HAPPY OR GREAT - WHICH WOULD YOU PREFER AMERICA TO BE?

By Edwin Cooney

A fortnight or so ago, Maggie Astor reported in the New York Times that the 

United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network listed Finland as the “happiest” country in the world. The survey was conducted by distinguished professors from Columbia University, The Canadian Institute for Advanced Studies, and The Well Being Program at The London School of Economics and Economic Performance. The ten happiest countries are Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia. The United States ranks 18th of 156 countries studied. It is the least happy of the advanced industrial countries. What interests me are these two questions: since  President Trump was elected on a pledge to “make America great again,” isn’t it time for him to define what elements constitute a “great” nation? And can a great nation also be a happy nation?

The World Happiness Report lists the elements of a happy nation. They are a high GDP per capita, a high life expectancy, adequate social support to sustain and hopefully uplift the national standard of living, the freedom of minorities to make choices they believe will improve their lives, and an atmosphere of social tolerance and even generosity.

It’s easier to guess what President Trump might consider to be the elements of a great nation than it is to guess what he believes would make America a happy land once again. (I’m not very confident that the word “happy” is even in President Trump’s lexicon!) Here are the elements I’m guessing President Trump believes would “make America great again.” They are an impregnable national defense, minimal taxes for productive individuals and corporations, balanced national budget legislation which includes a line item veto, absolute acceptance of the concept that property rights outweigh human rights, the return of prayer to the public schools and public institutions, ironclad sustainment of the Second Amendment that guarantees gun ownership sales and rights, and rigid law and order provisions to his interpretation of the Constitution.

As I have pointed out a number of times throughout these weekly musings, I believe there have been at least two periods of American “happiness.”

The first period was just after the War of 1812, between 1817 and 1825, when James Monroe resided in the executive mansion. The country was expanding westward. There was but one political party, the National Democratic Party, which had grown out of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party. The South generally admitted that slavery, although a “necessary evil,”  was more a question of economics than evil. With the passage of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery became an economic issue for the South and a moral issue for the North.  Then, good feelings became contentious issues on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The second era of good feeling began on the raw afternoon of March 4, 1933 when FDR launched his New Deal. The era began to unravel on November 22, 1963, but totally came apart in the wake of the election of 1968.

Of course, happy times aren’t totally absent of political or social contention. FDR certainly had more than his share of enemies. In fact, during his final address of the 1936 presidential campaign, he openly and even (it seemed) happily welcomed the hatred of his political foes. However, that era lasted from 1933 and 1969 and was generally a time when far more boats were floated than were sunk! Although many of Roosevelt’s opponents insist that the Depression didn’t really end until World War II, they never tell students in their FDR-bashing seminars that New Deal financing and administration actually enriched private enterprise enough to win World War II. 

There are several historical realities that made the two eras of good feeling stand out. History has generally been the province of the wealthy.  America was created and united not because the poor rebelled against George the Third, but because the aristocrats (planters, merchants, bankers and westward land speculators) were inconvenienced. They felt harassed by Britain’s demand that the colonists pay her back for the men and money she invested to save men like George  Washington, and Benjamin Franklin from the warlike French and indians between 1756 and 1763.

The rich have indeed done much to create our nation, but moneymaking isn’t necessarily socially or morally sustaining. Hence, another reality of a truly great people is their sense of contentment or happiness. Today we’re urged by the discontent to love our country but hate our government. No people encouraged to hate its government can ever expect to be a happy people especially if the government really and truly is “by, for, and of the whole people” — both poor and rich.

Ideally, both greatness and happiness should be our choice as well as our lot. However, great nations are seldom recognized as being great during their struggles.

While I was growing up, I often wondered if the people of Eastern Europe felt as continuously downtrodden as they were usually portrayed to be by our leadership. In other words, is happiness a product of a national ideology? Of course, it can be affected by repression, but happiness begins with you and me.

Okay, here I come leaping off the proverbial fence. Right now, I’m ready for a nice dose of happiness. I’m convinced that a happy people are in a much better position than a resentful and an angry people to launch and nurture a “great America.” 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

PRESIDENT DONALD THINKS HE CAN! THE WORLD HOLDS ITS BREATH.

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here it is! According to a headline I just read, President Trump thinks he can accomplish what no other president ever has been able to do  —  specifically, negotiate to America’s advantage with a leader of North Korea. After all, no other president has ever been named Donald John Trump! What I’m wondering is, what are President Trump and Premier Kim going to talk about? Up to this point, all that either man has ever done is bloviate at each other.

Historically, every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been very cautious before meeting an adversary at “the summit.” This meeting appears to have about as much preparation as did confrontations at high noon during American frontier days. 

Actually, they have a lot to talk about. Kim Jong-un might well open by reminding President Trump that technically his country is still at war with the United Nations. The document signed at PanMunJom on Monday, July 27th, 1953 which halted the conflict between North and South Korea was a truce, not a peace. He might add that President Trump’s fellow Republicans have been mislabeling it as a peace ever since the ink dried on the document. Thus, his country has been denied sufficient respect for nearly 65 years. Additionally, some 60,000 forces from the United Nations and United States have been pointing some of the world’s most modern weapons at his little homeland since before he was even born.

President Trump might respond that North Korea has deliberately isolated itself by not participating in major conferences which have been held in East Asia ever since the Eisenhower Administration. In addition, President Trump is likely to remind Premier Kim of a series of hostile acts over the years — specifically, the capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo in late December of 1967 and the humiliating treatment of Captain Lloyd Bucher and his crew throughout all of1968.

Getting into the substance of things, Kim is likely to chide President Trump for his outrage over North Korea’s right to build a nuclear weapon’s system. After all, he may point out, North Korea is a sovereign nation which is free to act just like the United States, China or Russia.

President Trump may well respond that America has a special responsibility of leading a great alliance of nations since the end of World War II and has demonstrated over and over again that it has practiced diplomatic restraint despite countless broken promises and acts of aggression on the part of Russia, China and North Korea itself.

The two combatants are next likely to trade accusations as to who brought about each of these crises whereupon Kim will remind the President that the United States of America remains, after 73 years, the only nation to fire a nuclear weapon in anger. This observation is likely to lead once again into Kim’s justification for arming North Korea with weaponry many nations believe it is too poor to responsibly afford.

Once again, President Trump will surely remind Kim that his nuclear button is not only bigger than Kim’s but that it really works. Kim is likely to remind President Trump that North Korea is not alone in the world and that American “fire and fury,” even in the event of victory, will cost America’s taxpayers more than they can possibly imagine. He may well quote President Kennedy who observed during the November 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis address that “…even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth.”

The conversation might then degenerate into who has the greatest trust of the Russian and Chinese leadership. However, should their talk end there, the venture will surely be the bust most people expect it to be. If not, there may actually be some substance taken from this most unlikely meeting.

This meeting apparently requires two things. First, Kim must not interfere with military games which the United States and South Korea are scheduled to conduct in the next few weeks. Second, between now and the time of the meeting, Kim must keep his word not to conduct nuclear tests.

There is speculation even within the Trump administration that this meeting may never take place. After all, if there is to be no substantial result expected from the meeting, there will be little point to it. On the other hand, how much can either Trump or Kim afford to accomplish?

Might President Trump put sufficient pressure on South Korea to recognize North Korea? Were he to do that, how would that play in “Republican Peoria?” If President Trump actually recognizes the legitimacy of the North Korean government, what may he be compelled to do in the way of bilateral cooperation between the “land of the free” and one of the world’s “terrorist nations?”

This is an opportunity equal to President Obama’s strike against Osama bin Laden in May 2011, George W. Bush’s “shock and awe” strike against Saddam Hussein in March 2003, and Jimmy Carter’s Camp David venture in 1978 with Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It may well be as dramatic as President Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972.

Ventures like the one President Trump announced shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday night is the dramatic stuff that historically justifies a presidency.

With either hope or trepidation (and perhaps some of both), we all wonder what this most bizarre of American presidents is up to. Back on Inauguration Day 2017, our newly minted Chief Executive pledged that he would ultimately be the best of all our presidents combined. Millions of us laughed with the derision such a pronouncement surely deserved. After all, outgoing President Obama had warned President-elect Trump that a peaceful resolution of the crisis with North Korea would be his greatest challenge. Even in the face of this warning, Donald Trump appears confident that because he is who he is, he will be the one to successfully fix this relationship and, thus, sometime during the next two months he will meet and confront Kim Jong-un.

If he extracts a stabler peace from this venture, he’ll be a hero. If he fails to be who he says he is, the rest of us will profoundly wish he’d never tried!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

IS PRESIDENT TRUMP A BULLY OR MERELY A LEADER WITHOUT A COMPASS?

By Edwin Cooney

A week or so ago, I read a commentary strongly suggesting that President Trump would really be dangerous if he were “smart.”

That observation reminds me of several presidential self-assessments. 

FDR used to say that he never let his right hand know what his left hand was doing. Richard Nixon thoroughly enjoyed the possibility that North Vietnamese and other Communist leaders might well consider him unpredictable or even “mad.” President Carter reveled in his reputation as “a political outsider” but it was ultimately to his political disadvantage. Finally, President Reagan willingly encouraged supporters to publicly proclaim his loose management style — which ultimately led  to Iran-Contra-gate.

Of course, presidential assets (intelligence, intellectual prowess, integrity, and patriotism) and presidential liabilities (dishonesty, ill temperament, indecisiveness, and incompetence) have traditionally been the way Americans measure presidential conduct.

As for presidential “smartness,” that’s quite another matter! This particular commentator suggests that if President Trump were “smart,” he would be more thoughtful and thorough in his thinking. In other words, he would be more ideological and predictable thus insuring the likelihood of a smoother legislative process with Congress. A smoother legislative process would have enabled a Republican President and a Republican Congress to actually eliminate “Obamacare” last year rather than to merely cripple it. Beyond that, this critic insists that President Trump would be much more successful in his efforts to “drain the swamp” if he were a more serious student of American political and social history.

This criticism, as I see it, is more to the point. Donald Trump has serious flaws as a communicator and as a moral leader. He preaches morality even as documented evidence points to a lack of “traditional morality” in his personal behavior. He preaches loyalty but practices very little himself either to our traditional allies or even to his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He implies that Americans are traditionally suspicious of Russia, but so far shows little concern regarding the obvious threat of Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic imperial foreign policy toward the people of a free Ukraine or a free Syria.

Then, beyond the questions of legitimacy or loyalty, there’s the reality that good people have no monopoly on “smarts.” Adolf Hitler was, in the assessment of most people, an “evil genius” - if not merely a sick one! One of the most constant threads in American history is our increasing tendency to grant all favorable attributes to our social and political friends and allies and assess our political opponents as having almost a monopoly on all things stupid, mean, and/or evil. Both of these tendencies are extreme and unrealistic.

What’s most disturbing about President Trump is his personal conduct in office. There’s his inconsistency in political negotiating, be the subject DACA or his promises to the National Riffle Association when he’s under pressure. Finally, and most sadly, his apparent incapacity to grant political opponents any degree of logical, political or social legitimacy makes it almost impossible for men and women of conscience to reach common ground when it comes to responsible governing.

Back in November 2016, millions of Americans convinced themselves that their choice was between a hardened and corrupt politician — Hillary Clinton — and a tough but realistic businessman named Donald Trump. Their assessment of budgeting was the business budget (the goal of which is not to spend more than it takes in) versus a civic budget (much of which is about investment in human affairs). In the popular mind, politicians primarily wheel and deal at the taxpayers’ expense. The businessman or woman on the other hand invests profits in business expansion which creates jobs at nobody’s expense. What this popular assessment leaves out are two vital realities. Number one, over expenditures by business results in increased costs to consumers. Number two, competition among business entities can be extremely fierce. Businessmen and women often succeed by destroying the competition when they are allowed. Thus, we have Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a bully both by training and, even worse, personal instinct. (Obviously, not all business people are bullies!) However, since Mr. Trump entered politics, he has functioned as an autocratic businessman rather than as an effective and conscientious  public servant. It’s his way or the highway! His social strategy calls for political and legal dominance over opponents, conditions and circumstances.

Whether or not President Trump is perceived as smart or stupid depends on the outcome of his presidency. If business deregulation, business tax cuts, and protective tariffs bring about Trump’s promised prosperity, he could be a cinch for re-election in spite of his permanent state of petulance.

Try this conclusion on: success will be President Donald John Trump’s triumph. Failure will be our fault — not his! How could it possibly be otherwise?!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

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