By Edwin Cooney
As business tycoon Donald J. Trump gathers in his Republican chips after vanquishing sixteen Republicans (notice I didn’t say fellow Republicans!), he’s fully aware of the power of fear — his most powerful and trusty weapon. After all, he apparently believes he’s the master of fear. Even more, he seems certain that he needs neither knowledge nor principle to prevail. Thus, personal degradation of women, Hispanics, Muslims, and, of course, our foreign and domestic policies under President Obama constitute everything he’s about. “Why change now?” he seems to reason. After all, a successful competitor shouldn't alter the strategy that has brought him or her this far! That being the case, perhaps it’s time to review some pretty tough but compelling realities that are just ahead.
(1.) No one who has decided to vote for Donald Trump will be convinced not to, regardless of what you and I write or say.
(2.) Undecided voters, whatever their socio/political orientation, currently have only two realistic choices in the absence of a compelling third party candidate. Voters will elect either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton as America’s 45th President.
(3.) Like getting up in the morning, voting doesn’t have to be either pleasurable, let alone satisfying, to be vitally important. You may not satisfy your dreams or soothe your nightmares, but you can effectively alter the direction of that angry political bully charging toward you thereby seriously blunting his effectiveness.
(4.) Should you exercise your right not to vote, not only are you confirming your insignificance, you are actually empowering it.
(5.) The voter who votes sets standards for the future. On the other hand, the voter who stays home meekly will abjectly surrender the future and that of his or her children and grandchildren to the whims of those who are likely to destroy that future.
As for Trump, the master of fear, notice how he exploits the voter’s fears yet offers no details as to how he will vanquish them — not that Donald Trump is by any means the first politician to be vague about his plans. Mr. Trump apparently has decided that fear and uncertainty during a political campaign is precisely the best strategy for achieving victory. After all, he appears to believe, if he offers answers to what worries voters, he and not his opponent will become the issue. I’ll have more to say on that subject as the campaign goes on.
As for what Mr. Trump has to offer, he reminds voters every day that he is a businessman. That means he is in control of all his domains. No president, not even George Washington, has ever had the luxuries that a businessman has. No American president appropriates or controls money as a business executive does. Our elected chief executive has to function, unlike the business executive, with two coequal decision-making and confirming forces, Congress and the Supreme Court. CEOs like Tom Watson of IBM, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Warren Buffett of GEICO fame never made decisions that could just be altered by Congress — and Congress is eternally jealous of its historic prerogative to alter or reject presidential proposals or even executive authority.
As of today, we have had 44 men serve as President of the United States. Most of them have been pretty determined if not willful men. None of them (not even George Washington, Andrew Jackson, or Woodrow Wilson to name just three presidents) have avoided congressional “checkmate” at one time or another in their presidencies.
George Washington was so livid when South Carolina senators rejected his nominees for appointments to federal office in that state, that he refused ever to personally appear before Congress again. They say his anger was terrifying to behold.
Andrew Jackson was censured by Congress in 1833 for his coercive policy enforcing the “Tariff of Abominations” bill passed by Congress in 1828 and resisted by South Carolina. (From there on in, Andrew Jackson was often derided as “King Andrew.”)
Woodrow Wilson, whose lifelong tendency was to make every issue a moral issue, damaged his dream of a League of Nations through his own self-righteousness when he willfully refused to respond to some legitimate concerns Congress had with the structure and functions of an international league in conjunction with our constitution. Consequently, not only did Wilson destroy his dream out of his sense of moral superiority and self-importance, he made World War II almost inevitable.
If Donald Trump is the master of “fear itself”— that which FDR asserted in his first inaugural was our greatest challenge — the vital question is: as the master of fear, what does he intend to do with or accomplish by utilizing fear?
Whatever the deciding issue may be this fall, it’s not ultimately about what Donald Trump thinks of Hillary Clinton or what Hillary Clinton thinks of or believes about Donald Trump. What is important is how they see us, and even more, how they value “we the people.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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