By Edwin Cooney
Last Thursday, a lady who I suspect will vote for Mr. Trump, wondered out loud, “why don’t we do better than we do when it comes to choosing presidential candidates?” My immediate response to her was “we don’t choose the candidates, they choose themselves. Were we, after all, to actually “choose” a candidate, we’d entice presidential candidates from their preoccupation with private or public affairs. That, however, doesn’t happen. We merely select from candidates who have already chosen themselves to lead us. It always has been that way and I’m guessing that it’ll likely always be that way!” From Washington to Obama and their opponents, Adams to Romney, there runs a common thread: personal ambition. No one has ever forced even one candidate to seek the presidency. Even more, it’s highly likely that there are many people out there who don’t even dare to run even although they possess sufficient wealth and political status! Thus, in 2016, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, whatever their motives, agendas and backgrounds, have one thing in common, a driving ambition for personal socio/political satisfaction and gratification. Consider this! Only 43 people since the spring of 1789 have achieved the American presidency. That’s 43 individuals out of approximately eleven generations of Americans, My estimation is that approximately one billion Americans have populated this continent since George Washington reportedly agreed to accept unanimous election to the newly minted office of President of the United States. Some, perhaps even most, believe that Washington accepted election totally out of duty. However, knowledge of human nature reminds some of us that duty, when it encompasses our perceived abilities and talents, is an ever-tempting and self-energizing nectar!
Thus, between 1789 and 1831 when the first national political conventions were held with representation from most of the states, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and even Andrew Jackson were chosen largely by a combination of state legislatures and party congressional caucuses before their ultimate election by the electoral college.
For the next 100 years, presidents were chosen largely out of the public eye by the political and financial structures of the Whig, Republican, and Democratic parties. Remember, United States senators weren’t popularly chosen in most states until 1914. That tells those of us who are students of history that very few men elected president during that time (with the exception of military leaders such as Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Grant) were known nationally before the expression of their party’s preferment. Sure, newspapers reported the speeches of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, William Jennings Bryan, the “also rans” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but there were few ideological differences between the unsuccessful and successful candidates which were discernible to the public of that era.
Eighty-three years have passed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seated in a small metal wheelchair (according to one report I once read), inserted a small bridge between his two front teeth to prevent him whistling when pronouncing the letter S, next inserted a cigarette into his long ivory cigarette holder and went in front of microphones to deliver his first “fireside chat.” The purpose of that Sunday night, March 12, 1933 address was to assure the public that banks, which were about to reopen, were safe to receive deposits. The president’s rich tenor voice and cultivated Harvard accent gave a combination of warmth and learned authority to his reassurances that today we would describe as sufficiently “presidential.” Ever since that broadcast, the person of the presidency has become equally if not more real to the American people than the institution itself.
Since 1932, candidates for president have been forced by multiple cultural and political circumstances to endure a political and personal grilling that is intellectually, emotionally and even spiritually invasive and dehumanizing. Hence, it is essential to victory that candidates grasp for a socio/political advantage during a presidential campaign. Thus they’ve come to rely largely on both sensationalism and ideological agendas sustained by money and media.
As I listened to Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic nomination last Thursday night, I passed through a few somewhat conflicting moods and thoughts. As I listened to her describe her heartfelt agenda, I passed through an instant of boredom. After all, her work on single payer healthcare while first lady adequately and permanently stamped her as a liberal in my mind. Next, as she threaded her way through the agenda she will face as president, I felt re-assurance that this lady really gets it — it, being the essential cooperation any successful president needs to accomplish priorities throughout his or her term — because like it or not, the business of politics requires the skills of a good politician. (Note: good politicians must sometimes be both warm and ruthless. Some examples include Mayor Fiorello Laguardia of New York, Mayor Richard J. Dailey of Chicago, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, FDR, Truman and, of course, LBJ. As for President Obama, his successes have occurred when he has let others do the political wheeling and dealing, thus leaving the application of policymaking and inspiring up to him.)
No, we, the American people, don’t consciously choose our presidential candidates, but we do create the atmosphere and fertilize the socio/political soil in which they ultimately thrive. Our presidential candidates are the fruits of our creation offering themselves for our selection - or, if you prefer, for our election.
Here’s the truth! We’ll be more successful in creating a higher quality of presidential candidates when we recognize three essential realities. We must modify our own political agendas in recognition of the legitimacy of our neighbor’s welfare, recognize that freedom accommodates the natural and benign needs of others, and realistically evaluate and respond to the multiple societies with which we must engage around the world.
There’s little evidence right now that we are ready to consider those three vital restraints before election day, Tuesday, November 8th, 2016. If we don’t, Mr. Donald Trump may well be President Donald John Trump come January 2017.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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