DEMOCRATS, WHERE IS YOUR HEART? WHERE IS YOUR SOUL?

By Edwin Cooney

As Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their 47th quadrennial National Convention, like their Republican cousins, they face a daunting question.  While the Republican Party is the victim of an outside hostile takeover, Donald Trump by name, Democrats are about to nominate one of their very own: “Lady” Hillary Clinton.

If the GOP’s cranky negativity, panicky nativism, homophobia, racism, and unprincipled ambition are the major forces behind the capture of their party by the self-absorbed Donald Trump, what forces must energize the Democratic party in 2016?  Even more, what can they do about it?

As I see it, the Democratic party hasn’t been a powerfully potent political force since Lyndon B. Johnson began running out of gas in 1966.  By 1968, its ability to govern was shattered over the war in Vietnam.  Domestically, it was pretty much intact, but so split and guilt-ridden by “LBJ’s war,” and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s “police riot” during the 1968 Convention, that the party lost its political nerve. Thus, it crumbled under Hubert Humphrey, who deserved much better, and has never been the same since!  Gone is the Democratic Party structure that once drafted progressive legislation in Congress.  Although barely defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968, the party’s zest for passing or even sustaining social legislation seemed to evaporate almost the instant Richard Nixon lowered his right hand after taking the oath of office from retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren that historic Monday, January 20th in 1969.

Over the next two years, conservative Republicans and key Southern Democrats slowly but surely began dismantling LBJ’s Great Society beginning with the Office of Economic Opportunity and cutbacks for LBJ “Model Cities” expenditures.  Sure, Democrats mightily resisted administration Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, the Nixon administration’s healthcare proposal, which they saw as meager in comparison to that of Senator Ted Kennedy’s, and Nixon’s Vietnamization policy. However, the party’s ability to advocate, pass and sustain progressive legislation was permanently stymied.  By the 1972 presidential campaign, the Democratic Party had instituted reforms that prevented party leaders from setting party strategies and policies.  State presidential preference primaries had stripped the big city and state bosses of their once unchallenged authority to assess the qualifications and likely vote-getting abilities of potential presidential candidates and, on that assessment, to nominate a successful presidential candidate.  By 1975, the immediate post Watergate era, the congressional seniority system, a historic congressional institution, was history.  While not all of these reforms were bad, they limited the traditional authority of experienced congressional leaders of both parties.  However, Republicans, with the increasing popularity of their conservative doctrine, were more successful in passing their party’s agenda due to party discipline.

Thus, as they enter the 2016 presidential campaign, Democrats have little to brag about when it comes to social legislation.  Additionally, healthcare or if you prefer “Obamacare,” successful and historic as it is, remains controversial. Hence, rather than a solid record of progressive achievement to point to, Mrs. Clinton is in a position where her major challenge over the next three months appears to have more to do with who she is rather than anything she or her party stands for or has accomplished!

In his 1981 Inaugural Address, President Reagan asserted that government doesn’t solve problems; government is the problem. The popularity of that presidential declaration was such that Democrats, instead of challenging the new president’s proclamation, surrendered to it. That surrender, of course, didn’t save them from being bombarded with anti-big-government  slogans. Hence, Democrats, especially those in the northeast, midwest and far west, have been permanently on the defensive for nearly fifty years.  Many Southern Democrats, on the other hand, vulnerable to the popular mores of the Bible Belt, oil magnates and the military industrial establishment have dragged their feet thus abetting at crucial points the national conservative movement which they used to back New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society proposals and projects.  That’s why I insist that the modern Democratic party appears to have lost its heart and perhaps its soul.

As to the significance of Hillary Clinton’s integrity, as I see it, many of those questioning her trustworthiness, if they are honest with themselves, have supported other presidential candidates whose promises and assertions have been far from candid.  For example, there are still a lot of voters, Republicans who are enraged over Hillary’s “lack of integrity,” who still excuse the antics of Richard M. Nixon who was forced to insist, during a November 1973 news conference in Florida: “I am not a crook!” Nor did Ronald Reagan ever redeem his promise to balance the national budget! George H. W. Bush, as I recall, never did adequately distribute those “thousand points of light” he once so eloquently promised. We have yet to discover the weapons of mass destruction that threatened our national security and led us to the second Iraqi War under President George W. Bush.

