in the recent Mexican War;
(2.) Settlement of the Texas-New Mexican border dispute (Texas was given $10,000,000 to pay its debts and New Mexico became a U.S. territory);
(3.) Utah became a U.S. territory;
(4.) The fugitive slave law allowing the capture without trial and return of slaves, and sometimes even free blacks, to the South; and, finally,
(5.) The end to the slave trade—although not slavery itself—in the District of Columbia.

Warned by his wife Abigail that signing of the Fugitive Slave Act would be political suicide, President Fillmore nevertheless signed it. He believed the rule of law under the Constitution took greater precedence over anything he personally believed or didn’t believe. Thus he was forced to send federal troops into the North to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law and into the South to put down occasional threats of insurrection. America was discontented and President Fillmore was destined, despite his efforts on behalf of American commerce at home and abroad, to be a most unhappy President and man.

During his administration, President Fillmore sought to take some very positive measures to increase American commerce by mending past quarrels and conflicts. He sought to mend relations with Mexico by authorizing the building of a railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec which connects the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean. (It is located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca). He also authorized plans to cut a canal across Nicaragua, pressured the French out of Hawaii, and sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open up trade with Japan. At home, President Fillmore cooperated with Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, to finance the building of railroads in different regions of the country.

As laudable as all of this was, President Fillmore seldom got credit for his administration’s accomplishments. He was invariably overshadowed by Secretary of State Webster and even Attorney General John Crittenden. Hence, he would be denied nomination by the Whig Party in 1852 which merely marked the beginning of more tragedy in his life.

Abigail Powers Fillmore, once his teacher back in New Hope, New York, had been his wife since Sunday, February 5, 1826. Ill and unable to stand for extended periods of time during her husband’s presidency, Abigail’s health was extremely delicate. Her entertainment obligations as First Lady were largely taken over by their daughter Mary Abigail Fillmore. She was beautiful and intelligent (she spoke French, Italian, Spanish and German) and played the piano, harp and guitar thus providing much of the musical entertainment herself. (The Fillmore’s son Millard Powers Fillmore served his father as private secretary during his administration.) Abigail Fillmore attended the outdoor inaugural ceremony for Fillmore’s successor Franklin Pierce on Friday, March 4, 1853 and became chilled. The following day, she contracted a fever. By Wednesday, March 30, she was dead, never having left her room at the Willard hotel in Washington. A little more than a year later, Millard Fillmore’s beloved daughter, Mary Abigail Fillmore, was also dead of cholera in Buffalo. Many believe the former president sought to stifle his grief by getting back into politics. However, he had another problem: his Whig Party was gone.

In early 1855, Millard Fillmore -- the man who entered elective politics opposed to secret Masonic societies -- joined ( and there’s no adequate explanation for this) the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a secret political order that was anti-Catholic, and anti-foreigner. The Order’s political party was the American Nativist or “Know Nothing” party. Fillmore received news of his nomination by that party while traveling in Europe. He accepted its nomination, although he avoided anti-Catholic or foreigner rhetoric throughout the 1856 campaign. He got about twenty percent of the vote, but won only the state of Maryland’s eight electoral votes.

With all his faults and misjudgments, Millard Fillmore was a decent man and a pretty good administrator. His obscurity, I think can be laid to two causes.

First, had he vetoed the Compromise of 1850 (as President Taylor would have done ) with its clearly wretched Fugitive Slave provision plus if he perhaps had used the federal treasury (as was clearly done to mollify Texas in the Compromise’s second act), war still might have been prevented. Slavery, after all, was doomed as a profitable institution and President Fillmore lacked the imagination to insure that the very death of slavery might be realized by southern planters as profitable in its own right;

Second, like his two immediate successors, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, President Fillmore chose law over morality. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who almost instinctively knew when to bend the law to match his moral obligation, President Fillmore was unable to apply his finest traits as a public servant to his presidency which he almost always did do as a public-spirited citizen of Buffalo, New York.

Millard Fillmore possessed good looks—he’s easily one of the ten most handsome of our presidents. Legend has it that Britain’s Queen Victoria saw him as one of the most handsome men she’d ever met. His attractiveness was such that he won the heart of Caroline Carmichael McIntosh, a wealthy widow, whom he married on Wednesday, February 10, 1858.

He frequently used good judgment as well. Offered a degree by Oxford University while traveling in Europe in 1855, he turned down the honor because, as he put it: “…no man should accept a degree that he is incapable of reading.”

One of his early admirers in Washington was former President John Quincy Adams who deeply lamented Congressman Fillmore’s decision not to run for election to Congress in 1842.

Millard Fillmore, a man of law, ultimately left America a legacy of bad law—made so because its main provisions substituted morality with mere expediency. If only he had allowed himself to display the force and magnitude of his personal morality, history may well have been different and his genuinely good name would have been well-known as well as highly honored to this day.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CHANGE—IS IT REAL OR SIMPLY POLITICAL?

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here it is. Barack Obama is my favorite candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. Therefore, I was more than pleased with his eight percentage point victory in the Iowa caucuses last Thursday night. I’m also very encouraged as New Hampshire voters go to the polls tomorrow, January 8, 2008.

Senator Obama appeals to my desire to see changes in both our domestic and foreign policies. As an agent of change, his approaches and policies appear to me to be designed to be more inclusive and therefore more effectively beneficial to the greatest number of people throughout both America and the world community.

There are times when various ideological principles are applicable to what John F. Kennedy once called “…the unfinished public business of our country”—hence the election of: Thomas Jefferson in 1800 when the issue was government decentralization;
Andrew Jackson in 1828 when the issue was greater participation in democracy for working people;
William Henry Harrison in 1840 when the issue was the interstate financing of American business opportunities by the federal government;
Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when the issue was the containment of the slave-holding south;
Woodrow Wilson in 1912 when the issue was the economically responsible advancement of progressivism;
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 when the issue was the very survival of people’s homes, livelihoods and even American democracy;
and Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1980 when the issue was economic “stagflation” and America’s perceived impotence in international affairs.

I believe that Barack Obama offers a responsive approach to a set of domestic and international priorities which is unique in his combination of intellect, vision, energy and personality. Furthermore, it seems to me, Senator Obama offers to include the input of ideological and political opponents as well as supporters in the prioritizing and the solving of domestic and international problems. Even more significant and powerful is Senator Obama’s goal to move us politically beyond the Conservative versus Liberal grab for culture supremacy.

Americans are, of course, entitled to expect that Senator Obama will be forthright and detailed on the subject of the changes he expects to bring about if successful. No presidential candidate can be expected to know what the final version of any proposal he or she makes will look like once it’s been accomplished since successful proposals and final legislation are almost always a compromise. However, Senator Obama no doubt expects to be challenged in the coming weeks and months on the substance of his ideas. That’s the way it should be. Nor do I, as a Barack Obama enthusiast, know or comprehend the details of all of his proposals.

For example, on the issue of health care, I haven’t studied the differences between his proposals and those of his fellow Democratic opponents’ proposals. However, what I do know is that Democrats are far more responsive than most Republicans to the reality that most Americans can no longer afford the quality of health care which they once could.

On the international front, I believe our struggle is against all international outlawry whether Islamic, Fascist, or Communist. Terrorism, after all, is a strategy, not an ideology or cause. What is needed is a worldwide intelligence and command force inclusive of many nations and bolstered by the highest level of technology to identify and prevent acts of terrorism by all nations or paramilitary political gangsters.

As for the historical significance of political change over the past 200 plus years of our republic, the outcome has been quite mixed.

Twenty times in our history, Americans have chosen to switch parties on national Election Day. However, only nine of our forty-two presidents have been defeated for re-election including:

John Adams in 1800 who felt both defeated and betrayed by his old friend Thomas Jefferson;
His son John Quincy Adams in 1828 who returned home and two years later was elected to the house where he became known as “Old Man Eloquent”;
Martin Van Buren in 1840 who later abandoned his beloved Democratic party and became an abolitionist;
Grover Cleveland in 1888 who got off the political mat and reclaimed the White House just four years later;
Benjamin Harrison who suffered the duel agony of personal bereavement and political defeat when First Lady Caroline (Carrie) Harrison died in the White House two weeks before the 1892 election;
William Howard Taft in 1912 who later served as Chief Justice of the United States;
Herbert Hoover in 1932 who earned the respect of future presidents and generations of Americans through his philanthropic works and service as a government reorganizer;
Jimmy Carter in 1980 whose service to humane causes and international peace has largely obliterated his past inadequacies And finally, George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 who, though triumphant in the Gulf War, was dragged down by angry and disappointed citizens over high taxes and the economy.

Only four presidents, all of whom succeeded to the presidency from the vice presidency on the death of their party’s successfully elected nominee, have been denied re-nomination by their respective parties:
John Tyler in 1844; Millard Fillmore in 1852; Andrew Johnson in 1868; and Chester A. Arthur in 1884.

When political change has occurred it has meant both good and bad for the country. For example:
In 1800 when political change elected Thomas Jefferson, the result was a cut back in our Navy, an strengthening of the autonomy of the states as well as changes in the federal judiciary;
The 1860 political change to Abraham Lincoln meant a tragic civil war;
The 1932 shift to FDR meant a fundamental increase in the involvement of the federal and state government in the solving of national problems;
The 1976 change to Jimmy Carter meant bold personal presidential diplomacy in Central America and most dramatically in the Middle East;
The subsequent change to President Ronald Reagan in 1980 meant a bolder and more decisive front against Soviet Communism as well as landmark legislation in the area of tax reform;
The change to Bill Clinton in 1992 meant that there would be a balance toward the center in the wake of the increasing rightward shift in the American body politic;
Finally, the change to George Walker Bush in the year 2000 meant a determined “go it alone” policy in Iraq as well as in international affairs in general.

Whether you support or oppose the candidacy of Senator Barack Hussein Obama (and you can be sure the GOP will literally beat him over the head with his own middle name, especially during their late August convention!), political change is not only real—it’s inevitable.

My endorsement of Barack Obama is affirmative. It belittles no other candidacy. I can still admire John Edwards’ capacity and commitment to advocacy. I can still admire Hillary Clinton’s depth of knowledge and obvious brilliance. I can still pay tribute to Bill Richardson’s experience and energy. I can even reach across the political aisle and salute John McCain’s brave patriotism and occasional political independence, Mitt Romney’s smooth political agility, Mike Huckabee’s self-determination and Rudy Giuliani’s stubborn pugnacity. After all, that’s precisely what Senator Obama hopes to make it politically fashionable for all of us to do. As he assures us: There is no shortage of anger in Washington.”

Whatever change is implemented by our next president will be judged good or ill by the people. Our last best expectation however has to be that we will remain free to so judge.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY