FOREVER BECKONS THE DAWN

By Edwin Cooney

I don’t know about you, of course, but I love “clean slates.”  Clichés such as “tomorrow is only a day away!" and “tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life!” have given me, since I was quite young, a sense of newness or redemption from yesterday’s -- and today’s -- drudgery or mistakes.  Thus, for me, a new day can be a new start.

Another gateway between the past and the future can be a vacation.  I offer this perspective from such a vantage point.

Last Sunday night, two United Airlines jets (respectively) swept me out of San Francisco and Los Angeles heading eastward toward Cleveland, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania.  This vacation not only meant meeting new people and going new places, but it also meant what my fellow Methodists often refer to as “a new beginning."  Exactly what constitutes an "old beginning" no Methodist (Wesleyan or United) has ever explained, but a new beginning has a special meaning for me during this vacation!

Shortly after I settled into Seat 24A on the flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles, twenty-two year-old Alexandra plunked her tiny self down into the seat just to my right.  A very curious and inquisitive college student traveling home to Southern California for her Thanksgiving holiday, Alexandra was fascinated when she realized that she was seated next to a blind man.

“What’s it like to live in total darkness?” she wanted to know.  So I explained, as I usually do, that total blindness isn’t dark since "dark" must be seen to be identified.

Full of energy and a bunch of presumptions and assumptions, Alexandra made the approximate 52 minutes between California’s fourth and first largest cities lively indeed.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., my trip continued as the Boeing 737 rose into the air and headed northeastward towards Cleveland.  My seatmate was Michael, a young violist with the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra.  Born in Rochester, New York, and raised primarily in Buffalo, Michael, too, was heading eastward for his Thanksgiving week vacation.  He was on his way to visit his fiancé and her family.  Michael had originally planned to fly from Boise, Idaho to Cleveland via Chicago, but a mechanical malady to the aircraft caused him to go to Cleveland via Los Angeles adding over twelve hours to his travel time.  Michael was ready for some shuteye as soon as he settled into his seat.  All of what little conversation I had with him occurred as we were making our approximate twenty minute approach to Cleveland.  Michael told me it is his hope to keep advancing from small town orchestras up to the big time orchestras in the United States, Canada, or perhaps Europe.

Strangely, the atmosphere on the "puddle jumper" between Cleveland and Erie was almost nonexistent.  Except for the flight attendant’s pre take-off and post landing announcements, hardly a word was uttered by the passengers or the crew.

A vacation, like anything else, is what one makes of it.  Still, the best part of any vacation very often is the hospitality provided by one’s host and hostess.  In this instance, my friends Chet and Linda have been more than wonderful in every way.  Chet, who attended my alma mater, possesses a rare combination of wisdom, candor, and humor along with a healthy dose of thoughtfulness.  His wife Linda is generous, creative and unfailingly attentive.

One of the most pleasurable challenges one ever has is to introduce to others the lady he has grown to love.  Marsha is an intelligent, loving, energetic little dynamo of a woman who agreed to marry me last Thursday -- November 22^nd, 2012 -- Thanksgiving Day.  My new fiancée possesses an almost unquenchable curiosity, a thoughtfulness toward others, an undying spirituality and a tremendous capacity to give and receive love.  Like Chet and me, Marsha is a graduate of the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia.  Her alertness, vitality, integrity, imagination, warmth, and compassion are out there for all to see.  As for when we’ll become one or exactly where that will happen isn’t yet definite -- but we both want it to happen as soon as possible.

Happily, sixteen days remain to this wondrous holiday.  From Monday, November 26^th until Monday, December 3^rd, I will visit with the editor of these weekly musings, my friend Roe and her husband Mark.  Then, between December 3^rd and 10^th, Lady Marsha and I will spend time celebrating her birthday and meeting friends and family in Syracuse, New York.

My memory of the two aircrafts that swept me out of California on Sunday night, November 18^th toward Monday’s ever rapidly approaching morning star reminds me once again that while yesterday may be rich in history, tomorrow’s dawn -- God’s greatest gift to us -- forever provides that clean slate on which to write tomorrow’s story.

Thus, forever beckons the dawn!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

By Edwin Cooney

'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.  

We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.  

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.  

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.  

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.  

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.  

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.  

We have abused power and called it politics.  

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition.  

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.  

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!'

The prayer you just read was sent to me by two friends believing that it was issued by the Reverend Billy Graham, who turned 94 on Wednesday, November 7^th, one day after a majority of Americans had reelected Barack Obama President of the United States.  The prayer asking God’s forgiveness for America’s sins appears to be an indictment of not only our sins, but of the social and political factors or forces represented by the outcome of our politics.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines of the above to gather that the author of this prayer believes that we once had high moral values and have allowed them to be corrupted by our appetite for the material and the carnal.  Clearly the author of this prayer believes that:

We were once morally directed by principled forefathers who have since been replaced by ambitious politicians; we once had stellar human values to a greater degree than any other people on God’s green earth; and that the values expressed by the outcome of the 2012 election represent the yelpings of a craven materialistic and Godless people who lack both standards and principles.

What the utterer of this prayer doesn’t appear to acknowledge is incredibly revealing:

That our forefathers wrote the tolerance of human slavery into Article 1 of the Constitution by valuing congressional constituents who were Indian or black as "three fifths of a white male" rather than as children equal in God’s sight; that as late as 1845, another generation of Americans justified our destruction of Native Americans as our “manifest destiny;" and, most important of all, that we’ve spent the better part of the last 112 years granting God’s children of color, children with disabilities, children of lesser financial means, children of the foreign born, and so on, the rights and the equities that George Washington, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (just to name a few) should have granted them back in 1787 and 1788 when the Constitution was written and ratified.

One doesn’t have to be religious to fully acknowledge that our societal mores have a direct link to those things the most influential among us vote for and adapt as our national policy.  Still, it’s equally true that where religion and politics intersect is where the rubber meets the road.

Thus, a prayer of this eloquence invariably has a special meaning if it is uttered by a man of the Reverend Billy Graham’s stature.  However, the real question is whether it should!  One of the major forces that governed the Protestant Reformation beginning in the Sixteenth Century was the insistence that all sincere prayers to the “almighty” are created equal.  Hence, neither the Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish clergy possesses a monopoly over you and me on what is sincere or worthy of God’s attention.

What makes the above prayer even more intriguing is that it actually didn’t come from either the pen or the heart of the Reverend Billy Graham.  It was offered to the Kansas State Legislature on Tuesday, January 23^rd, 1996 by Pastor Joe Wright of Topeka Kansas.  It was initially called “The Prayer of Repentance.”  Since then it has been attributed to the late Paul Harvey as his “on air prayer” and finally to Billy Graham.

As one who seeks to be both Christian and authentic, I find this sort of misattribution to be both presumptive and disturbing.  As I see it, every generation and every nation has sinned since the beginning of time.  Modern America has no monopoly on sin.  In short, all sins are created equal.

Hence, I believe that a prayer, offered by even the most saintly among us (such as Billy Graham or Pope Benedict XVI) has no more weight than that offered by the humblest parent or the most innocent child!

What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE REPUBLICAN WHO GOT AWAY!

By Edwin Cooney

Sometimes it’s hard for even me to believe, but I was once a devout Republican.  From about age 10 through age 30, my political heroes were primarily Republicans.  Throughout that twenty year period, I witnessed the ups and downs of Dwight Eisenhower’s, Barry Goldwater’s, Richard Nixon’s and Jerry Ford’s Grand Old Party.  Finally, feeling abandoned by what I regarded as Republican blindness in the presence of an unnecessary and costly Vietnam War and upset at the domestic political crimes and Watergate cover-ups which were committed, I left the Republican Party to join Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Democratic Party.

Modern politics is bedecked with the stories of leaders who have abandoned their original political party affiliations.  Their names are very prominent and even legendary.  They include Abraham Lincoln who left the Whig party along with just about everyone else in 1854 to join the newly created Republican party and Teddy Roosevelt who temporarily bolted the GOP in 1912 for the Progressives or “Bull Moose” party when the Republicans refused to nominate him for president.  In recent years, former Texas Governor John B. Connally, an old Democratic ally of LBJ's, became a Republican in 1973.  New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay switched to the Democratic Party in 1971. Some time after being an honored guest at Harry Truman’s 1949 Inaugural festivities, actor Ronald Reagan followed his newfound sweetheart Nancy Davis into the Republican Party -- and the rest is history.

What’s so staggering about the president’s rather impressive popular and electoral victory is that Republican leaders and financiers had been assuring America since February 2009 that Barack Obama would definitely be a one term president.  Men such as Grover Norquist, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, and Rupert Murdock (not to mention the Koch brothers and Joe the Plumber) promised us -- they crossed their hearts and hoped to die -- that this wicked, black, Marxist, socialist, foreign sympathizer (if not foreign-born “internationalist”) would be forced to pack his bags and depart 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by Sunday, January 20^th, 2013.  Somehow, it isn’t happening because something went very, very wrong.  What was it?

One of the healthier aspects of a free society is that, in order to be successful, political parties necessarily reexamine themselves in the wake of defeat, especially when that defeat spells political embarrassment as 2012 surely must. This was a party determined to unseat the man many Republicans regard as historically America’s worst president.

A month or so after President Obama took office, the GOP decided that its major goal was to insure that Barack Obama would be a one term president.  The best way to bring that about they reasoned was not to cooperate with him.  For the first two years of his administration, when Democrats had majorities in both houses, this strategy seemed to work.  After all, Obama and the Democrats were clearly answerable for whatever they passed and signed into law during 2009 and 2010, be it healthcare, banking reform or a job stimulus package.

However, in 2010, Republicans asked the people to give them control of the House.  Simultaneously, they retained control of most of the state governorships.  Thus the House of Representatives and many of the GOP state governors decided that obstruction of whatever President Obama wanted to do was their best possible domestic policy.  Just as the House led by Newt Gingrich did in 1995, the Republican leaders sought to bring government to its knees if they could.

In addition, there is the all out attack Hispanic families have felt emanating from the Republican Party in the name of ending illegal immigration.  The fact is that hard working, family-oriented, and generally anti-abortion Hispanics are rather natural cultural Conservative allies.  Up until the administration of George W. Bush, most Hispanics focused on the anti-Castro, anti-Communist policies of the GOP.  Since 9/11, with the GOP’s obsession with protecting America against the possible infiltration of "dangerous" and hostile dark-skinned, non-Christian, and anti-western immigrants, hardworking family-oriented Hispanics have felt increasingly picked on especially by reactionary Conservative elements within the Republican party.  Hence, Hispanics are far more comfortable with the leadership of a man, who, like them, has risen above suspicion and discrimination to the top of the greasy pole of American politics: to the presidency of the United States.

Perhaps post 2012 election soul searching will enable Republicans to realize two important political realities: First, continuous demonization of the activities and motives of ethnic groups, however legalistic, patriotic or well-intentioned, will never win their votes. Second and even more important, perhaps the leadership of the GOP finally understands that a party that merely obstructs is a party that ultimately fails to serve!

Ronald Reagan always insisted that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but that the Democratic Party left him.  As for me, the story is quite the opposite.  The Republican Party didn’t leave me; I got away clean.  The damndest thing about my getaway is that the Republicans didn’t even look for me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DOES ELECTION NIGHT POLITICAL GLORY REALLY DICTATE OUR NATIONAL FATE?

By Edwin Cooney

Author Theodore White once labeled our quadrennial presidential election campaigns “…rowdy transactions of passion, tumult and circus.”  Now, as the 2012 presidential campaign concludes, Americans -- regardless of their hopes, fears, prejudices and partisanship -- are genuinely asking themselves  “how does my vote really matter?”

Four years ago, sixty-two percent of eligible voters thought that voting was important enough to go to the polls, the highest percentage of the voting population to do so since 1960.  Barack Obama’s popular vote was 69,456,897 or 52.9 percent of the total vote.  John McCain’s popular vote total was 59,934,814 or 45.7 percent of the national vote.  Obama carried 28 states to McCain’s twenty-two. Out of a total of 538 electoral votes, Obama’s electoral vote total was 365 (a majority of 270 is needed to win) to McCain’s 173.

Of course, by now it's old news how close this year’s election appears to be.  Political pundants, in some cases depending on their partisanship, as usual are calling it both ways.  A budding columnist named Cooney, a firm Obama backer, thinks his candidate will collect 303 electoral votes and approximately 52 percent of the popular vote whatever that vote turns out to be.  Karl Rove (deservedly much better known and the genius of two George W. Bush victories) predicted a few days ago that Mitt Romney will get 279 electoral votes, nine more than he needs to become president.  Mr. Rove predicted further that Governor Romney will get 51 percent of the vote to President Obama’s 48 percent.  What neither Cooney nor Rove can tell you is what the total popular vote will be.

That leaves two burning questions:  How does the outcome affect the fate of the American people?  How might the outcome affect the fate of the candidates as individuals?

History clearly demonstrates that a president’s personal outlook on what the legitimate role of the government should be, both at home and abroad, can make the difference between prosperity and stagnation here at home and between peace and war abroad. 

Governmental policy, especially since the 1930s, has had a lot to do with the way we live our lives here at home.  FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama all believed that government has a legitimate responsibility to regulate the activities of major commercial and business institutions and activities.  Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the two Bush’s sought to reign in big government and stimulate the economy by giving business and industry a freer hand in conducting their activities.  If you are a Conservative, you are likely to believe that President Reagan’s firmness toward the “evil Soviet Empire” was a major factor in ending the “cold war.”  If you’re a Liberal, you’re likely gratified that President Obama saw credit card and home loan banking practices, and national healthcare reform as high priority items despite the ravaging recession throughout 2009 and 2010.  If you’re a Conservative, it matters very much to you that the George W. Bush tax cuts will be continued under a President Romney.  If you’re a Liberal, you’re likely very concerned as to what the government will do to promote environmental and consumer friendly products and activities during the next four years. 

Whether the president is a fiscal standpatter or a progressive may have a lot to do with how the government responds to future natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy which has just devastated such a huge portion of the northeast.

Tonight at midnight, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, two New Hampshire villages almost within shouting distance of the Canadian border, will be the first two precincts to begin sealing the political fates of Willard Mitt Romney and Barack Hussein Obama.  These two men, regardless of what has been said about either of them or what they’ve had to say about each other, are highly energetic, well-meaning public-spirited men.  Whatever satisfaction or disappointment one of these men experiences after tomorrow night, his self esteem and sense of personal well-being is not likely to be much affected.

History records that seven presidents (William Henry Harrison in 1841, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, Warren G. Harding in 1923, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy in 1963) all died in office.  Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were victims of assassination.  Ten other presidents (John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829, Martin Van Buren in 1841, Millard Fillmore in 1853, Franklin Pierce in 1857, Andrew Johnson in 1869, Benjamin Harrison in 1893, Herbert Hoover in 1933, Jimmy Carter in 1981 and George H. W. Bush in 1993) left the White House regarded as political failures in the wake of defeat following their four years of public service. 

As I see it, if social trends matter, if the way commerce and business are conducted is important, if what only one individual believes, does or thinks at all matters, then certainly your vote has vital national implications. 

Political success on Election Day for presidential candidates and their families has been varied in its effect.  I find the fate of one presidential couple gripping.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 1920 was the fifty-fifth birthday of Warren Gamaliel Harding.  Tall and handsome, an outgoing man who wanted more than anything to be loved, Harding spent the day happily playing golf with his friends.  That night, largely due to the ambition of his wife, Florence Mabel Kling DeWolfe Harding, his birthday celebration was crowned by his election as our twenty-ninth president.  However, his White House ordeal, lasting from Friday, March 4^th, 1921 until Thursday, August 2^nd, 1923, although by no means a complete failure, was an uncomfortable time for Harding.  He found his presidential duties to be way over his head.  Some 26 months into his administration, the president discovered that two of his closest friends, Attorney General Harry Daugherty (a long time Marion, Ohio neighbor and friend) and Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, had involved his administration in the infamous "Teapot Dome" scandal.  It was later observed that Harding’s discovery was embarrassing enough to the president to rob him of all will -- except the one to die.  His death came suddenly at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco around 7:30 on the night of August 2^nd, 1923.  “No one can hurt you now, Warren,” Flossie Harding was heard saying to the president over his open coffin as he lay in repose at the White House.  Nearly sixteen months later, on Friday, November 24^th, 1924, Florence Harding died of kidney failure in Marion, Ohio.  The Harding’s thus hold the dubious distinction of being the only presidential couple not to survive a presidential term.

The ultimate fate of Warren and Florence Harding probably mattered little to our national well-being, but it's worth noting that its course may have actually been established amidst the glory of political victory that election night ninety-two years ago!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, 

EDWIN COONEY