Policymaking is the responsibility of strong leadership.  Mrs. Clinton, even with all her knowledge and experience, has yet to demonstrate her capacity to prepare, present, and sell a national agenda.  Between now and November 8th, it is essential that she get across the following points:

(1.) The 2016 presidential election is about people not politics;

(2.) A specific agenda rather than a mere recital of our fears, foreign and domestic,  is what will strengthen our prospects for peace and plenty;

(3.) Our prosperity, safety and peace matter more, much more, than the personal liabilities, assets or fates of either presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton is a well-meaning politician who has demonstrated a commitment to progressive thought and policymaking.  Before her unsuccessful attempt to lead her husband’s first administration’s effort to pass single payer healthcare in 1994, no First Lady actually led an effort on behalf of a major domestic policy issue before the Congress. That historic fact is to her everlasting credit!

Despite all the breast-beating as to Hillary Clinton’s character, when all is said and done (someone once observed that in most instances more is said than done), this election is unequivocally about us.

Character does matter, but character comparison has seldom if ever mattered when comparing presidential candidates.  How many Republicans have you heard admit that Nixon and Agnew were “SOB’s, but at least they were our SOBs!”  Even more to the point, if character is what really matters, Jimmy Carter should definitely have had a second term as President of the United States.

Hillary Clinton is not my favorite possible Democratic party candidate. I would have preferred Senator Sanders, but she is “the candidate.”  Her intellect is keen, she treats political opponents within the traditional rules of political competition and she is in the tradition of progressive or forward-looking responsible policy changes.

Hence, I urge Hillary to: fight fiercely but fairly! Passionately advocate and explain your proposals. Avoid being defensive. Let the country observe your capacity to listen and learn and, be seen doing both. Finally, vigorously defend your party’s modern progressive liberal heritage.  An excellent way to do that would be by publicly echoing some of FDR’s most powerful words from his 1936 acceptance speech in Philadelphia: “Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference!”

To the extent that Hillary Clinton follows the above admonition, she can recapture the heart and soul of the Democratic party and thus deserve victory on November eighth!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

NOVEMBER’S REPUBLICANS — WHO ARE THEY?

By Edwin Cooney

As Republicans open their 41st quadrennial convention, one question stands out above all others!  Who are they? Like their Democratic kin-folk, factionalism is a necessary and often valuable aspect of voter appeal.  In past years, Republicans have nominated candidates for president and vice president who occupy opposite fringes of the party’s ideological and cultural constituencies. Never, however, has such a fringe nomination been such an alteration to traditional party values than that of Donald J. Trump.

Up until Mr. Trump began upsetting the table that holds the bonafide credentials of American “solid citizen conservatism,” it appeared that the traditional ideological combination of churchgoers and chamber of commerce types would be the ones to challenge Hillary Clinton’s presidential legitimacy.  Suddenly all predictable bets are off and the GOP elephant (I’ve named him Abe in these pages) finds himself “buffaloed” as he attempts to clear a path to Republican success next November eighth.

More than Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, Wendell Willkie in 1940, or Barry Goldwater in 1964, the nomination of “the Donald” flies in the face of traditional Republicanism.  Consider the following:

Up until recently, most Republicans supported free trade (minus all tariffs) in concert with “the new world order” of international affairs and expectations.  Mr. Trump, who’s wealth suggests that he knows more about business than most other business people, insists that the United States needs to return to eighteenth century protectionism to stimulate job creation here at home.  He reasons that if it costs corporations more to compete in foreign markets due to the tariffs they will then pay, they’ll begin bringing good jobs back to America.

As for international relations, Mr. Trump insists that as a “no nonsense wheeler dealer,” he can do business with the Russians and North Koreans, because, after all,they’re “real” and he’s “real.”   It’s amazing to this observer that a potential president should appeal to voters on the basis that he shares the mentality and traits of such leaders as Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un.  (Somehow I can’t imagine Truman insisting that he’s like Joseph Stalin. Neither can I imagine Eisenhower or Kennedy advertising himself as comparable to Nikita Khrushchev!)

Meanwhile at home, Mr. Trump is sure he can make Congress do his will because, after all, he’s a businessman!  Many Americans have long believed that the government should be run as a business, which fits hand in glove with Mr. Trump’s oversimplified concept of what makes a free society work.  This belief is close to the heart of millions of Americans despite the fact that presidents with successful business backgrounds (Hoover, Carter and G. H. W. Bush) all served only one term and were defeated for re-election by Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and William Clinton respectively, none of whom had much experience in business.

Last Friday, Mr. Trump announced his selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.  Governor Pence’s selection from an ideological point of view is an excellent move, at least on the surface.  Still many crucial voters will be wondering, what does the Trump/Pence team portend for public policymaking?  Therein lies the potential genius —  or foolhardiness — of the Trump candidacy!

Political opponents customarily and invariably seek to contemptuously drive wedges between presidential and vice presidential doctrinaire histories.  In 1988, Republicans delighted in wondering when the debate between “liberal” Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and “conservative” Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen would take place.  (One even got the impression that Republicans might pay for such a televised debate.)   

The Pence nomination represents the party’s ideological tradition which is its intellectual and spiritual representation for a considerable segment of society.  However, Mr. Trump’s appeal is more to our fears than it is to our hopes or even to our enterprise.  Donald Trump is far from the first politician to appeal to our fears. Presidential nominees including FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ all, to some extent, appealed to voters’ fears.  FDR appealed to our fears of continuing economic depression.Truman appealed to voters’ fears of the possible destruction of enlightened progressive government.  Ike appealed to voters’ resentment over the ongoing war in Korea.  JFK, in 1960,  appealed to Americans’  fears of Russian superiority in space and national defense.  The crucial difference between Trump’s appeal to fear and the earlier appeals is most apparent in the crudity of its roots and in its thrust.

Mr. Trump’s appeal to voters’ fears widens the number and types of people we should legitimately fear.  The wholesale dehumanization of minorities, women,  foreigners, non- Christians and others amounts to little more than a demonstration and ultimate legitimatizing of just plain bad manners.  Furthermore, it legitimizes rather than outlaws “political correctness.”  Don’t ever let any political ideologue pretend he doesn't have a sense of political correctness. Christians and social conservatives both preach rules of conduct one must apply in order to be a solid citizen.  The only reason political liberals or progressives have a reputation for “political correctness” is that they have traditionally believed that social morals are equal to spiritual morals and that social mores and issues really and truly constitute a just society.

The GOP’s appeal this fall will invariably be that what matters most is the individual’s priorities and feelings.  The idea that America has any kind of a collective responsibility will simply be labeled socialism or despotism.

Mr. Trump’s crude and ill-mannered appeal for votes is obviously a substitute for both principle and knowledge. It is my guess that the 41st National Republican Convention will reflect the understandable resentments of the American people far more than it will seek to energize the creativity and generosity of “we the freest people” in history.

Back in 1884,  New York Governor Grover Cleveland (a Democrat) ran against Republican James G. Blaine of Maine.  Both of the candidates brought a serious flaw into the campaign.  Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock.  Blaine appeared to have been guilty of an involvement in public scandal.  Ultimately the public decided Cleveland’s error was more tolerable because it had nothing to do with public policy.  Hence, the question is whether a lack of vital operational knowledge or occasional political deviance will most likely demean or enhance  our future safety, prosperity, and peace.

My guess is that your future and mine ultimately matters more than Hillary’s integrity or Trump’s ill-mannered and crude ambition!

The instant Mr. Trump is nominated on Wednesday, July 20th, what Donald Trump is all about will ultimately define who the Republicans are for the foreseeable future. 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

SO, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT!

By Edwin Cooney

I begin with a confession.  I’m a sucker for social, political, and sometimes occasionally even moral rogues!  Their backgrounds and motives are often most instructive.  The point of all this is that today, July 11th, 2016 is the 212th anniversary of the fatal duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.  Although like Burr, Hamilton was a political rogue, he died a hero.

Hamilton’s heroism comes not from the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey where, shortly after 7 a.m. that hot July morning of Tuesday, July 11th, 1804 the ball from Vice President Aaron Burr’s dueling pistol entered just above his right hip, traveled through his liver and lodged against his spine.  His heroism stemmed from his career as one of the Founding Fathers of our Constitution, as a designer of our monetary system while serving as George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, and as the mastermind who created a plan for paying off our Revolutionary War debt.

Vice President Aaron Burr was also a brilliant man.  The grandson of the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards, Aaron Burr was a first rate political practitioner.   It was Burr who helped bring New York State into the Jeffersonian electoral column in 1800.  Burr, a graduate of Princeton University, was ahead of his time on social issues such as women’s rights and municipal administration.  Both Burr and Hamilton were extremely ambitious and willful men thus making permanent enemies.  Both were manipulators and womanizers.  Hamilton publicly confessed to having an affair with Maria Reynolds, a married woman, while he was Secretary of the Treasury.  Both men were educated far and above most Americans of their time.  Hamilton was loved by George Washington but despised by both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Burr had the permanent enmity of President Jefferson after refusing to withdraw his name from consideration during the electoral vote tie with Jefferson during February of 1801.

Both Hamilton and Burr became distracted by the slings and arrows of political fortune and misfortune.  Frustrated by their pending political demises, both were ready to believe their honor was at stake at the slightest provocation. The conflict that led them to the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey was over a commentary by Dr. Charles Cooper in an Albany, New York newspaper.  Hamilton paid for his distraction with his life.  Burr paid for his with his reputation.  Although he would serve out the remaining months of his vice presidential term remarkably well, Burr would be arrested in 1807 and charged by the Jefferson administration with treason. The treason charge was about an alleged scheme designed to conquer western territory from Mexico and then to create a new empire with Aaron Burr as its president. Burr was acquitted of the charges in a trial adjudicated by Chief Justice John Marshall, a Jefferson cousin but a political opponent of the president.  The point of all this is the tone Hamilton and Burr inadvertently set for adversary politics in the centuries ahead.  (I’ll perhaps write more about the duel in the near future if readers are interested.)    

A hundred years ago when President Woodrow Wilson and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes faced each other, little was known about them in comparison to what we now think we know about our 2016 presidential candidates.  Wilson, the incumbent, ran on the slogan “he kept us out of war.”  Hughes ran as a progressive Republican and was only narrowly defeated.  As close and significant as the 1916 election was, the American voter chose between two men he barely knew. Not until FDR’s splendid radio voice became familiar to Americans during the 1930s did Americans experience the sound of a presidential voice.  Even then, most Americans didn’t know that FDR mostly used a wheelchair to get around and that it was his struggle with polio that was a motivator for his outlook and his accomplishments on behalf of the less fortunate among us.

Today we know (or think we know) a lot about the candidates, their backgrounds and their motives.  Yet, as much as we brag to the rest of the world about our liberties and our system, as often as we beg for God’s blessing on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day and Ronald Reagan’s birthday, we’ve become dangerously cynical of the electoral process.  (Note: Ronald Reagan shares a birthday with guess who?  That’s right, it’s Aaron Burr.  Burr was born Friday, February 6th, 1756.  Mr. Reagan was born Monday, February 6th 1911.  Alexander Hamilton was born Tuesday, January 11th, 1757.  That’s a little too close to Richard Nixon’s January 9th birthday, wouldn’t you say?)

The question is, who’s at fault?  The answer is “we, the people,” that’s who!

To begin with, too few people bother to educate themselves about what it takes for a bill before Congress to become a law.  How can we begin to repair a system that we’re not interested in enough to understand how it works? 

Second, we have come to judge practically every issue as to whether it is conservative or liberal and thus we depend on “ideological talking points” to sustain our conclusions.

Third, we make moral issues out of practical matters.

Fourth, we poison moral issues with social prejudices.

Fifth, we erect straw men and women to demonize.

Like Hamilton and Burr, we’ve distracted ourselves with irritants rather than seeking perspectives and solutions to really vital matters.  I can name you previous presidential Trump-like bullies and Clinton-like liars.

Of course, we will elect a political rogue next November!  If we didn’t elect a political rogue, it would be more difficult to feel superior to a genuinely capable leader.  Indeed, “the people” must rule!  After all, absent the scourge of royalty, it is from our ranks that come forth the presidential rogues!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA THE GREAT - IT SOUNDS GOOD, BUT IS IT?

By Edwin Cooney

As Americans prepare to celebrate their 240th Fourth of July as a free and independent nation, America’s “greatness” is being infused into our quadrennial presidential campaign.  One of our candidates promises “to make America great again.”  That assumes that one president can, or ever has, made America great!  The main problem with Mr. Trump’s hope is that it is both subjective and intangible!  It’s like beauty which, as everyone knows, is in the eye of the beholder.  How does one evaluate what it takes to be a “great” nation.  I was a Republican back in the 1960s when we used to scoff at Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.”  Thus, it is likely, although not assured, that Republicans will heartily endorse Mr. Trump’s “Great America” pledge as they heartily scorned LBJ’s “Great Society” proclamation.  However, to dismiss America’s greatness as merely political symbolism is, I think, too arrogant and quarrelsome to go unchallenged.

When the thirteen colonies published America’s birth certificate in the form of The Declaration of Independence on Thursday, July 4th, 1776, they created a government unlike that of any nation on earth.  Under its structure, the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen new states agreed to support a new central government whose first obligation was to win the war for independence  even though those new states in great part failed to keep their promises to the Continental Congress — and to General Washington, the tall aristocratic Virginian who rode a horse like few other men and who braved death as British Musket balls occasionally tore holes in his coat. Still, he muddled through to become “father” of a new nation. That new nation, structurally unlike any other country and thus a political and social experiment, turned out to be valued as a “great” nation.  Ah! but that greatness was only declarable after over 50 years of its existence.  Not until the 1830s did the great French journalist de Tocqueville more or less testify to the world as to America’s greatness.

It is both natural and gratifying to believe that one’s homeland is “greater” than any other nation.  Most of us were instructed as we grew up that America was greater in wealth, power and genuine human goodness than any nation ever conceived.  If perfection could only be found in Heaven, America’s well-intentioned generosity amounted to the highest degree of goodness that could be measured and thus appreciated here on earth.  These words uttered by the “Great Commoner” William Jennings Bryan stir me even today as I assert that American greatness is largely an individual evaluation.  Bryan, the three time Democratic presidential nominee and pacifist Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, made this proclamation:

“…Behold a republic gradually but surely, becoming the supreme moral factor in the progress of the world 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.”

Mr. Bryan’s Christian pacifism would be overwhelmed by “The Guns of August” of 1914. However, Bryan’s brand of Christian morality remains in some small corners of humankind’s awareness a prescription of human greatness, American style.

Of course, American history is bedecked with laws, customs, trends and choices that fall far short of greatness, as do the histories of every other nation on earth.  Nonetheless, our history is also enriched by the deeds of great men and women.  However, just as America’s greatness was only gradually recognized, it is obvious to this observer that the greatness of nations can only be effectively awarded by future generations.

Throughout the1950s under presidents Harry Truman,  Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy, a time when many of today’s proclaimers of American greatness were growing up, there was considerable uncertainty as to America’s future. Although America led two great alliances, NATO and SEATO, and assisted in bringing Germany, Italy, and Japan, our World War II enemies, back into prosperity and respectability, Americans felt far from secure.  They still had to endure the “cold war” struggle with the Soviets, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.  Jim Crow ruled the South, and there was the ever present fear of nuclear obliteration.  We certainly can be forgiven if we look back on the mid fifties and early 60s as a time of American greatness, but no one who lived through that period experienced much comfort in the face of external threats and internal bigotry.

Thus, promises by Mr. Trump or even Mrs. Clinton to make America great again may be well intentioned as well as politically expedient, but it is vitally important to remember that the path to greatness is full of hazards rather than instant gratification.  Mr. Trump’s assurance that if he is elected, America will “win” so often in our struggles with other nations that we’ll be bored with winning is absurd!

American greatness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  American greatness is a personal not a national evaluation!  Whether or not America is great is not up to either Trump or Clinton.  American greatness is ultimately up to you and to me.  However, there is an even more vital factor in the measurement of America’s greatness.

 Of course, America is our home and thus beckons us to her bosom.  The children of other nations are also so beckoned.  Hence, the ultimate test of American greatness is invariably a verdict of humankind.  Individually we can be forgiven, and perhaps we should be encouraged to make America great, but the realization of American greatness is ultimately not up to us.

To hope that America is great is indeed noble.  To declare America “great” for political renown is arrogantly ignoble and as such is both unAmerican and unpatriotic!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY