OF COURSE, IT HAD TO HAPPEN!

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, just as it appeared that Donald J. Trump and Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz were permanent political bosom buddies, Trump did the unpredictable: he challenged the Canadian-born, Texas-bred Cruz’s American authenticity. Ah, the year may be new, however, there’s little new regarding the tone of American politics!  In fact, Donald Trump’s latest political tactic toward Senator Ted Cruz goes back well over a century and perhaps even longer than that!

Of course, it’s only because Mr. Trump “genuinely loves” Senator Cruz, that he’s anxious to see young Ted sufficiently deal with the issue of his possible ineligibility to serve in the office of President of the United States!  After all, Mr. T. is bringing up the matter now because otherwise Hillary Clinton might unfairly and cruelly slap Senator Cruz across his handsome physiognomy with the issue during a presidential debate next fall.  That would be tragic for two reasons. First, should Senator Cruz be surprised by Hillary’s “wickedness,” it might indicate that he is less than well prepared to be president. Second, it is only right that he, Donald J. Trump (rather than Hillary Rodham Clinton), should benefit from any possible personal or political inadequacy on the part of Senator Cruz. 

What ought to be plain to the public by now is that in 2015 and 2016, all, absolutely all, is fair in American politics.  Even more, the key to political success in 2016 may well be something that is actually new.  (More about that later.)

History is bedecked with outrageous political slander.  In 1796, John Rutledge (who, at the time, was President Washington’s designee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) said during an after dinner speech that he would rather have seen George Washington dead than see him sign the Jay Treaty.  Of course, that derailed the good justice’s nomination.

Then there was the politically based duel between Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr that occurred on Wednesday, July 11th, 1804 at Weehawken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York.  Burr killed Hamilton and thus became the only sitting vice president wanted for murder in New York and New Jersey.

Four years earlier, during the 1800 presidential campaign, Federalists warned that if Vice President Thomas Jefferson were elected, all bibles would be confiscated because Jefferson was a Deist, not a Christian. 

In 1860 and throughout his presidency, Abraham Lincoln was described by his political and cultural opponents as a baboon or a guerrilla due to his awkward appearance and disproportional size.  During the 1930s, some of FDR’s worst enemies suggested that his paralysis was brought on not by polio but by a “social disease.”  Harry Truman’s enemies altered the expression “to err is human” to assert that “to err is Truman!”

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As for the birther issue, that goes at least as far back as President Chester Alan Arthur’s day when his opponents insisted that he had been born in Canada rather than in Fairfield, Vermont.

In 1968, opponents of George Romney wondered (out loud, of course) whether Governor Romney’s birth in Mexico meant that he wasn’t a naturalized citizen.  This was despite the fact that both Governor Romney’s parents were as American as apple pie.  In 2000 and 2008, war hero Senator John McCain’s Panamanian birth was offered up to suggest that he wasn’t a genuine enough American to be elected president.

Ted Cruz is far from being my candidate for 2016, but he shouldn’t be denied the presidency for the wrong reason.  Like Barack Obama, Ted Cruz was born to an American mother.  Her name is Eleanor Elizabeth (Darragh) Wilson Cruz.  She was born in Wilmington, Delaware.

President Obama’s mother was the late Ann Dunham. (Her given name was actually Stanley because her father Stanley Dunham wanted a boy.) She was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1942 and died in 1995 as her son sought his first elective office.  Ted Cruz will surely cringe from this comparison, but like President Obama, regardless of where he was born, his mother’s place of birth legitimatizes his presidential candidacy.

It’s increasingly evident that Donald Trump is successful largely due to a new political reality.  What Trump has going for him the most is his very unpredictability.  Americans may be sufficiently weary of both conservatives and liberals who, after all, have been indulging in the same political and cultural quarrel since Reagan defeated Carter back in 1980.

What has got to be scaring the 2016 GOP the most is the unlikelihood that a President Trump would be any more cooperative with the conservative establishment than he has been so far with his fellow presidential candidates -- Ted Cruz included!

George Washington became President so Americans could be united.  Lincoln’s presidency took the American Humpty Dumpty apart and put it back together when we were too quarrelsome to live peaceably in unity.  When we were both broke and hungry, FDR taught us to be dependent on one another.  Reagan made us feel good about ourselves at a time of economic insecurity and apparent international confusion.

What might President Trump do if elected by an angry and resentful people whose ideals have been swept away by their angry resentment of problems real and imagined?

Mr. Trump’s recent attack on Senator Cruz was inevitable.  That, however, doesn’t mean that Trump’s election is also inevitable -- does it?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY