By Edwin Cooney
Americans have been asking the above question since George Washington packed up his stuff and went back to Mount Vernon. (No doubt a few people asked that question even during the Washington administration!)
Millions of Americans ask that question every time President Trump brings forth another tweet. I believe that there is a very simple answer to that question and I’ll answer it via a series of presidential “whys.”
(1.) Why Franklin Roosevelt? By 1932, almost everyone was a victim of the Depression. People were losing their jobs, homes, businesses, and their hope. The homeless moved into groups of cardboard shacks called “Hoovervilles.” In the summer of ’32, Herbert Hoover sicced the Army on the bonus marchers who’d come to claim the veteran bonuses that the Congress had promised by 1945. Business, bank, and farm failures made it likely that any opponent of President Hoover would defeat him. Roosevelt had a magic name through his Republican uncle Theodore Roosevelt and he had a plan.
(2.) Why John F. Kennedy? It was a close one between the young charismatic Kennedy and the experienced, but rather solemn Richard Nixon. The turning points of the campaign reflected the temperament of the public in 1960. The dazzlingly handsome Kennedy outshone Nixon on America’s favorite toy — television — during the first debate between the two candidates. However, the action that gave the Kennedy campaign its ultimate boost was when JFK called Mrs. Martin Luther King when Dr. King was arrested and sentenced to hard labor following a sit-in in Atlanta. Black Protestant voters in the South, but more important those in the industrial northeast where electoral votes were packed, swung their votes from Nixon to Kennedy when a judge agreed to suspend Dr. King’s sentence.
(3.) Why Richard Nixon? By the close of 1968, Richard Nixon was ultimately the most solid and cerebral presidential candidate. Chaos ruled both parties. Assassination or fear of assassination, weariness and anger over the Vietnam War, and, finally, divisiveness over the struggle for black civil rights, led a sufficient plurality of his fellow citizens to settle for the rather dour former Eisenhower Vice President. After all, the man had a plan, didn’t he?
(4.) Why Jimmy Carter? By 1976, the public was clearly tired of “insider politicians.” President Gerald Ford was honest and decent enough, but he’d rubbed shoulders with old-fashioned politicians for too long. He proved that sufficiently when he pardoned former President Nixon after promising Americans that “…their long nightmare of Watergate was over.” Jimmy Carter was smart but simple in his bearing. Carter spoke plainly promising never to lie to the American people, offering Americans a government as honest and as efficient as themselves. Besides, he was deeply religious without imposing his faith on anyone else. He was a farm boy who had become a naval officer, a nuclear physicist, a fighter for human rights, and a successful Georgia governor. Above all, he was a political outsider who would go to Washington and make a real difference. Thus he went!
(5.) Why Ronald Reagan? Reagan persuasively offered to take government “off Americans’ backs.” Both exceedingly handsome and articulate, he inspired us when he talked, entertained even while feeding us his ideology and, most of all, was a culmination of the truest and best of the past and the most promising of the present.
(6) Why Bill Clinton? President George H. W. Bush committed a horrible political “no-no.” He promised that by reading his lips we could be assured he’d never raise taxes. Then, in the Fall of 1990, he broke his word. It was a perfectly sensible move to make insofar as our needs were concerned, but it was his political Waterloo. Bill Clinton was young, good-looking, and progressive but not too progressive. He came across as a politician willing to take a risk or two if it would be good for the country. Besides, the 16 years “granted” to one political party were up. Bill Clinton was as much a boy as he was a potential president. So, America tried him on.
(7.) Why Barack Obama? The need for change was the theme of 2008 and whatever he did, young Barack Obama would be a change. Like JFK and Ronald Reagan, Obama was both handsome and articulate. He was energetic and a family man. He was academics, political practicality and intellectuality all in one rare package. After dazzling liberal Democrats and turning them away from Senator Hillary Clinton during the campaign, his ultimate success was how he handled himself during the economic crisis during the campaign. While his honorable opponent sought to sooth the national mood with standard conservative optimism, Senator Obama began publicly articulating possible solutions to the looming bank failures. Although his solutions were controversial, he gave voters in 2008 substantial issues to chew on. “He may be black,” many Americans said to themselves (privately of course!), “but he’s smart and we need smart more than anything else.”
(8.) Why Donald Trump? Americans want what they want when they want it, not when some politician vaguely promises what they want will finally happen. Donald Trump promised a lot of impatient, frustrated, self-indulgent Americans that all answers to their worries would be dealt with through executive decisiveness. He would “drain the swamp” of business regulations, unfair trade practices, and lawlessness. Business, as every true American knows, is more efficient and moral than government. It was expected that his presidency would be better than any of his predecessors.
In case you haven’t caught on, I believe that every successful presidential candidate, in one way or another, reflects the national mood. Today, with all of our comforts and social security, we are a self-indulgent, unhappy people. We minimize all factors that challenge our assumptions and beliefs. Even worse, we have sufficiently criminalized all political opposition to the degree that politics, which could often be dirty, is now downright squalid.
Thus we have President Donald Trump. We will continue to deserve him so long as we fail to insist that genuine and continuous freedom means legitimate choice, and that it is vitally important that we perceive and treat others as we would like to be perceived and treated ourselves.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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