UNEASY POLITICAL IDEOLOGUES

By Edwin Cooney

As all of you know, whenever I’m uncertain as to the temperament of the American people, I visit my local watering hole to consult with two of my favorite American citizens, Lunkhead and Dunderhead.  So, in the wake of President Obama’s second inauguration, I did exactly that just the other night.

There they were as usual, Lunkhead chewing his inevitable unlit cigar and stirring his scotch with a swizzle stick and Dunderhead munching on salted peanuts while sipping his imported beer. Yet, there was something different in each man’s demeanor.

“You look a little grim, Lunkhead,” I observed, “What’s the trouble?"

“His president,” murmured Lunkhead. “He says the right words but he’s too sicky sweet and way slicker than even “Slick Willie.”

“Nuts!” shot back Dunderhead just as sorely. “That’s exactly how I used to feel about your president, Ronald 'awe shucks' Reagan."

“Yah,” said Lunkhead, "but the difference is that my man was real and your man is a fake.  He’s a socialist, in fact, a third world socialist, before he’s a true American.  I don’t deny that he’s interested in preserving this country. After all, his reputation now depends on it. But he doesn’t speak to my values which are that respect for property rights are what guarantee human values, that government can’t create wealth, that marriage between men and women is sacred, that people kill people not guns, and that government doesn’t solve human problems. Instead, it tends to create those problems. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with him for four more years.  I just hope that we’re both vigilant and strong enough to blunt his internationalist socialist ideas.”

“In the first place,” began Dunderhead, “while I like him better than you do, Lunkhead, and voted for him twice now, he’s not really “my” president.  My president would assert far more clearly than President Obama that human rights have permanent priority over property rights, that banks ought to be nationalized rather than bailed out, that healthcare should be run strictly by the federal government, that gay marriage should have federal recognition, and that every handgun and semi automatic rifle in the country ought to be confiscated.  He gives voice to none of that and I find that very frustrating.  He’s no “internationalist socialist” as Lunkhead here insists; he’s an international thug just as George H. and George H. W. Bush were along with Ronald Reagan before him.  The last truly activist peacemaking president we had was Jimmy Carter.  Still, he’ll do for now!  I only hope he’ll get more activist as time passes on,” said Dunderhead.

“What did you fellows think of his inaugural address?” I asked.

“I thought it was a campaign speech more than it was an inaugural address.  It was well delivered, I suppose,” said Lunkhead, “but although he made a nice reference to the American soldier and the flag near the end of the speech, he made only offhand references to God. He made no references to the values God taught us,” insisted Lunkhead.

“There you go again,” asserted Dunderhead, referring to the old Reagan line used so effectively against President Carter in their 1980 presidential debate, “hearing only what you want to hear.  Didn’t Jesus urge us to assist the sick and the poor?  Wasn’t Jesus' message to love your neighbor as yourself?  Didn’t Jesus tell the rich man at one point to give up his earthly wealth to the poor so that he might know permanent heavenly riches?  As for Lunkhead’s assertion that government doesn’t create wealth, wasn’t Alexander Hamilton George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury when he created the almighty American dollar?  As for Obama’s socialist tendencies, don’t you think that free American enterprise, insurance companies, and the American automobile manufacturers benefited from Obama’s first term recovery plan?  Aren’t American businessmen today warning the GOP that if they destroy our credit by not paying our bills, down the road their businesses will suffer?  Lunkhead is permanently invested in the idea that only the wealthy have the right to use the government as a legitimate tool to secure and insure their prosperity!  As for the president’s inaugural address, it was exciting but it was only a speech after all.”

“Well,” I observed “neither of you seem overly enthusiastic about our immediate future!”

“I can’t say that I am," said Dunderhead, "but it could be worse.  Suppose we’d elected Romney or, even worse, Santorum, Gingrich or Rick Perry!  Still, I’ll believe things are better when I see them becoming better!”

“Oh! Of course, they’ll get better once Americans have had enough and decide to elect a real American as their president!” growled Lunkhead, sliding off his stool and lighting his cigar just as he passed through the front door with Dunderhead right behind him -- leaving me to pay the check.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THINK ONCE, THINK TWICE—GUESS WHAT!!!

By Edwin Cooney

Guess what event never takes place on a Sunday!  Its significance is doubly dramatic when one considers all of the things you can do on a Sunday these days.  You can, since most of our old “blue laws” have long since been repealed: watch or attend Super Bowl games, attend rock or other concerts, buy beer and even hard liquor on a Sunday, and you can even work on a Sunday in blatant violation of one of the Ten Commandments “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"!

However, what has never happened on a Sunday throughout the whole two hundred and thirty-seven years of the history of this great republic of ours is a public celebration of the inauguration of an American president.  Yesterday, Sunday, January 20^th, 2013 was our sixth opportunity to do just that -- and we muffed it.  You can even say we blew it!  So the next question is: How significant or important is this strange institutional American reluctance?  Well, the answer to that question is that it depends on the state of our national security at the close of any particular presidential term.

Six presidential terms have ended on a Sunday: James Monroe’s first term in 1821, James K. Polk’s only term in 1849 and Ulysses S. Grant’s second term in 1877. (Those were March 4^th inauguration days.)

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term in 1957 ended on Sunday, January the 20^th as did Ronald W. Reagan’s first term in 1985, and now President Barack H. Obama’s first term in 2013 has come to a grinding halt.  However, today rather than yesterday those of us so inclined celebrate the beginning of President Obama’s second term.  Two things are particularly notable about this rather obscure historical fact.  First: two of the six presidents (Monroe in 1821 and Taylor in 1849) didn’t take the presidential oath at all until noon on the 5^th of March.  Then, Rutherford B. Hayes took his oath in 1877 before Grant’s administration ended at noon on Sunday the 4^th of March.  Two of these situations were potentially significant to the ongoing welfare of the United States.

When President James K. Polk and Vice President George M. Dallas’s terms ended on Sunday, March 4^th, 1849, President-elect Zachary Taylor and Vice President-elect Millard Fillmore, supposedly for religious reasons, held off taking their oaths until noon of Monday, March 5^th, 1849.  Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 which was then in effect, Senator David Rice Atchison of Missouri was serving as President pro tempore of the United States Senate and was in line directly behind the outgoing and incoming vice presidents in the line of presidential succession.  Atchison, a violent and rather irreverent pro-slavery, anti-Union and anti-abolitionist ruffian, could have been a very dangerous president.  Although Atchison never claimed to have been acting president during that twenty-four hour period, his grave marker at Plattsburg, Missouri reads: “David Rice Atchison, President of the United States for one day.”

Sunday, March 4^th, 1877 came at a time of considerable political and emotional disquiet.  New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat, was believed by many to have been duly elected president of the United States since he’d received 184 electoral votes, just one shy of an absolute majority in the Electoral College the previous November.  However, Republican officials in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana insisted that all of their electoral votes, plus one illegal vote in the state of Oregon, belonged to Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes.  If these claims were granted, Hayes’s total would jump from 165 to 185 electoral votes giving him rather than Tilden the presidency.  These officials asked President Grant, a Republican, to send federal troops to their capitols if necessary to reinforce their claims.  Grant complied and ultimately Congress appointed a special electoral commission to resolve the matter when the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, meeting in joint session as required by the Constitution, couldn’t certify the total vote of the Electoral College.  Both Tilden and Hayes publicly stayed away from the controversy, but there were plenty of angry Union and Confederate hotheads who were fully prepared to exacerbate the situation on a moment’s notice.  Hence, once the Electoral Commission headed by Supreme Court Associate Justice Nathan Clifford issued its eight to seven decision favoring the Republican Hayes, Grant took action.  Hayes arrived in Washington D.C. on Friday, March the second and visited President Grant on Saturday night, March the third.  Considering that his term of office would end at noon the following day, Grant decided that it would be dangerous if any time was allowed to elapse between noon on Sunday and the time planned for Hayes’ scheduled Monday, March 5^th inauguration.  Hence, Hayes took the presidential oath of office in the Red Room of the White House even before Grant’s term ended.  No one, insofar as I’m aware, ever challenged the legality of Grant’s and Hayes’s action.

One thing our federal system does better than any governmental system in the world is in the way it handles the transition of executive power from one administration to another.  Thus, this rather irregular and uneven procedure by which we avoid Sunday inaugurations, which occurs approximately every twenty-eight years, can be and occasionally is a little awkward.

Yesterday, as did Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan in recent years, President Obama officially took his second presidential oath of office in the White House at noon eastern standard time. In so doing, he invited Chief Justice John Roberts to “officially” swear him in.  Unlike four years ago, you can be sure they both got it right this time!

“So,” you may wonder, “what does it all mean?”

Not very much, perhaps, except that it provides for the chance to do a bit of storytelling and what’s more American than that!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON JUST NEVER GOES AWAY!

By Edwin Cooney

I hadn’t intended to write about Richard Nixon again anytime soon, but his 100^th birthday last Wednesday compelled my sense of nostalgia (which probably lies at the core of my love for history) and sentimentality (my personal soft spot) to bubble to the surface once again.

Between about 1957 (when I began to be intrigued with the drama of political affairs) and 1973 (when I sadly decided it was time for him to leave public life), Richard Nixon was a hero of mine.  Without boring you with too much detail, here are some of the reasons.

(1.) As Ike’s vice president, he seemed to effectively and most eloquently articulate America’s legitimate diplomatic, military and moral resistance to the advancement of world Communism.

(2.) Although fiscally conservative, he appeared to me to possess a genuinely progressive social conscience.

(3.) His views on most issues appeared to be balanced and practical rather than doctrinaire.

(4.) He seemed to represent middle class rather than elitist values.

(5.) At his best, he gave very eloquent speeches with his 1960 GOP acceptance speech and his 1969 inaugural address being his two finest.

(6.) Finally, until severely buffeted by the trials of his 1969-74 presidency, he seemed to me to be a pretty steady fellow.  To me, his 1962 public show of frustration in view of his second political defeat in less than two years only proved that he was human after all!

In celebration of the anniversary of Nixon’s birth on January 13^th, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California, William Whalen, a former speechwriter for Pete Wilson (California’s 36^th Governor and a friend of the former president) wrote a tribute to Mr. Nixon called “The Many What-Ifs of Richard Nixon.”  This tribute covered his narrow presidential loss to JFK in 1960, his loss to Governor Pat Brown in the 1962 gubernatorial campaign, and a number of personal “what-ifs" extending throughout Mr. Nixon’s time.  However, it ignored why and how a Nixon presidency in the early 1960s might have been different from the one Nixon ran for in 1968 -- so, let’s speculate a bit on that topic.

The presidency JFK inherited from Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 20^th, 1961 was a much honored office.  The presidency Richard Nixon so ambitiously sought to obtain in November 1968 had been tainted by a credibility gap.  I am referring, of course, to Lyndon Baines Johnson and the much divisive Vietnam War.  By January 20^th, 1969, millions of Americans were dubious as to whether there was either wisdom or truth in any president’s domestic or foreign policies. 

Had Richard Nixon become President in 1961 rather than 1969, he would have inherited the political benefit of the doubt that sustained Ike so well in the previous eight years.  His chief antagonists would have likely been the men in the Kremlin rather than the legitimate and unhappy critics of the Vietnam War.  Beyond that, a more experienced and still vibrant eastern Republican establishment headed by Ike and guided by such luminaries as an energetic and ambitious Nelson Rockefeller, Senators Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, former Secretary of State Christian Herter, and former President Herbert C. Hoover (just to name a few) would have been looking over Nixon’s presidential shoulder.  There would have been much less room for the Watergate "yes men" of the 1970s in a younger Nixon administration.

Sadly, Richard Nixon’s insecurities ultimately did him in.  It’s arguable however that the presidency he occupied had been so tainted by the unhappy Vietnam War and the struggle over civil rights that Nixon’s character type no longer fitted him for the task.  Hence, he allowed the outrage of angry political and cultural critics to overwhelm and break him.  Chronic Nixon haters (and once there were legions of them) will always insist that Nixon was a bad apple with nothing but political shrewdness and ambition to recommend him.  Many of them still smile the smile of the righteous to remind those of us who once believed in this man how very naive we were and -- of course -- how much foresight they possessed.

Am I, you ask, sorry that I once loved Richard Nixon? No, I insist not. Although the ride was a bit of a roller coaster, even roller coasters sometimes rise to dizzying heights.  Still, although I was cured of infectious Nixonianism after the infamous 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre," the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus as the Watergate investigation got too tight, I’ve never been able to hate or even resent Nixon.  Some of his final words as president ought to remind all of us that we must never allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by resentment or hatred:

“…others may hate you,” the outgoing president asserted on that hot August morning in Washington D.C. as he left for permanent political oblivion, “but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them.  Then you destroy yourself.”

Hmmm! I wonder if anyone will remember me on my one-hundredth birthday!  Nah! Why should they?  After all, I haven’t yet made enough enemies!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

“THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!”

By Edwin Cooney

Nearly a month has passed since that awful Friday morning of December 14^th, 2012.  On that chilly late fall morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza apparently went berserk and slew his mother, twenty school children and six other adults before turning his weapon upon himself.  Our justifiable outrage emphasizes the reality that there have been way too many of these carnages!  Six of these tragedies have taken place over the past six years including:

Monday, October 2^nd, 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Charles Carl Roberts kills six (himself included) and wounded five Amish girls in reprisal against God for the death of his own baby daughter nine years before;

Monday, April 16^th, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant shoots 49 students in two separate incidents on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Thirty-two students and faculty are killed while seventeen are injured.  (His own suicide brings the total dead to thirty-three.)

Friday, April 3^rd, 2009, shortly after 10:30 a.m., Jiverly Antares Wong (aka Jiverly Voong) shoots fourteen (himself included) and wounds four others at the American Civic Association Center in Binghamton, New York.

Thursday, November 5^th, 2009 at 1:34p.m., Major Nidal Malik Hasan (a Palestinian born psychiatrist) kills 13 soldiers at the Fort Hood Soldier Processing Center in Killeen, Texas.  Shouting “Allahu Akbar,” Hasan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting, allegedly has anti-American and terrorist sympathies. He faces a court martial and capital murder charges. Hasan’s toll: 13 killed and 32 wounded.

Friday, July 20^th, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado at around 12:30a.m., James Eagan Holmes first fires tear gas and then live ammunition into the Century Movie Theater killing 12 and wounding 58  -- the largest civilian shooting spree in American history.  Holmes awaits capital murder charges in the state of Colorado at this writing.

Friday, December 14^th, 2012, at around 9:30 a.m,, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, , drives to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut after first killing his mother Nancy and shoots 20 children and six adults before wasting himself.  (Lanza’s totals are 28 dead and 2 wounded.)

I calculate the death and casualty toll from these six shootings at 106 dead and 120  wounded.

I assess this series of American tragedies around the oath required of all witnesses to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

THE TRUTH: As for the truth, we have the casualty figures of 106 dead and 122 wounded resulting from just the above listed instances.  We have the method of carnage, gunshot wounds.  We have the reasonable assumption that shooting is the fastest and most convenient way of committing mass murder.  We also face the obvious reality that guns have been and remain too readily available to the angry and the disturbed.  Finally, we must confront the reality that, since Cain killed Abel, human beings of both sexes, of nearly all ages, nationalities, and walks of life are convinced that they can ultimately solve their most vexing problems by killing one another.

THE WHOLE TRUTH: Although the vast majority of us loathe killing, we nevertheless insist on the necessity for selective killing.  Most of us (me too), would kill to defend those we love.  Second, although capital punishment has been abolished in every country around the globe except in the United States, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the People’s Republic of China and a few other isolated national jurisdictions, most every nation is prepared to indulge in the world’s most traditional form of killing: war.  Third, regardless of how angry we are or how incompetent we insist our politicians are, we still expect them to stop or at least minimize “senseless killing.”  Some say it can be done by more effectively controlling the manufacture and sale of firearms.  Others insist that the more the right to carry firearms is sanctioned, the more killings will decrease.  (Of course, those representatives and executives who agree with you and me are "leaders" and those others who have a different idea are “mere politicians!”)  Finally, sad as it may seem, it may be necessary to employ more police units to guard public places (especially schools), but that is a lot to ask of today’s legitimately outraged taxpayer, even if financially well off.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH: All murders are tragedies for they cheapen and ultimately demoralize us all.  The Newtown, Connecticut murders are especially heart-rending.  One can’t read the individual stories and stated epitaphs by those who loved the twenty-seven victims the best without a tear in one’s throat!  If murder is to be stopped or even minimized, we’ll have to find a solution that’s vastly different than anything we’ve ever conceived.  In other words, when it comes to discovering a way to prevent human beings from killing one another, we haven’t a clue.  As I see it, we’re closer to curing cancer than we are to curing you and me of homicide!

That’s how I see it!  What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY