PAST PRESIDENTIAL FLAVORS

By Edwin Cooney

The public watches every administration at least temporarily haunted by an impression of what I'm calling a “flavor.” (Someone somewhere might substitute the word “stink” for “flavor” but I'm too genteel to use a word like stink. I wonder if anyone will actually buy my gentility!)

Andrew Jackson left office on Saturday, March 4th, 1837 and for the better part of the next 25 years Old Hickory and what he would do or not do was anticipated by the Democratic Party. It helped to elect Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce and, finally, James Buchanan. When President Abraham Lincoln took his final breath at 7:22 a.m. on April 15th, 1865, the era during which almost anything really significant happened was in his name whether he would have approved of it or not. Following the dreadful term of Lincoln's vice president Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland would be the only Democrat to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue between 1869 and 1913, but even Cleveland had to run twice to get a second term. As for Woodrow Wilson who took office in 1913, although he was more highly polished and much better educated than Andrew Johnson, Wilson was every bit as racist and an unreconstructed southerner.

Teddy Roosevelt's flavor was one of expectation of progressive politics when he left the presidency and headed for Africa to do some big game hunting in 1909. William Howard Taft had some anti-trust success that was soured by a lack of anticipated progressivism. Woodrow Wilson left the presidency on March 4th, 1921 an internationalist rather than merely an unreconstructed racist southerner. It wasn't until that future war that Wilson had warned against that American voters realized that he was right and they were wrong. However, for twelve long years after "Woody Wilson,” everything from Democrats and progressive Republicans had the Wilson “odor” and was doomed for failure at the pens of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Warren Harding was simply incompetent by his own admission. Calvin Coolidge left office well regarded, but he was steeped in the government flavor which brought about the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover could never grasp the people's genuine need for government assistance. Thus his administration left a hungry and dry taste in most people's mouths.

When FDR, a sick, crippled and spent old man at age 63 who seemed to have been president forever died on Thursday, April 12th, 1945, the difference he'd made in so many lives flavored the Democratic Party and even the government as useful tools of and for the people. It lasted to the end of LBJ's turbulent administration on January 20th, 1969.

Truman's flavor was political cronyism and military stalemate in Korea. After all, America was used to winning its wars. Harry Truman's flavor changed only with the gradual realization of the stability of his foreign policy ventures.

Ike's flavor was government despite Republican dogma. Supported largely by Eastern progressives named Tom Dewey, Henry Cabot Lodge and Hugh  Scott, he spent billions of taxpayer dollars on his highway system and was open to limited civil rights proposals as passed in Congress by LBJ and supported by the up-and-coming Kennedys. JFK's flavor was "what could have been and seemingly nearly was” when he was assassinated on Friday, November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. LBJ's intention was to leave a "Great Society" energized by liberty for all and regulated by a benevolent government in the FDR tradition, but failure in Vietnam and the turbulence of civil rights issues left his administration stale in taste and emotionally exhausted by its "credibility gap."

President Nixon's flavor, despite our arrival on the moon, the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency, the opening of Communist China, and the close of our involvement in Vietnam, was the flavor of Watergate and all it implied. Thus Gerald Ford's administration ended with a reputation of cronyism because Ford had pardoned his friend Richard Nixon.

Jimmy Carter's real flavor is just now coming into fashion. When he was defeated, his failure was flavored by an economy in full free-fall, a foreign policy seemingly indecisive and defeatist. Carter was a well-intentioned president above his head to the extent that, at least during the 1984 and 1988 Democratic conventions, delegates more than less muted their genuine affection for him. President George H. W. Bush's flavor, despite some solid achievements, was that he wasn't really “one of us” because he couldn't appreciate the significance of a grocery store barcode. Additionally, his vice president, Dan Quayle spelled the word “potato” with an “e” --so, back they went to the ranch and the golf course where they functioned better for all of us!

"Slick Willie" was William Jefferson Clinton’s ultimate flavor and it sticks to him this very day despite his obvious smarts and crowd appeal. George W. Bush hung on tight to the politically potent coattail of Evangelical Christianity, free market economic dogma, but his lies about Iraq's expanding weapons of mass destruction and the less than successful Iraq war caught up with him when the economy collapsed.

President Barack Obama was personally more popular than the performance of his administration when it constitutionally gave way to Donald Trump on Friday, January 20th, 2017. Warm and genuine, his rhetoric, like his Affordable Care Act, couldn’t quite overcome his lack of pure political skills. Thus, he was forced to rule more by executive order than by domination of Congress.

I've given you all of these presidential administration flavors and will present you with my taste of Donald Trump's flavor when we meet again next week.

Please stay tuned!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY