HIS NAME WAS STEPHEN BUT PEOPLE CALLED HIM GROVER!

By Edwin Cooney

Stephen Grover Cleveland was born Thursday, March 18th, 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey, the son of the Reverend Richard Falley and Ann (Neal) Cleveland. Richard Cleveland was a Presbyterian minister throughout his son’s youth. Young Cleveland was 16 when his father died in 1853. Later that year, a friend arranged for him to teach reading, writing and arithmetic at the New York Institute for the Blind. (He only taught there for a short time and I've read no details of what he taught or how he taught it!) By the 1860s, he was practicing law in Buffalo, New York.

The 1860s were Civil War years and Cleveland was certainly physically and mentally strong enough to fight, but when he was drafted in 1863, he legally, under the Conscription Act, paid a 32-year-old Polish immigrant, George Benninsky,  $150 to go to war in his place.

By 1870, he was the elected sheriff of Erie County, New York. One of his duties as sheriff was that of executing convicted killers. Patrick Morrissey, who stabbed his mother to death, and Jack Gaffrey, who shot a man during a card game, were hanged by Grover Cleveland.

When Grover Cleveland ran for Mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and for Governor of New York in 1882, he was regarded as a reform-minded Democratic candidate.

There were two primary differences between the GOP and the Democratic Party in the 1880s. The Republicans’ idea of reform was to pay out large, private pensions to Civil War veterans. Reform-minded Democrats believed in cutting government costs at all levels. Republicans believed in a high tariff to protect industries from competition at home. Democrats believed that lower tariffs would increase agriculture markets abroad. However, both parties competed to put together the best Civil Service program.

In 1884, Governor Cleveland faced James G. Blaine, former Secretary of State under the late and martyred James A. Garfield. Both men were of high quality but each had a scandal.

It was revealed early in the campaign that Grover Cleveland had fathered a little boy named Oscar by a woman named Maria Halpin and was supporting the child. Governor Cleveland openly admitted it. James G. Blaine's "corruption" was financial and had to do with the misappropriation of public monies. Hence one commentator suggested that since Blaine was a superb citizen and since Cleveland was a superb public servant, each man should be encouraged by voters to continue serving in the aspects of life they best exemplified.

Grover Cleveland would serve two nonconsecutive terms as president, 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897. On Wednesday, June 2nd, 1886, Cleveland would become the second president to marry while in office. (John Tyler was the first president to so do on Wednesday, June 26th, 1844.) Cleveland's bride was the 21-year-old Frances Folsom, the daughter of one of Cleveland's late law partners, whom Cleveland had supported as a ward throughout her childhood in Buffalo, New York.

Cleveland's first term was marked by the strengthening of the civil service system, the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Cleveland's introduction of the low tariff which led to his defeat by Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Cleveland won the popular vote, 5,534,488 to Harrison's 5,443,892. However, Cleveland won more states 20 to 18, but Harrison won the states with the most electoral votes, 232 to 168. In 1892, Cleveland won both the popular and the electoral vote, thereby becoming both our 22nd and 24th president.

Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, didn't believe that the government should serve the working man or any other man. In his second Inaugural Address, he asserted that the people should support the government rather than the other way around. Ironically, during his first administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first strictly regulatory federal agency ever created, was passed! Also, Cleveland, who considered himself a "working man's president" and who ultimately proclaimed Labor Day a national holiday, sent federal troops into Chicago in 1894 to quell the famous Pullman Strike. Grover Cleveland was also considered a “gold democrat” who was in opposition to the “silver democrats” who supported William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Nor was Cleveland sympathetic to labor as it developed under such leaders as Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs.

Woodrow Wilson would eventually assert that Cleveland was ultimately  more of a Republican than he ever was a Democrat.

Still, with all of these seeming contradictions, Grover Cleveland is considered a "near great president."

He and Francis would have three daughters and two sons. Their oldest daughter Ruth would always be known as "Baby" Ruth. Born between Cleveland's two terms in New York, her health was always frail and she died at age 12 in 1904. The “Baby Ruth” candy bar would be named after her.

Grover Cleveland would have still another distinction. He was the sixth cousin once removed of Ulysses S. Grant. Whether or not they ever met, I haven't a clue!

Grover Cleveland died at 8:40 p.m.on Wednesday, June 24th, 1908 at his Princeton, New Jersey home.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

COMMON SENSE — IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME!

By Edwin Cooney

Come on now, be truthful! What's usually going through your mind when you say to someone "have a little common sense”  or “use your common sense”?

Most people who utter those interminably boring words to me are usually frustrated because I don't, didn't, or won't think, say, do, or believe what they think, do, or say they will do because they believe something or other!

I'll never deny that I feel a high degree of gratification when people agree with me, because agreement is wonderful intellectual and emotional reinforcement of a strong belief or set of beliefs. More than once as a parent, I urged my lads to use their "common sense" especially when it came to their behavior in and around school or towards their mother.

A person I love and respect almost beyond expression insists that common sense is merely "the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions." Then she chides me, "What's wrong with that?"

What's the matter with it is largely its application. "Use your common sense” is a command, even a demand. On reflection, I've come to realize that to urge the use of anyone's "common sense" is largely not instructional. More than that, such an instruction comes from a place of superiority. Beyond that, it's demanding and it intensifies disagreement or conflict rather than alleviating it. Finally, it's confrontational and authoritative rather than either supportive or encouraging. After all, the value or applicability of your behavior is inevitably subject to how others see your application of "common sense” as opposed to how you view your own behavior. If your "common sense" says vote for Trump and my "common sense” says vote for Hillary, Biden, or Bernie, and we slug each other with our "common senses," where does that leave our feelings, our attitudes and ultimately even our behavior?

