THE MISSING INGREDIENT

By Edwin Cooney

A few days ago, I got a telephone call from a friend I'll call LD. At the time of his call, I was struggling with what to write about this week and it was his question that brought about what you see here. Here's the substance of our conversation.

LD: Ed, what do you know about our first ever left-handed president?

I replied: I know his name was James Abram Garfield, that he was a Republican Congressman from Ohio, that he was a teacher and a preacher as well as a college president.

LD (with considerable pride): Well then, I know something about him you don't know. President Garfield could write Greek with one hand, and Latin with the other hand simultaneously. Isn't that impressive?

Me (not to be out done!): He was the first president since John Quincy Adams who possessed sufficient knowledge to administrate every office in his cabinet.

LD was right of course about President Garfield even though I didn't mention it in my immediate response. I  did know it. Beyond that, I began thinking what we know about so many presidents coupled with the comparatively little that we know about President Trump.

Until the 1930s, what Americans knew about their president was what the president’s friends and enemies wrote about him. Radio and newsreels brought FDR's cheerful, optimistic personality and "first class temperament” to the people’s attention even if it didn't inform them that he needed to use a wheelchair most of the time. Both radio and television brought forth President Truman's plain straightforwardness and President Eisenhower's engaging simplicity. There also was the Kennedy charm. (President Kennedy became "Jack" to millions.) Even though not all that people saw in their presidents was positive, at least there was room for both positive as well as for negative impressions.

Even more to the point, over time political advisors became increasingly aware of what effect any president's mood may have on voters. Presidential advisors often counseled the chief executive on the best way, given the circumstances, to approach the public. Presidents ignored such advice sometimes to their detriment — such as the time that Carter wore a cardigan rather than the standard suit coat during his first ever national broadcast following his 1977 Inauguration.

As I see it, President Trump is exhausting the public with his chronic  anger. A presidential attitude such as grim determination in the wake of genuine crisis or endangerment is not only understandable by the public, but even welcomed as they reflect the national mood. After all, as cheerful and optimistic as FDR usually was, his staff occasionally would warn each other that "the boss's Dutch is up." Standing before Congress on Monday, December 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt expressed his anger, but everybody else within the 48 states and in all of the territories was also angry.

Chronic anger appears to be the most effective way the President believes that he can successfully communicate with the American people. Up until the Trump presidency, Americans knew something noncontroversial about every president whether it was Obama's professorial manner of explanation, George W. Bush's love of pork rinds, Clinton playing the saxophone, George Herbert Walker Bush's dislike of broccoli, Ronald Reagan's jars filled with jellybeans, and so on. The most that America knows about President Trump is that he resents all opposition or resistance to any suggestion or directive that he hasn't himself initiated or endorsed. We don't know his son Barron and we barely know our First Lady. We need to see Trump’s charm, his optimism, along with "the better angels” of his nature before too many of us conclude that within his persona there are no angels at all.

Beyond everything we know or don't know about President Trump is that missing ingredient. Simply stated the missing ingredient in President Trump's relationship with the American people is his total lack of magnanimity for our worries not on his agenda.

President Trump's "October surprise" this election season must powerfully and persuasively demonstrate his capacity for genuine magnanimity for a much broader group of Americans than he's shown so far or he may find himself permanently unemployed!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY