THE MISSING ELEMENT

By Edwin Cooney

I trust that regular readers of these weekly musings would generally agree that I try, even when being critical, to be optimistic concerning our national future.  I’m still willing to be optimistic, but it’s becoming increasingly like climbing the greasy pole with soapy hands.

America has been grouchy, and even warlike, several times in its history.

In 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was seeking to take the presidency from John Adams' and Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists, there were warnings from the South that if Jefferson were to be unfairly denied there might be a second revolution.

In 1814, angry New England bankers and merchants hurt by the nearly 3 year old war with Britain gathered in Hartford, Connecticut to consider seceding from the Union.

In 1825, supporters of Andrew Jackson who had won both the popular and the electoral vote in the 1824 election were close to apoplectic when Jackson was denied victory in the House of Representatives.  Jackson’s 99 electoral votes to Adams’ 84 votes were greater, but Adams, Georgia’s William Crawford and House Speaker Henry Clay’s combined 152 electoral votes were greater than General Jackson’s.  Thus, on the floor of the House where members voted by state delegation, Speaker Clay arranged that his votes, three of Jackson’s eleven votes, and two of Crawford’s votes went to John Quincy Adams.  Thus there occurred what Jacksonians called “the corrupt bargain” that elected Adams and sent Speaker Clay to the secretaryship of State.  Adams was in fact President, but only in fact.  President Adams only managed to get one major program through Congress during his 1825-1829 term.  That bill was the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution.  Adams would be overwhelmingly defeated by Andrew Jackson for re-election in 1828.  Jackson would receive 178 electoral votes to Adams’ 83.

The 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes and the 1888 electoral vote winner and popular vote loser Benjamin Harrison made hardly a dent on the national mood but neither man was re-elected four years later.  That trend was finally broken when George W. Bush, the beneficiary of the 2000 Supreme Court election, was re-elected in 2004.

Great as he was, Harry Truman was largely vilified during his presidency.  Truman was accused of losing China to the communists, of being a defeatist in Korea, and of socialistic tendencies on such issues as civil rights and medical care.  The negative view of Harry Truman was salved by the election of Ike — who was trusted to protect us — and Jack Kennedy who led and charmed us.

The national mood is the sum and substance of our individual moods.  So long as we’re determined to be angry with one another, the future will be gloomy.

We are still allowing ourselves to be affected by the most destructive elements going back into the 1960s.  We’re still angry over all aspects of the civil rights movement, over the outrages of the Vietnam War, the temerities of Watergate, and the audacity of legalized abortion.  Finally, there’s the judicial complicity of the 2000 United States Supreme Court.  Ah, but there’s more.

Our newly elected president appears to exploit differences rather than seeking solutions to them.  There’s nothing new about this. FDR, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, at times preferred a political issue to the solution of a public question in anticipation of the next political campaign season. The problem is that increasingly political ideology has been used to create and sustain differences rather than merely to outline them.  “I’m patriotic and moral, my opponent is neither. Even worse, he or she is stupid and incompetent.”  Add suspicion of teachers, news-gatherers and scientists to the mix and our sense of national well-being may well be in for a long coma.

By bullying his way into the presidency, Mr. Trump, who will head the government in four days, may soon discover that he’s destroyed the expectation of credibility and respectability which are the key elements of successful administration.  How many times do you hear sports figures say of their managers and coaches: “I’d go through a wall for him.”  How many Americans do you suppose would “go through a wall” for President-elect Trump today?  According to a recent poll, only about 34 percent of the American people say that President-elect Trump has done well during the transition.  Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton had over 50 percent approval of their transition periods.

So, what’s the missing element in our body politic today?  It’s the urgency for national self respect.  We no longer respect each other enough to be truly free.  We prefer suspicion to benefit of the doubt, ideology to morality, and being right to being helpful.

Around noon this Friday, America in the minds of some will begin becoming “great again.”  In millions of other minds, including my own, America will completely slip over the brink of compromise, reasonability, and mutual respect into the caldron of “winner take all” and “survival of the fittest.”

January 20th, 2017 appears to be the equivalent of the April 12th, 1861 attack on Fort Sumpter, of Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, of November 22nd, 1963, and  9/11 all rolled into one overwhelming challenge.

Grim as it sounds, it’s important to remember that the outlook of neither the Civil War nor indeed the Second World War looked promising  at the outset.

One of the most constant threads in our social political history is that seldom do ideological alliances last.  As the late Arthur M. Schlesinger observed, that’s because they often have different “fish to fry.”  The true conservative libertarian and religious moralist are ultimate opponents.  Conservatives may favor dismantling “Obamacare,” but they have a long way to go to effectively replace it.

It’s essential that moderates and progressives not surrender their principles. However, as they seek to wean America back to a national expectation of rational discussion before national resolution, their righteous indignation must be tempered by an effort to build consensus.  An urgency for healthy consensus is the cornerstone of healthy self respect.

A nation determined to build a national consensus will surely fall in love with itself all over again.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY