By Edwin Cooney
Over the years it seems that these pages are loaded with my personal
confessions, so I guess one more confession won’t hurt! I’m as much
a romantic as I am an academician. I have a tendency to fall in love
with an odd mixture of people and institutions.
Among my favorite people are such personages as: Abraham Lincoln,
Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter, Billy Martin, Elvis Presley, and even Aaron Burr. Among
my favorite institutions are professional baseball, politicians of varying
types and ideologies, and of course the presidency of the United
States. I even once confessed to a clergyman friend of mine that
perhaps the United States presidency was, unconsciously, my
idol. (He agreed with that and offered to pray for
me.) My feeling about the presidency is equivalent to Winston
Churchill’s love for the British Empire and the English monarchy.
I’ve been increasingly concerned about the health of the institution
of the presidency since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It
seems to me that Americans did wake up on the morning of Saturday, November 23,
1963 stripped of their innocence. Take this additional confession as
you must, but I’m a full-throated innocent. I love to empathize and
even admire some political and social rogues, although I do have my
limits. In other words, I’m no fan of George Zimmerman or David
Duke, but I do find Aaron Burr and even Spiro Agnew intriguing. In
addition, I’m fascinated with John Adams’ decision to defend the British
soldiers who participated in the March 1770 Boston massacre as he sought to be
elected to the Massachusetts legislature. (Fortunately, both for the
nation and posterity, Adams was successful as both a defense attorney and as a
political candidate that year.) My guess, however, is that I’m not
alone in this tendency to be fascinated and intrigued by people, events and
institutions.
As I’ve observed in these pages, there have existed three worldwide
institutions over the centuries. The first is the Roman Catholic
papacy. The British monarchy is the second and, since the era of
William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, the Presidency of the United States is
the third. In order to achieve the papacy, one must be steeped in
Roman Catholic history and doctrine. Those first in line for the
British monarchy are, from almost the day they’re born, extensively educated to
meet their royal responsibilities. Under our constitution there are
no specific qualifications for election or appointment except age, citizenship
and, by implication, good behavior. This is also true of the
judiciary. In other words, if you’re 35 years old and a citizen who
“…comes under the tongue of good report,” as Kentucky Senator A.B. (Happy)
Chandler used to put it, you may, without any other qualification, be elected
President of the United States of America. Therein, as I see it,
lies a formidable weakness in our socio/political system!
I see this lack of expectation or qualification as part of the
reason for the increasing ambiguity when it comes to affection for and respect
for the presidency. Although no president, be he named Washington,
Lincoln or Roosevelt, has escaped severe criticism and even reprimand, I remember
a time when few serious minded people regarded the office of the president with
anything less than awe.
For the last 50 years, presidential candidates and presidential
incumbents alike have suffered a level of continuous public abuse that is more
intense than in any other era of our history.
Today, we live under an expectation of political
hatred. President Trump insisted in his recent inaugural address
that all presidents up until his newly minted incumbency were primarily
self-serving. And why shouldn’t he say that? After all,
politics has finally become like sports; winning isn’t only necessary, it’s
everything.
Thus the American voter is encouraged to demonize rather than
minimize socio/political differences. No longer are differences a
matter of strategy or emphasis. Differences are matters of morality
verses immorality. Thus, by the time one side of a moral debate is
elected over the other side of the moral debate, the office of the presidency
is forever tarnished.
A very, very close friend of mine, I’ll call him Mr. Leopold (that’s
not his name!), recently told me that he’s actually lost all respect for the
office of President of the United States. After all, he hasn’t cared
much for any candidate recently and he finds our incumbent president the worst
of them all. (By the way, this gentleman is no liberal by any means! Furthermore,
he’s one of the two smartest men I’ve ever met. He has a towering
intellect and is very judicious in his conclusions.) What I think my
friend Leopold may be missing is that all of the great offices of the world,
the papacy, the British monarchy and the American presidency, have had their
moments of shabbiness and shame as well as glory and greatness.
Forty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon turned LBJ’s common
holidays act from being known as George Washington’s birthday to that of
Presidents’ Day to honor all presidents of the United States. Since
the Nixon presidency, which ended in President Nixon’s resignation in disgrace,
it seems that both major political parties have worked strenuously to minimize
the efforts and morals of each other’s leadership to the extent that by the
time their own candidate takes office his range of opportunities for compromise
and creativity, let alone his freedom to even associate with the political
“loyal opposition,” has become as close to a “Cardinal sin” as can exist in
secular America.
Today begins the second month of President Donald Trump’s term in
office. As I see it, so far the Trump experiment has been pretty
close to a disaster. There is, however, a way to turn President
Trump’s presidency almost 180 degrees around.
Should President Trump champion a major liberal cause and make it
stick, he’ll energize the “body politic” like no chief executive has since the
president who defied “…fear itself.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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