Insistence of "common sense" is especially galling in politics. At present, there is a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination here in New York who insists that he'll bring "common sense" along with prudent economic administration to government (of course), because elected legislatures have never met anyone as efficient and honest and as determinant as he is. He even tells the public that unless legislators do things the way he tells them to, it will hurt their paychecks. Now, I'm generally sympathetic to the Democratic Party these days, but an appeal like that is an absolute turnoff for me. I suppose that self-righteousness is admirable at some times, especially when there is a counter element of self-righteousness in the field of debate, but there's little about self-righteousness that informs and thus convinces anyone as I see it!

As for sense, common or otherwise, it is invariably a physical, emotional, or intellectual reaction to other’s beliefs, behaviors, attitudes. Additionally, sense is the almost automatic physical reaction to heat, cold, gravity, or pain. If all of these senses are natural, then it's in denial of "common sense" that we have learned to fly above the atmosphere and into outer space. It can also be said that swimming in the extreme depths of the sea is a defiance of "common sense."

How many times have you heard a parent tell their child that a cat won't sit on a hot stove due to its "common sense." The late Gordon Liddy used to hold his hand over a hot cigarette lighter to demonstrate his willpower. However, you and I would pull our hand from a flame or avoid getting our fingers slammed in a door or withdraw our toes from under someone's spiked shoes — especially when our bare toes are at risk. These reactions are true enough, but they're instinctive rather than logical.

As I see it, good sense exists out of necessity — why else would Christopher Columbus have sailed despite the possibility of sailing right off the edge of the world! Back in 1491, the edges of the world to the average Italian, Spaniard, Frenchman, German and Englishman were plain "common sense” since the curvature of the earth can only be viewed from a great distance.

So, let's stop this appeal to people's "common sense" and respect them enough to discuss with them what makes “good sense.”

Even when we're frustrated or angry, let us begin teaching our otherwise “good sense” to others rather than our personal outraged self-righteousness!

So, there it is, you “common sense” types. Good sense might not be common enough, but it's too valuable to take for granted!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

"NO," SAYS PRESIDENT BIDEN. “THERE'LL BE NO NUCLEAR WAR WITH PUTIN.”

By Edwin Cooney

Before they are powerful, most world leaders are gifted with numerous material luxuries which give them pleasure beyond the gratifications of public office. Additionally, most of them have the capacity to draw distinctions between the foolish and the practical when it comes to public policy. Thus I, along with Joe Biden, believe that there will be no nuclear war with Vladimir Putin initiated by either Putin or President Biden.

Back in the mid 1980s during Soviet Premier Konstantin Chernenko's 393 days-long premiership (February 13th, 1984 to March 10th, 1985) and the time of President Reagan's re-election to the American presidency, the world was filled with much consternation regarding the effects and placements of nuclear weaponry.

Americans wondered if the Soviets would react badly if the Reagan administration put cruise missiles into NATO. The Russians got their undies in a bunch over President Reagan's Star Wars missile defense program. Then, there was the distinction between nuclear weapons that destroyed absolutely everything and those missiles that killed people and left buildings and supposedly the opponent's leftover nuclear weaponry intact. Finally, there was the "nuclear winter" prediction by Carl Sagan, a prominent astronomer and documentary producer, whose nuclear winter documentary even impressed President Reagan. Dr. Sagan pointed out at that time that not only were there far more nuclear weapons on both sides for absolute destruction, but the situation was equal to living in an environment that was soaked in a sufficient amount of gasoline so that it would be fatal to light a single match! 

What the public and hopefully every present and future national leader should grasp is the reality President John F. Kennedy asserted during his Cuban Missile Crisis speech of Monday, October 22nd, 1962. As he enunciated the risks of Khrushchev's missiles in Cuba, he reminded Americans that were we to engage in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, the “fruits” of victory would be ashes in our mouths.

Back in the 1930s in his book "The World Crisis," Winston Churchill sought to measure the costs of wars over the centuries. First it was man against man, army against army. Wars were fought during warm weather months, they were mostly fought on battlefields, and so forth. It wasn't until World War I that wars came to be fought between whole peoples. That reality has also been expressed in the analysis that the living in the wake of a nuclear exchange would envy the dead.

A few short years ago, someone asserted that a nuclear war between theocratic societies might be even more dangerous since spiritual antagonists believe that paradise awaits the victor in a religious war. I think that such a war would be called Armageddon. (No doubt, some believe that Armageddon is something humanity must inevitably face one day.) On the other hand, a struggle between strictly doctrinaire societies is less likely since materialists know they must survive to enjoy their materialism. Victory over communism has been seen by most Americans as a triumph of capitalism over regulation and liberty over tyranny! On the other hand, religious conflict is invariably a spiritual triumph for the victor.

Beyond the above analysis, there's the geographic reality for the victor in a nuclear exchange. In the Middle East, due to their geographic proximity, nations with nuclear capacity can hardly afford to strike at an enemy without endangering the ultimate well-being of its own citizens: Israel versus Iraq or Iran, India versus Pakistan, North Korea versus South Korea. Could Communist China afford environmental damage to itself should it use nuclear missiles against India or South Korea? Could Communist China afford to govern Taiwan if China attempted to conquer Taiwan by first poisoning it?

I'm betting that Vladimir Putin is more interested in ruling his people as they exist than he is in the cleanup he would be responsible for conducting in the wake of the atomic poison so recently suffered by his people.

I close this grim analysis with a mitigating reality as I see it. Human nature being what it is, humankind has demonstrated over the millennia and the centuries its determination to survive and to flourish!

Some would assert that what I just wrote is plain "common sense.” I wouldn't call it plain common sense in view of some of the religious, geographic and attitudes I've just discussed. I'll have much more to say about common sense next week!  

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY