IN THE NAME OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, AMERICA'S GREATEST SATAN/SAVIOR STILL LIVES

By Edwin Cooney

At 8:45 p.m. on Monday, January 30th, 1882, James and Sara Delano Roosevelt's only son Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. Originally, Mama Sara intended to name him “Warren Delano” after her father, but due to the death of her brother's son by the same name, Sara named him after her favorite uncle, Franklin Hughes Delano. James Roosevelt wanted to name him Isaac, but Sara would have none of that! (Some have suggested that had he been born Isaac, FDR would have been the first presidential Ike.)  Baby Franklin weighed 10 pounds although both he and Sara nearly died due to an overdose of chloroform. Hence, what's here is not about FDR's presidency as much as it is about his personhood!

Raised as an only child although he had an older half brother James Roosevelt Roosevelt, young Franklin had every book, toy, horse or boat that he could ever wish for. At 10, he had his first pony, at 12, his first rifle, and at 16, his first sailboat.  The wide Hudson River that connects Albany to New York City was a part of his playground. Like his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin (never Frankie and only rarely “Frank” to a few) especially loved science, history, and sailing. However, the story has been told that when Franklin was about 4 and sailing home from Europe during a severe windstorm which nearly capsized their ship, he begged his mother: “Mama, Mama, save my Jumping Jack!” Note: The only one I have ever seen quoted to have called FDR “Frank” was Governor Al Smith of New York.

Although he was dressed as a girl until he was 5, he wore kilts until age 8 when he finally wore pants. He engaged in a rigorous outdoor life of sailing, skiing, fishing and hunting, and his steady relationship with father James intensified his manliness. Although generally obedient and polite, he did have a boyish streak. One night, he put phosphates into his nanny's chamber pot stored under her bed. The fizz undoubtedly got him punished, but probably not spanked.

From childhood he knew how to tell a good story and appreciated the pleasure it gave others — potential voters, of course!

As a student and young politician, he was charming and friendly for the most part, but his considerable height, unusual good looks and social class caused him to look down at too many people along his large but handsome nose. Hence, to many liberal friends, he originally seemed at least aloof. 

In 1903, his final year at Harvard, he met and fell in love with Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin. Eleanor was tall, slim and willowy with pretty eyes and thick hair. Franklin was taken away by her intellect and was curious about her fascination with the needs of the poor in New York. When they wed on Saturday, March 17th, 1905, Eleanor was given to Franklin by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, who was visiting New York for the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The standard reception line of the bride and groom was taken over by the President who was said to want to be "the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."     

FDR grew into a mature, tall, athletic, handsome young man, confident of whom he was and of his powers of persuasion. As a politician, he learned the vices and virtues of the successful politician. Between January 1911 and March 1913, he was a member of the New York State Senate. Following nearly eight years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, at the age of 38 he was nominated as the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee under candidate Governor James M. Cox of Ohio. Few knew that a year and a half earlier, he had nearly ruined his marriage and political career due to an affair with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Page Mercer. Since a divorce would destroy his political career and limit Eleanor's liberal Democratic social contacts and ambitions, they mutually agreed to remain married. FDR agreed to permanently stop seeing Lucy Mercer. As his presidency grew more wearing and he became lonelier, FDR began seeing Lucy again during World War II. She was with him in Warm Springs, Georgia where he died on Thursday, April 12th, 1945.

His polio attack which occurred on Wednesday, August 10th or Thursday, August 11th, 1921 at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, the Roosevelts’ traditional summer home, was originally misdiagnosed which increased its intensity and damage. Through strenuous efforts, he could stand with assistance, but most of every day he needed a wheelchair. He needed assistance bathing, dressing, and transferring to and from his wheelchair. For all intents and cultural purposes, he was an invalid. His emotional recovery was incredible in that he became sufficiently both patient and sympathetic to the struggles of others.

Exceedingly friendly and cheerful by temperament, FDR was a "can do" person and politician. During the twenties, he turned his own recovery needs into the Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation for polio patients. Elected to the governorship of New York State in 1928, he was willing to utilize both private and governmental resources to attack poverty created by the Depression.

Although FDR was never a socialist, he was willing to utilize socialist strategies to combat traditional privileges or licenses that benefited capitalists whom he called "economic royalists.” Hence, laws creating the Securities and Exchange Commission, banking regulations, and public works programs became the center of the first and second "New Deal.”

Although he was generally friendly and cheerful, he could be angrily stubborn when defied or denied. "The Boss's Dutch is up!" cabinet and administration colleagues were occasionally known to say. As for his integrity, he would often explain: “I never let my right hand know what my left hand is doing." One day in 1935, he sent his aide Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran down to Congress to lobby for a particular proposal. In the meantime, he decided not to pursue the issue which he had sent Corcoran down to advocate. When Tommy returned, FDR explained, “I’ve decided that this problem ought to be a political issue in the coming campaign. For now this matter is more helpful as an issue than it is a solution." 

FDR's resentment of the United States Supreme Court's willingness to declare unconstitutional "needed and even vital" economics and social legislation led to the almost permanent destruction of both the president and the New Deal. It wasn't so much the proposal itself, but the president's unwillingness to advise administration and congressional leaders of his intentions. He merely announced it without their consultation. In their eyes, FDR had become a dictator rather than a congenial politician.

In 1938, FDR sought to purge the Democratic Party of all conservatives. Georgia Senator Walter George, one of whom was to be purged, used to assert that those who considered the president his own worst enemy were wrong saying "as long as I'm around he isn't!"

The New Deal was over by 1939 and so, instead of being “Doctor New Deal,” FDR became “Doctor Win the War.”

We celebrate this far from perfect man and politician, administrator and gentleman, for the social benefits he left to us. Presidents Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Wilson left us mostly with valued principles. FDR's legacies were gifts that influenced our ongoing well-being. Their upkeep and improvement are, I think, vital to our future.

For this reason, January 30th remains an exceedingly special date on every year’s calendar!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY  

THE LIE, THE MYTH, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH

By Edwin Cooney

Several times since I began writing these weekly musings, I've made reference to the foresight and careful thoughtfulness and eloquence of President John Kennedy’s June 11th, 1962 Commencement Address at Yale University. In that speech, he asserted that one of the reasons it is difficult to adopt genuinely meaningful legislation is largely due to our tendency to rely on stereotypical and mythical political solutions to solve national issues.

Observed President Kennedy: "As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so we in our time must move on from the reassuring and repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deceptive, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears, we subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Back in 1962, JFK maintained that our concerns were a matter of different strategies in the achievement of the same goals. However, sixty years later as we enter 2023, we have moved on from an era of general consensus to an age of ideological separation. Families, neighborhoods, states, and America as a whole have all been overwhelmed by "free agent” politics and politicians.

Hence the question: how can you and I grasp the truth, thus enabling us to create solutions to our national problems?

First, we must strive to determine what lies at the root of our national  discontent. Second, we must make every conscious effort to comprehend and consider the fears and woes of our fellow citizens. Third, we must educate ourselves on how the government operates. For instance, how many of us understand what it takes to create and pass legislation through Congress? I have somewhat of an idea, but my knowledge is far from complete. Fourth, we must separate the questions of political ideology from the rules governing the passing of legislation in the House and the Senate.

While it's unlikely that most Americans will ever do it, it is vitally important that those of us who are so intent on spouting our opinions make at least some effort to be knowledgeable in what it really takes to pass laws in the America of 2023. Our right to have opinions is pretty close to absolute in a free society, but the weight of opinion is very largely dependent on the factors we allow in reaching our conclusions.

For too many of us, political ideology even more than practicality dictates our opinions! All I can do for myself and urge you to do is to keep in mind that however you think or feel, try and avoid the distractions brought on by both lies and myths!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THOSE NASTY ANGELS

By Edwin Cooney

In his Monday, March 4th, 1861 Inaugural, in an attempt to urge national unity over rebellion, Abraham Lincoln referred  to our highest tendencies as a people as "the better angels of our nature." Not to be outdone by "the Great Emancipator,” Richard Nixon used the same phrase to make the same observation during his Monday, January 20th, 1969 Inauguration!

As I look over the divisions and resentments occurring in 2023's version of national politics, two things are obvious. First, these new House priorities don't address the real issues people really and truly are worried about. These issues include climate change, the financing of badly needed infrastructure, and the worries that traditional majority groups have about becoming minorities in an increasingly Black, Hispanic, and other ethnic and gender-oriented constituency. Second, most of the priority issues being enunciated by the House's new majority are designed to get back at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her "left wing" minions. As negative and destructive as this may be, it's very traditional. Here are some examples:

1) In July of 1921, the new GOP Senate majority, resentful of much of the Wilson Administration's domestic and foreign policies, opened an investigation of the Wilson Navy Department and, specifically, of the activities of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 1920. His prominence and his charming personality were potential future political threats to the Republicans’ political future. The question was whether or how much the Navy Department had been involved in the efforts of the Newport, Rhode Island Naval Base's efforts to clean up a homosexual scandal. FDR sought to minimize his participation in the matter which he barely managed to do. Ted Morgan in his 1981 biography of FDR shows that Roosevelt was much more vulnerable to the charge than he had insisted. The hearings put a lot of stress on young Franklin and that heavy stress, Morgan insists, given FDR's health history, may well have contributed to his August 10th, 1921 polio attack. (Note: the naval base scandal was never a political issue against FDR, as controversial as it was, once he was elected President!)

2) During the late 1940s and early 1950s, much of Congress's agenda was designed to clean up the accomplishments of the 

Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The Taft-Hartley bill, offered in 1947 by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and New Jersey Congressman Frederick A. Hartley, countered the Wagner Act of 1938 guaranteeing the legitimacy of labor unions and their right to strike. Other anti-Roosevelt and Truman congressional actions included the work of the unAmerican Activities Committee and its subcommittee that Congressman Richard Nixon used to investigate former State Department employee Alger Hiss who went to jail for denying his membership in the Communist Party in 1938. The Eisenhower Administration was nearly denied the right to negotiate treaties by the proposed Bricker Amendment which sought to alter the president's ability and flexibility during international treaty negotiations.  

 

3) Congressional investigative and other activities have plagued the post-presidential reputations of every president since the 1950s. These investigations, although they occasionally may disclose vital errors, are the type of advice to which those nastier angels of our nature are so susceptible. The most common of this type of advice is the suggestion that when something negative or bad happens, don't get mad, get even! 

The audacity of the American people to elect a Black President in 2008 and again in 2012 just had to be countered by his opponents as the election of a foreigner or of a radical Muslim!

The worst aspect of "get even" politics is the way it obscures the real national agenda.

Next week, I'll define (as objectively as I can) our real national agenda.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE GOP ROAD

By Edwin Cooney

The selection of Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House following 15 rounds of bitter and contentious sparring was conclusive but hardly unifying or healing! Politics since the mid 1970s has been about the destruction of the old political party system rather than being about any kind of political or national unity. Both Democrats and  Republicans over the past 50 years have destroyed the old seniority system, have sought to limit the terms of elected officials at both the national and state levels and have created  what Professor Richard Pildes calls “free agent” politicians. Steadily freed of party obligations in the way of rewards and punishments, congressional leaders such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz (who considers himself the Right's AOC) are on the verge of becoming at least the first wave of the new GOP oligarchy.

What is especially fascinating to imagine is how Speaker McCarthy can consider himself strengthened by the prerogatives and powers that he has negotiated away in his effort to realize his greatest political ambition. Speaker McCarthy would be much more powerful had he been selected from the ranks to serve as Speaker rather than achieving that office from his knees via the grovel!

Another aspect of this “elephantine” wrestling match is how ineffective both Ms. Greene and Mr. Trump were in their efforts to pull Mr. McCarthy out of the pile and station him atop that glorious altar on which good politicians named Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Tom O'Neill and Nancy Pelosi so recently stood.

For years and years, third party hopefuls have deplored the dominance of the two party system while people like me have defended its essential stability. The steady dominance of interparty discipline has achieved a major accomplishment in the destruction of both Democratic and Republican authority on Capital Hill which so many third party advocates have deplored. 

As Professor Pildes points out, politicians have moved from the rank and file of party membership to political free agency. Due to the prevalence of the internet and ideologically based television, individual politicians named AOC, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Donald J. Trump no longer have to depend on party favor or preference to advance and sustain themselves on the local or national political stage.

Although the first steps of functional party reform in the past 50 or 60 years began largely in the Democratic Party especially in the wake of the Watergate era, well financed Republicans today lead the army of political wunderkinds who are clearly determined to starve the progressive party body politic of the funds necessary to sustain the social and economic needs and rights of millions of racial and ethnic oriented Americans.

Having failed to totally dismantle progressive government by eliminating established departments such as that of Energy, Welfare, and Education (something Messrs Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Trump tried and failed to do), Speaker McCarthy will use the power of the purse, the House's most potent and legitimate function, to cut, slash, deny and minimize the well being of so many good people!

Now that they've managed to elect a Speaker, they will traverse this new Republican road. No doubt they'll insist it's a road to much needed reform. I insist it's a road to national chaos and, ultimately, to Republican Party wreckage.

Following that wreckage, they’ll perhaps be ready to reason once again and give the Democratic Party the kind of opposition both parties need!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY   

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEW

By Edwin Cooney

Humankind has been marking and therefore measuring the significance of time going back to the era when the clock replaced the sundial. Yet, especially the older we get, you and I insist each January 1st that there's nothing really significant or "new" about the incoming year. Many of us no longer have the energy or even the inclination to stay up until midnight. Hence, for openers, I bet there are more “bah, humbugs" aimed at “Happy New Year” than there are at "Merry Christmas!" (Note: This is probably due to people’s resistance to keeping New Year’s resolutions!) Yet, January 1st has only been New Year's Day since 1752 (that's a mere 271 years ago) when the British officially adopted the Gregorian calendar. (As I pointed out recently, George Washington never celebrated his 19th birthday because there was never a “February 11th” of 1731. Nor was there a January 1st through March 25th of 1731. Father George, who died on Saturday, December 14th, 1799, was officially 67 years and 295 days old.  You can say that George's time was longer than his years since in official years he lost one year and eleven days. Washington was recorded as being born on February 11, 1732.)

Ah! But time passes on, however it is measured. Hence, it allows the new to prevail over that which was important, practical, thinkable, or even doable in the past. Whether you or I had the energy, gall, or the presumption to celebrate the onset of 2023, the new year brings to realistically cynical you and me its greatest and most wondrous gift! 

That gift is its newness.

New is fresh, untrammeled, unexplored, and only partially predictable. Don't let anyone tell you that no one (who possesses "common or practical  sense”) does not look forward to the new. After all, newness represents almost boundless opportunities.

When I was growing up and the Yankees were beating the Brooklyn Dodgers on almost an annual occasion, I'd hear Dodger fans crowing: "wait till next year!”

 

Who would have predicted just 23 years ago that we would elect a Black president or the the birth of the iPhone and the iPod. Neither his detractors nor supporters could have predicted the Trump presidency. Would any Republican have predicted that one day Republican leaders would have nice things to say about Vladimir Putin formerly an officer in the Soviet KBG? They used to ridicule those of us who admired Mikhail Gorbachev. Cubs fans may have prayed for their 2016 championship, but they wouldn't have dared to predict it!

History enables us to evaluate the past, but the past was once the future! When I was about 8 or 9, I asked my foster father if, while growing up, he knew he was living in the “olden” days. He responded that his days were modern to him just as today’s were modern for me. I'm quite sure that I didn't entirely grasp the significance of the olden versus the modern, but what else could a 9-year-old boy ask?

The fact of the matter is that without the new there is no significance to the old. The conundrum is that there's nothing tangible about the new because it isn't clearly fathomable!

Therefore, if you're one of those who had neither the interest, the energy or even the inclination to celebrate the arrival of 2023, that's okay, but don't try telling yourself that there will be nothing "new" about 2023, because anyone who buys a lie deserves the deception that accompanies it!

President Lincoln used to urge Americans to think anew and act anew according to changing circumstances.

I'm convinced that what's possible, good or bad, is generally more desirable than most of what never will be!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY