PRESIDENT “WHO?”

By Edwin Cooney

Today marks the forty-fifth time Americans have celebrated President’s Day since it was proclaimed a holiday by President Richard Nixon on Monday, February 15th, 1971.  Under the Uniform Holidays Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, the day officially remained George Washington’s Birthday.  However, since Abraham Lincoln’s birthday comes nine days earlier and since Nixon sought to identify himself with great and near great presidents, he designated the third Monday in February as “President’s Day.”

Academicians have been evaluating and rating the greatest and least great presidents since President Kennedy’s Harvard professor friend and presidential assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. conducted a presidential ranking survey back in 1962.  Most historians rank three presidents above the rest, categorizing them as “great” presidents.  They are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. (Note: Harry Truman, who was rated by many Americans as lower than whale droppings when he left office to make room for the popular Ike Eisenhower in January 1953, now ranks fourth, the first of six  “near great presidents.”) With all that background, I’m ready to proclaim a new category of president.  Before I describe this new presidential category, let me justify its relevance.

Most of the 43 men who have served as president have known some national political prominence prior to their service.  A few, however, have achieved the high presidential responsibility with comparatively little political legislative or executive experience measurable by the public.  My new category, which I call “Presidents Who,” knew limited national prominence before assuming the presidency.  I suggest we elect another President Who.  President Who has been president at least six times.  

President Who was first elected under the name George Washington back in 1789.  GW rates the President Who designation because no one had been president before him.  In the first eight months following GW’s inauguration, he put together the executive and judicial branches of the federal government.  Even more impressive was how carefully and cleverly he established precedence for evaluating the appointment procedures to the executive, judiciary and the diplomatic services of the federal government.

President Who took a nice long vacation after 1797. He returned to work on Monday morning, April 5th, 1841 when Fletcher Webster, the son of Secretary of State Daniel Webster, rode up to the home of Vice President John Tyler to tell him of the death of President William Henry Harrison. Harrison had only been in office since Thursday, March 4th.  Many prominent and powerful associates of President Harrison insisted that a vice president, upon succeeding a deceased chief executive, could only be an “acting president,” a mere figurehead without any authority.  After all, President Harrison had agreed that all decisions made under him would be made by a majority vote of the cabinet.  Thus, the Harrison Cabinet certainly expected the same from John Tyler.  Tyler (John Who) had served in and resigned from both the House and the Senate on matters of principle. He refused to bow before the leadership of the Whig Party which had elected the 68-year-old Harrison.  Tyler let the “Whig-bigshots” know that if they were unwilling to cooperate with him, he’d demonstrate his authority by firing them.  Most of them, with the exception of Daniel Webster, proceeded to resign when Tyler vetoed a Whig Party-sponsored banking bill.  Amidst considerable resistance to his authority, President Tyler oversaw passage of the 1841 Preemption (or squatters) Rights Act. This law allowed poor but otherwise enterprising citizens to settle on unsurveyed public lands with the right to purchase those lands after five years of occupancy. In addition, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty permanently established most of the American and Canadian border up to the Oregon territory. Another legacy of Tyler’s was the annexation of Texas. Most of all, however, the tall, aristocratic Virginian violinist established the expectation of a smooth transition during a presidential vacancy, thus paving the way for strong presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson.

Millard Fillmore, the next President Who (“Millard Who”) became president nine years after Tyler.  Although he dismayed everyone including his beloved wife Abigail when he signed the Compromise of 1850, he had some successes.  Fillmore opened up trade with Japan by sending Commodore Matthew Perry to Tokyo in 1852 and he also improved relations with Mexico by financing the Tehuantepec Railroad which connects the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean across the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Another Presidents Who was President Chester A. Arthur. Although he was an excellent administrator, Arthur was originally pretty much a “hack politician,” unknown nationally, an appointee of the Grant administration as Collector of Customs at the Port of New York.  Chet Arthur was a tall, handsome, well-dressed, erudite man who was often referred to as “The Gentleman Boss.”  He acceded to the presidency on the tragic death of James A. Garfield in September 1881.  He was known largely for opposing President Garfield’s efforts to institute Civil Service reform even as he served as Garfield’s vice president.  Once he acceded to the presidency, he immediately saw it as his duty to carry on the Garfield legacy thus turning his back on his former political cronies.  Hence, President Arthur supported and signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883 establishing merit rather than politics as the basis for appointments to public office. Ironically, it was President Chester A. Arthur who signed legislation making George Washington’s birthday a federal holiday while presiding over the dedication of the Washington Monument on Sunday, February 22nd, 1885, just ten days before he left office.

President Who took another long holiday, not returning until January 20th, 1977 when “Jimmy Carter Who” took the presidential oath.  Jimmy Who shepherded more legislation through Congress since the New Deal than any other president except Lyndon Johnson.  His efforts in foreign policy included the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the Panama Canal treaty. His emphasis on human rights has had positive lasting economic, and socio/political effects.  His deregulation of the airlines, telecommunications, and trucking industries have all benefited you and me.

For the past six years, Barack Who has occupied those famous 18 acres at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.  It’s clearly too early to evaluate Barack Who’s presidential tenure, beset as he is by ongoing matters of national importance. Today’s uncertainties have many looking to 2016 to see who might succeed him.

History doesn’t instruct us on the importance of executive or political experience necessary for a successful presidency.  Presidents John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon possessed considerable experience prior to their less than successful administrations.  The "President Whos" above, although not spectacularly successful, have left us some valuable legacies, so whether we should nominate a Bush or a Clinton rather than a Paul or a Warren is a pretty open question!  As for other Whos out there…

Well, let’s see now!  There’s Cruz Who, Walker Who, Christie Who, and Santorum Who!

They’ll have to do if we elect one of them, but I’d prefer Voodoo Who!

PROVOCATIVELY PRESENTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DOES MORALITY DIRECT AMERICA’S FATE?

By Edwin Cooney

Ah, morality! Most of us insist that morality is what our personal lives are all about.  That goes for both religious and secular America!  The question is: what about our history?  Has morality played much of a role in America’s relations with our sister nations or have we reached our international superstardom absent the wisdom morality provides?

To adequately answer that question, one must first define morality.  While you do that for yourself, I’ll review a little history which you may, if you like, apply to your own thoughts on this topic!

Most Americans today appear to believe that war is immoral — especially aggressive war.  The source of that belief is partly due to our indignation over the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  However, much of it comes from the oratory of some of our most distinguished leaders.  FDR opined in his last appearance before Congress: “Certainly, I don’t want to live to see another war!”  President Kennedy declared before the United Nations in September of 1961: “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind!”  Winston Churchill, to whom we granted honorary citizenship in April 1963, regarded war near the end of his life as “squalid” rather than “glorious” as he had when he was young and ambitious.  Richard Nixon from the depth of his Watergate scandal agony as he resigned the presidency practically begged the nation to remember him as a peacemaker.

More to the point, an objective analysis of the reasons we have gone to war throughout our history has nothing or very little to do with the morality of our cause.  The cry of 1776 “no taxation without representation” was misleading.  If Eighteenth Century Bostonians and Virginians were taxed without sufficient representation in parliament, so were most Englishmen.  Adequate representation for Englishmen had to wait until the 1830s to be corrected.  Even as our state and national governments were formed, there remained outrageous examples of voting and representation inequities.  The cause of the American Revolution was little more than an interruption of the efforts on the part of northern merchants and southern planters to make a sufficient profit.

The War of 1812 was primarily a territorial squabble between Midwestern congressional hardliners and British intervention on the Western Great Lakes and the Mississippi which often blocked easy access to the Port of New Orleans.  There was also that ongoing bitterness on the part of young America over the British policy of high seas kidnapping and impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy.  Oddly enough, as outrageous as that practice was to Americans, its termination was not part of the Treaty of Ghent which ended the war in late 1814. The 1846-48 Mexican War was nothing more than a land grab justified by our insistence upon the legitimacy of “manifest destiny.”

The Civil War was over “states’ rights” and the ultimate legitimacy of the federal union. 

The Spanish-American War of 1898 ultimately had more to do with increasing American imperial and sea power than it had to do with the right of Cuba to declare independence from Spain.

World War I might not have included American doughboys had the German government refrained from tempting the Mexican government to attack us and thus regain the territory Mexico had lost to our sense of manifest destiny back in the 1840s.

The last war to actually unify Americans, World War II, although a conflict against Evil, was fought alongside an ally President Reagan would eventually declare to be “the head of an evil empire.”

Today we face the prospect of becoming involved in a jihad, or holy war, with radical Islam as ISIL seeks to establish a worldwide caliphate.  Our potential enemy is as “moral” ” in its religious faith as the most dedicated Christian clergyman or Jewish rabbi.  Hence, a possible war with radical Islam would hardly be a war of the moral versus the immoral, but rather a clash of conflicting moralities.  The question might even be, whose version of Heaven will prevail?  Unlike our old materialistic Communist opponents, radical Islam is certain of its spiritual superiority.  For them, their dead of 9/11 aren’t victims but rather brave and holy martyrs.

I define morality as a set of principles and values reflecting the conscience of a benevolent and equitable society.  An act of war may be undertaken in defense of such a society, but war itself is an act of immorality.  As such, war is a mere tool of human fear and desperation.

Last week I asked if practicality or principle should rule our foreign policy.  For me, the conclusion is obvious.  Practicality requires an objective assessment of the world around us thus enabling America to wisely and more safely adjust and respond to the world’s most outrageous challenges! Try this piece of advice on for size:

Comprehend and live in the world as it is and thus survive.  Make a tool out of your sense of moral superiority as ISIL does and self-destruct.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DOES PRINCIPLE OR PRACTICALITY RULE OUR FOREIGN POLICY?

By Edwin Cooney

In the early 1960s, as I was becoming aware of the importance of our standing in the world community as the moral leader of a worldwide political and military alliance against Communism, the observations of two Americans came to govern my image of the United States of America.

In 1962, Marine Colonel astronaut John Glenn, the hero of Mercury’s first orbital flight “Friendship Seven,” was quoted as saying: “I never see the American flag go by during a parade that it doesn’t bring tears to my eyes!”  For me back then, Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr’s status as a Marine and an astronaut linked the warrior and America’s glory together.  Subsequently, I fervently believed that the noblest act any citizen could perform would be to die for his country.

The second most stirring statement I ever heard came from a very different American, William Jennings Bryan of “Cross of Gold” speech fame.  Bryan, who was also known as “the Great Commoner,” would resign as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State in opposition to the Wilson administration’s increasing sympathy for the British and French alliance against the German and Austrian Central Powers during World War I.  Bryan was a Christian pacifist.  As such, he gained the contempt of both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Young FDR was then serving as Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy.  Both Roosevelts considered Bryan to be exceedingly naive and totally unsuitable as Secretary of State.  For William Jennings Bryan, just as for President Wilson, the morality of every issue, domestic or foreign, constituted the worthiness of every issue. Here’s the Bryan statement that so impressed me:

Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes -- a republic whose history, like the path of the just, "is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

 (Obviously Mr. Bryan, like a young Edwin Cooney, saw neither slavery nor Indian genocide as blots on our history or on our capacity for justness.)  Thus, I was moved by the possibility that America’s brand of morality was the brand the world most needed to flourish and prosper.

Our involvement in the Vietnam War began to alter my certainty that my country had a monopoly on morality.  I’ve since come to understand that no nation possesses such a virtue — if such a possibility might be in fact a virtue!

Writing in the Sunday, January 25th edition of the New York Times, Ross Douthat opined that the United States had become a prisoner of the Saudis.  The occasion was the recent death of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.  Secretary of State Kerry described Abdul as a man of wisdom and vision who was revered by his people.  Mr. Douthat went on to observe that Saudi Arabia, like the government of North Korea, the new government in Yemen, and ISIS, is a gangster state.  The only real difference between the Saudi family and the leaders of North Korea and ISIS is that the Saudis sit on a huge oil reserve, the profit and protection of which keeps them practical rather than principled.  Thus, it makes good sense that they tailor their foreign policy toward the best interests of the United States which remains their richest and most profitable market.

Meanwhile, its domestic religious practices are pretty much in line with some of the most brutal methods practiced by jihadist Islamic fundamentalists.

As 2015 opens, Americans are increasingly alarmed over the Islamic jihadists whether they be members of al-Qaeda or the newly established Islamic state known as ISIS.  For many Americans, the struggle is a moral one between Christian America and a radical outdated religious sect devoid of any sense of respect for human dignity.  Hence, just as mid to late 20th Century Americans convinced themselves that the cold war was a moral struggle between God-fearing democracies and “Godless Communism,” many Americans insist that our national security is today being threatened by a force as immoral as “atheistic communism.”  Unlike atheistic or Soviet communism, fundamentalist Islam is a religious faith.  It’s my guess that the Islamic clergy are every bit as dedicated to their faith as Billy Graham or the late Jerry Falwell to the moral principles of Christianity!

America has only about 117 years of experience in international affairs compared to the hundreds of years of foreign policy experience European governments have.  We only began colonizing the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii following the 1898 Spanish-American War. While we paid lip service to a Christian mission (especially in the Philippines), our real motive was largely corporate profit.  After World War II, we advertised our motives as being both moral and geopolitical.  Thus, most Americans, myself included, like to believe that America’s moral values are what motivate everything we do in both domestic and international relations.

The truth, however, is that international affairs like human relations seldom offer easy choices of association.  Just as our progeny command our love and connections despite their behavior, their friends, or even their attitudes toward us, so must America thrive within the family of international  relationships.  Strictly speaking, morality has never been the basis of America’s international friendships.  Back in the 1970’s, I remember reading quotes from representatives in the Nixon administration asserting that certain South and Central American dictators were “sons of bitches, but at least they are our SOBs!”  Thus, a few years later when President Jimmy Carter began preaching human rights as a prerequisite for our moral approval and our friendship, old Nixon hands as well as future Reagan policymakers belittled Carter’s insistence on human rights despite their eventual designation of the Soviets as the leaders of “an evil empire.”  Just as the morality of our own friends and neighbors is absolutely none of our business and beyond our control, so it is when it comes to America’s friends and neighbors.  To suggest otherwise is to cheapen the very importance and power of human morality.

America’s foreign policy is based on the practicality that historians and diplomats label as “Realpolitik.”  If the days of “realpolitik” went out with the passing of Bismarck and Disraeli in the late 19th century, it’s the best kept secret since LBJ decided not to seek re-election in 1968!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY