TWO ENTITIES BEYOND POLITICS

By Edwin Cooney

We've elected men of many different attitudes and characteristics to be president of the United States. When one enters a voting booth however, one is accompanied by two realities -- availability and wisdom.

Many Americans believed Clinton and Nixon were primarily different types of liars;

Grant was regarded by millions as militarily brilliant, personally decent, but too subject to the bottle and too naive of and thereby too easily influenced by scheming politicians and money makers;

Woodrow Wilson turned out to be a twice-elected racist;

FDR was a slippery but grand and effective politician;

JFK was too handsome and charming to be ignored;

LBJ was almost pure politician;

Lincoln's politics were deliberately misunderstood by partisans on both side of the Mason-Dixon line;

George Washington was the only president considered above politics, although he, too, was eventually politically evaluated as a Federalist late in his second term.

Had the worst attributes of the above presidents been the primary aspects for national consideration, there's a good possibility none of them would have been elected with the exceptions of FDR, Lincoln, and Washington.

As the result of last Thursday's verdict of a jury of his peers, former President Donald Trump is a convicted felon. Having been so convicted, Mr. Trump has crossed the Rubicon that separates acceptability from rejection of his candidacy.

What's ironic about it all is that the party that's insisted that it's the "party of law and order" is about to endorse the first convicted criminal in American history. Unfortunately, Republicans who would "hold their noses" but vote for Mr. Trump are no different than Democrats who held fast to Bill Clinton in 1999. (Note: I would not have voted for Mr. Clinton had he been the Democratic nominee in 2000!) Sometimes brilliance and political social commitments aren't sufficient to earn one's loyalty!

No president, be his name neither Lincoln nor Washington, is above personal and moral evaluation! As for those who would stay home and vote for neither candidate, that's a right, but so is the right to be ignorant or even stupid.

Should Mr. Trump be elected to the presidency by a bunch of Americans (holding their noses), history says that we'll likely survive it with our democracy intact, but it isn't going to be any kind of a "political picnic!"

The wisdom of a vote for President Biden may be highly questionable, but a vote for Donald Trump is as close to criminality as legality and criminality ever come in our government of laws and men!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY