AH, WHAT MAKES IT ALL MATTER?

By Edwin Cooney

Last Wednesday evening, I received a call from someone I’ve thought of as a likely supporter of President Trump. To my surprise she wanted to know if any previous president had been as fumbling, bumbling, crude, deceptive and dishonest as President Trump. 

My response was that while no president had ever come close to DJT in pure cussedness, other presidents had caused considerable chaos at the executive level of government. Among these were John Tyler, the first vice president ever to succeed to the presidency, Millard Fillmore, the second vice president to become president, Andrew Johnson, the third vice president who succeeded to the presidency, and Chester A. Arthur who succeeded the assassinated James Garfield. They were all unelected presidents and, by their succession to the presidency, caused mass cabinet resignations.

In all of the above instances, the public perceived the new presidents to be lesser leaders than the president whose death brought about their respective successions. Consequently, none of these presidents were either renominated or re-elected. Not until the election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Harry Truman in 1948 and, finally, Lyndon Johnson in 1964 were succeeding vice presidents elected to a full term of their own. (Note: Gerald Ford was nearly elected to his own term in 1976, but not quite!)

It is tempting to go through each case and explain its circumstances, but it really would be quite pointless. The reason for that has mostly to do with you and me.

Back in the fall of 1971, I was a student at SUNY Geneseo when George Reedy, the former press secretary to Lyndon Johnson, came touting his latest book “The Twilight of the Presidency.” Mr. Reedy, like many of his contemporary liberal scholars, was convinced that his old boss, LBJ, due to his Vietnam policy, had thus weakened presidential authority for the foreseeable future. He went on to remind us, members of the SUNY Geneseo political science club, how distant were the persons of the presidency from the public’s comprehension until the 1930s. Most Americans  had not heard a president’s actual voice until Franklin Roosevelt began addressing the American people over the radio in 1933. Throughout most of American history, except during a presidential campaign when pictures and posters and enthusiastic political parades blanketed the nation, was a presidential candidate anything more than a name to most voters. Thus, the president was more an institution rather than a flesh and blood individual.

Since my personal enlightenment by George Reedy nearly fifty years ago, the presidential, or potential presidential personality has become as much a factor in national elections as the “vital” issues of the day.

Probably more than any time in history, the outcome of a presidential election, despite the existence of the electoral college, depends on the mood of the people. Remember, there’s nothing secret about the existence of the electoral college. Its existence is a gift of the “Founding Fathers,” that very generation of rich merchants and planters who gave us the Declaration of Independence, our much valued federal system of checks and balances, along with other gifts. The electoral college was designed as a tool of  the states, not the federal government, to temper democracy with republicanism. The electoral college was, in short, designed to be a body of the just and the wise. Hence, the “predictable populous” could be checked by the better born and the better educated.

Thus, five presidents blessed by the constitution — John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Birchard Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George Walker Bush in 2000 and Donald John Trump in 2016 — legally, if unpredictably, have successfully defied the popular will of the American people.

Very few bloggers, columnists, or political pundits, predicted President Trump’s election — yours truly included. Thus, we can hardly expect to be taken too seriously when our personal political incredulity or outrage leads us to predict President Trump’s coming political demise.

Writing in Saturday, August 5th’s New York Times, columnist Nate Cohn points out how misleading political polls are. Specifically, he demonstrates how often positions taken by the Democratic party seem to mean very little when it comes to electoral power. The Democrats’ positions on gun control, immigration reform, health care, and even affirmative action seem to reflect popular support, but Republicans, conservative

Republicans in particular, now hold most of the state governorships, state legislatures, the congress and now the presidency despite the seeming popularity of Democratic party issues. He goes on to guess that this could have to do with the Republicans’ enthusiasm to back their party’s positions versus that of Democratic voters. Furthermore, he suggests that voters have a tendency to buck political trends. Thus, an incumbent president often finds himself, having succeeded, fighting a reverse headwind. That, he suggests, may well be the reason Republicans have been shocked to learn that large portions of their constituents were far more reluctant than they to repeal Obamacare.

Of course, it matters how the people vote! What is less clear is whether people vote because of what they have conscientiously learned or merely due to what they have thoughtlessly come to fear. However, if we’ve learned anything from the 2016 presidential election, it’s how defiant and fickle you and I can be. 

It may well be that the most powerful element of our personal freedom is our freedom to be fickle. Who shows up, who stays away from the polls may well constitute our unpredictable but inevitable national and personal fate.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY