By Edwin Cooney
I was born an upstate New York Republican which is why, in November of 1956 at age 10 going on 11, I got into trouble for running my political mouth. It was during the second Stevenson/Eisenhower campaign when I said to a schoolmate who turned out to come from a Democratic political heritage: Two four six do tell, who do you think should go to hell? Stevenson boo! Stevenson boo! Stevenson boo!
My friend Robby told his dad and his dad reported me to a school authority who proceeded to sternly scold me! (By the way, these days I admire Adlai Stevenson and for much of what he stood for.)
The late 1950s constituted a tense time. Khrushchev beat us into space while we were all attending the Yankees/Braves 1957 World Series. (It was clever of him to beat us while we were all at the games!) We worried that Russia might drop a bomb on us from the open skies. Then President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, and Secretary of State Dulles began pushing back against Premier Khrushchev's threat to create a separate peace with East Germany thus ending our right to remain in and protect West Berlin. That could mean war. Thus Ike, Nixon, Dulles as well as J. Edgar Hoover became my personal heroes and protectors.
After JFK defeated Richard Nixon (my GOP hero) for president in 1960, I reconciled myself with JFK because, after all, he was my president. I delighted in his youth and in his Boston accent. Following his assassination, however, I couldn't get used to LBJ who seemed so coarse and so starkly political!
At that time in early 1964, I began reading commentaries on the rise and fall of great historic empires such as Rome, Greece and even Great Britain. The long and short of those stories was that those empires were born in fierce patriotism determined to resist government coercion, but they grew to become huge incompetent bureaucracies that ultimately died of softness due to too much government and too many giveaways.
The Democrats, I was assured, were primarily guilty of a "steady, deadly, drift to the left” due to FDR's New Deal. It all fit in and made sense to me. Thus I was captured by the general endorsement of that version of history by Ike, Nixon, and Barry Goldwater.. Then, too, it seemed that the Democrats were unconstitutionally finding ways for the federal government to assist Blacks and, although I revered the GOP's Abraham Lincoln interest in helping Blacks, I saw the distinction between federal and private assistance for Blacks. Hence I supported the GOP sponsored "free enterprise zones" over federal restrictions on freedom of choice. The struggle between Whites and Blacks was a people's issue not a government issue. How well or how badly people got on together was up to them, not up to "big government."
In 1968, I was delighted that Richard Nixon, my lifelong hero, was finally elected to end (and I believed to win) the Vietnam War. As I saw it, Richard Nixon was a moderate rather than a conservative Republican. Conservatism by then had lost much of its luster for me, primarily because of what I saw as its tendency to brutally ridicule its opposition in both parties primarily at the behest of the John Birch Society. Between 1969 and 1973, Nixon seemed to dither on the Vietnam War. His Vietnamization increasingly became more more politically strategic than it was patriotic. Then along came Watergate. At the same time, I was a student in college and my knowledge of history greatly altered my once neat idea of the rise and fall of empires and nations. Next came the "Saturday Night Massacre" which saw President Nixon fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and which rocked my political soul.
The ultimate resignation of President Nixon (which was almost as sad as it was necessary) and President Gerald Ford's pardon of his "old colleague" smacked too much of partisan politics for me. Hence, I began re-evaluating my loyalty to the Republican Party.
By 1976, although I knew Democrats were as sinful as Republicans, I became increasingly aware of three basic realities. First, freedom, without responsible adjustment and regulation by society, was a license for social and economic warfare. Second, by their traditional dependence on government to protect their interests, business and banking leaders had already demonstrated that government regulation was and would remain a legitimate tool for the social stabilization of the nation. Finally, just as government is a legitimate tool for the rich, government is a legitimate tool for everyone. After all, no one is only a taxpayer; we're all tax beneficiaries as well. All of us pay taxes even if it’s just the taxes added onto prices that compensate merchants and other wealthy industrialists for the taxes they must pay to remain in business. Thus, since 1976, the Democratic Party under the leadership of Jimmy Carter (who in my opinion was the most humane and creative president of the final 25 years of the 20th Century) has been my hero, not because he was faultless but because he possessed a sense of balance and benign justice which are vital elements of good government of a healthy society.
However unlikely or unrealistic it may be, I hope that before my time is over, both major political parties will realize that unless they learn to work together, even as they contest one another, the fire of their angry and mutual contempt will invariably destroy the freedom for which they insist they stand. In order to bring this about, let local, state, and national elected executives and representatives become politicians once again, rather than the mean vessels of anger too many have become over the past sixty years!
Our national leadership's realization of the above would bring my political story to a happy ending.
Call it a fairy tale if you must, but let it be, at long last, real!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY