PART TWO: “MY GOD! WHO PICKED THAT GUY?”

By Edwin Cooney

Amidst constantly changing social, technological, and political conditions, twenty men would become president between 1901 and 2019.   

Blame the assassin of William McKinley, if you must, for the advancement of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. After all, the politicians didn’t want him.

Of course, since the election of “unanimous George” in 1789, politicians had the  key role in electing a president, but in 1900 and 1901, it was different. At the 1900 GOP Convention led by Senator Thomas Platt of New York and other political leaders, the politicians sought to kick “Governor Teddy” upstairs to the least powerful office in all “federal-dom” - the vice presidency of the United States.” 

At 4:07 p.m. on Friday, September 6th, 1901, while shaking hands with the public at 

at the Pan-American Exposition’s Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year-old unemployed iron worker from Detroit, Michigan. Eight days later at 2:15 a.m., the president died. 

The assassination of the exceedingly genial Bill McKinley did more to alter political life in this country than the preceding assassinations of Lincoln and Garfield as well as the future assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. You may ask how that could be.

The short answer is because Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president. The better answer is because President Theodore Roosevelt began advocating on behalf of the “general welfare” more insistently and persistently than any previous chief executive. 

First, TR advocated for business to recognize the anthracite coal miner’s union when it went on strike in May 1902. Although he wasn’t fully successful, TR put sufficient pressure on the mine owners to be open to ongoing negotiations through the coming winter, thus keeping millions of homes warm while saving vulnerable Republican seats in the upcoming 1902 congressional elections. During the next seven years, there followed such presidential initiatives as passage of the Food and Drug Administration, lawsuits against big oil, big tobacco, railroad and other trusts, and conservation of land and natural resources. There was also the establishment of the Commerce and Labor Department and the Bureau of Investigation (which became the FBI in 1935). Roosevelt’s administration, more than the most enlightened 19th Century administrations (such as those of Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes, Chester Arthur, and Grover Cleveland), established an expectation that government had an obligation to be of service, directly as well as indirectly, to the people. Thus, the period between 1901 and 1921 is generally known as ‘the Progressive Era.” If most presidents were picked by politicians and functioned as politicians, 20th and 21st Century politicians had a much wider constituency to account to than our first twenty-five presidencies. (Note that Grover Cleveland was both our 22nd and 24th president.)

The Twentieth and Twenty-first Century presidents continued to hail mostly from small towns such as: Staunton, Virginia, Marion, Ohio, Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Abilene, Kansas, and Plains, Georgia. Surprisingly to many, only half of these twenty men were lawyers:  McKinley, Taft, Woodrow Wilson (only nominally, as he never practiced), Coolidge, FDR, Nixon, Ford, Clinton and Obama. Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, both George Bush’s, and Donald Trump came from business backgrounds. (Hoover and Carter were mining and nuclear engineers respectively.) Harding was a small town newspaper publisher, Taft was a district judge, John Kennedy was a journalist, LBJ was a high school teacher, and Ronald Reagan was an actor.  William Howard Taft, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Donald Trump became president on their first try for elective office. Presidents as advocates began acting more like politicians than their predecessors. Thus, Theodore Roosevelt hand-picked William Howard Taft to be his successor. Woodrow Wilson was chosen to become Governor of New Jersey after serving as president of Princeton University in 1910 and was in the White House by 1913. Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution establishing the progressive income tax, establishment of the federal reserve banking system, and child labor reform marked his first presidential term. However, World War I and its controversial League of Nations dominated the second term of his presidency.

From 1921 to 1933, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover sought largely to undo the ravages of the Wilson Administration with its return to normalcy. Government wasn’t about people, it was about business. “The business of America is business,” proclaimed Calvin Coolidge, the high priest of economy and business.

By March 4, 1933, the bottom had dropped out of practically everything. “Dr. New Deal” in the person and skills of Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated without apology the use of government as a legitimate tool to regulate the financial and economic forces which left unchecked could wreck the lives of so many innocent people. Whether government should involve itself in your affairs and mine lies at the root of almost every controversial issue today. What is especially fascinating is how often both conservative and liberal issue advocates are willing to use the tactics of their opponents once they become entangled in a deadly clash. For example, conservatives insist on using government to control bedroom and birth activities. Liberals, on the other hand, become states’ rights advocates when it comes to the question of sanctuary cities.

Truman, who came from the Midwest, used plain speech and an unswerving will to master the Cold War. Ike, the country’s last war hero, mastered the home front as he had his military compatriots during World War II. JFK charmed and inspired us through the early 1960s after conquering religious prejudice during the 1960 campaign. Lyndon Johnson, who came from the South, boldly took on Jim Crow thus permanently injuring the power of the party he rode to the White House on the assassination of President Kennedy. 

Richard Nixon united his divided party of the mid 1960s and compelled it toward the reluctant recognition of Mao Tse-Tung’s Chinese Communist party. President Ford, a child of the House of Representatives, performed respectably as president in the wake of his predecessor’s Watergate debacle, but his pardon of President Nixon, more than anything else, did him in at the polls in 1976.

Jimmy Carter, who came from the “new South,” utilized his religious faith plus his brilliant mind to tackle such domestic and foreign feats as trucking and telephone deregulation, energy reform measures, and lasting peace agreements in Latin America and the Middle East. However, Carter preferred principle to politics and lost the possibility of a second term.

President Reagan came out of Hollywood via a corporate America that demanded lower taxes and a more dramatic challenge to the Soviet Union. He performed articulately and decisively for eight years.

George H. W. Bush, perhaps the most qualified presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, was a good president, but he made a promise he couldn’t keep: “Read my lips: no new taxes!”

Bill Clinton was brilliant and articulate, but flawed. His presidency came to be known more for those flaws than for his achievements.

George W. Bush, determined to fight terror abroad and solidify conservatism at home, saw his second term end in economic disaster as corporate America which insisted that it needed no regulation proved that regulation was exactly what it did need.

Barack Obama, brilliant and articulate, husbanded the economy he inherited from a high of ten percent unemployment down to almost four percent in seven years. His controversial Affordable Care Act may well survive the test of legal challenges which its enemies have brought against it. It’s fair to say, as I see it, that Obamacare has already survived its political test.

Donald John Trump comes to the presidency more on his own than any president in history. Many conservative intellects have tried to love him, but they just can’t. Professional conservative talk show hosts and the Fox television network are, so far, solidly behind him, but so erratic is his behavior that no one can be sure what his political fate may be.

When the era I’ve written about here began, there were comparatively few special interest groups, although lobbying has always been a part of our body politic. Most voters had never even heard the voice of the President of the United States before the mid 1930s. Hence, the “cult” of the presidency is less than a hundred years old.

Let’s start musing about that together next week. Whaddya say?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

PART ONE: “MY GOD! WHO PICKED THAT GUY?”

By Edwin Cooney

“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President and, unfortunately, I believed it,” asserted two time unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson in 1962.

“The executive power shall be invested in a President of the United States of America…No person except a natural born citizen or a citizen, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of the President; neither shall any person be eligible to the office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a Resident within the United States.” (Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution)

Above are the only qualifications one must have to be President of the United States of America. Donald J. Trump subsequently was electable to the most powerful and consequential office in all humanity just because he had attained the age of thirty-five years and was a citizen of the United States. It mattered not how well educated he may or may not have been, how smart he was or wasn’t, how knowledgable he was judged to be, whether he had ever been convicted of a felony, or whether he was good or bad, decent or indecent. These attributes and liabilities weren’t addressed in the American Constitution. One might easily concur that the personal character of the president was irrelevant to the “Founding Fathers.”

The genius and the greatness of the Constitution of the United States lies in the structure and the political and social relationships it outlines in both the original Seven Articles and the first ten amendments known as “The Bill of Rights.” As for who might become president, clearly no black, Catholic, Jew, or woman in 18th Century American culture need apply.

Although George Washington was picked by almost everyone who set foot in shoe leather or was a child of 18th Century motherhood, most of our earliest presidents were picked by the majority in Congress along with resolutions of support from key state legislatures.

Following the political debacle in the House of Representatives in 1825 which defeated Andrew Jackson, the winner of both the popular and electoral vote, and elected John Quincy Adams, known as “the corrupt bargain,” there was considerable pressure to find another method of nominating and electing presidential candidates. The solution to this challenge was the establishment of national political party conventions. The first national convention was held by the Anti-Masonic Party which nominated its first candidate William Wirt in September of 1831. However, the first major party convention nominated Henry Clay for president and John Sergeant for vice president in December of 1831. Andrew Jackson, the incumbent, wasn’t renominated until May of 1832.

Presidents between Washington and Lincoln were either successful soldiers (Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and even Franklin Pierce) or planter-lawyers (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and James Polk). John and son John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan  were farmer lawyers. Note that John Tyler (a planter-lawyer) and Millard Fillmore (just a lawyer) weren’t elected but became president on the deaths of Harrison and Taylor respectively. Presidents Jackson, Harrison and Taylor became prominent as “Indian fighters.” Mr. Lincoln, despite his genuinely humble beginning, was a capable corporate lawyer, a state legislator, and a former congressman. As for those who supported these early candidates, they consisted of combinations of bankers, merchants and, perhaps most of all, land speculators. Washington invested heavily in lands in Ohio and Kentucky. These land speculators through their congressional and presidential surrogates had a lot to say about every domestic activity and transaction from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the removal of American Indians to unproductive lands west of the Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln was probably the best pure politician of the first sixteen presidents. Aware of his national and political obscurity, he and his advisors entered the 1860 GOP convention determined to make “Honest Abe” the second rather than the first choice of state delegations during the early stages of that historic convention. Thus, Abraham Lincoln was in a position to be the solution rather than the cause of a divided party held in that famous Wigwam in Chicago in mid May of 1860.

In addition to special interests and powerful politicians, major events forced men and interests to move in specific directions. These events included the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Compromise of 1820 which forced Congress to adopt a process of admitting states to the Union as slave and free states. Then, there was the Mexican War which intensified the economic and political factors in the admission of Northern versus Southern-oriented states into the Union.

Next came the Compromise of 1850 which brought about the Fugitive Slave Law along with the admission of California into the Union. The 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act destroyed the Whig Party and created the Republican Party and seriously divided the Democratic Party. The result was civil war.

Two of the next seven presidents who followed the Civil War, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur, succeeded to the presidency rather than being elected. Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley became politically prominent due to their Civil War service. This was true especially of Ulysses S. Grant who, like Washington, Jackson, W.H. Harrison, and Taylor before him, was a hero to the hopeful politicians of the day.

Grant’s almost certain election meant that the new Republican Party’s special interests would reap decades of favorable support as they successfully industrialized America thereby closing the frontier. Grover Cleveland, on the other hand, was something of an anomaly. Having purchased his exemption from the Union draft in 1863, he cultivated his political reputation as an honest and efficient administrator as Mayor of Buffalo, New York, and later as Governor of the State of New York. He was the man who couldn’t be bought — a candidate of both principle and effectiveness.

Republican presidential candidates and presidents were consistent in their continuous support of practically every position advocated by big banking and business. Any attempt to obstruct the conveniences or profits of big oil, mighty railroads and, above all, high protective tariffs met with full disapproval of post Civil War GOP presidents. Even the well-liked, generally gentle and gentlemanly William McKinley was a tariff man. He had an 1891 tariff named after him while he was still in Congress. (Note: that tariff cost McKinley re-election to Congress in 1892.) Most post Civil War presidents were small town lawyers, state governors,  congressmen, and Civil War veterans, five of whom were born in Ohio.

From small towns they came bringing their sweethearts along with them to Washington. In most ways, they adequately represented Main Street Americans. They weren’t planters. They lacked the aristocracy of Washington, Jefferson and William Henry Harrison. As president, they might propose legislation, but mostly they either signed or merely disposed of bills considered by Congress.

Soon, however, all that would dramatically change.

I’ll tell you more next time…

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY  

HEY! LET’S “GO FIGURE” TOGETHER!

By Edwin Cooney

As I compose this musing, 35 days have passed since the federal government shut down. Even in the wake of all the financial and emotional tragedy due to the political impasse, what primarily dominates the news and commentaries is whether Congress (specifically the Democrats) or President Trump is to blame for this national debacle. From the standpoint of cause and effect, both are to blame. However, blame — tempting as it may be — is pointless, unless all of us in one way or another accept responsibility and search for a solution to this ongoing and nearly annual kerfuffle. 

(WAIT! Guess what? As I write this, it is over, over for at least three weeks! Even more spectacular, the “shutdown” has been shut down with no change in either the circumstances or conditions between the President and Congress. Wow!)

The heart of the shutdown epidemic is self-centered ideological willfulness. There have been a total of 21 federal government shutdowns going back to President Gerald Ford in 1976. The vast majority have been mercifully of short duration. Two of the last four shutdowns were against Bill Clinton (November 14th through 18th 1995 and December 15th 1995 through January 5th 1996). The next shutdown, January 1st through 17th, 2013 was due to a disagreement over Obamacare. This most recent government shutdown lasted 35 days. 

They all have one thing in common and, until the public recognizes and deals with that common cause once and for all, it will continue to rear its ugly head. There is a myth out there that insists that we, the free people of the United States, just don’t need government except to ensure our national security. The conservative wing of the GOP (to which I once belonged) openly and proudly boasts its contempt for government. Government means power and they insist that “power corrupts.” Specifically, they go on to quote Lord Acton, a Nineteenth Century British Baron, who wrote in 1887 “…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…” (As an aside, here are two observations: Lord Acton was a Baron and thus a pretty well-heeled and comfortable nobleman, and I’m guessing that somehow “bad great men” does not include men like Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater, Everett Dirksen, Ronald Reagan or perhaps even a Bush or two! It can’t include Mr. Trump because he’s no conservative.) 

However, there are several ironies here. First, once any man or woman takes the oath of federal office, they instantly become part of the government against which they’ve usually campaigned.

Second, if they refuse to sustain the legal functions of government without first changing the law, they violate their oath of office.

Third, history clearly demonstrates that government grew in the early Twentieth Century under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson because “free enterprise” (which I insist once again has never been free) up to that time had failed to care for the well-being of its workers or even their customers and the communities in which they lived. Had free enterprise invested sufficiently in the well-being of both its workers and its customers late in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, there would have been no (or at least very little) need for government.

Fourth, the current government shutdown reflects Republican ideology more than it reflects modern Democratic doctrine.

Fifth and finally, since the current crisis through which we’ve just passed marks the fourth time since 1995 that a Republican Congress has voted to shut down the government it despises, it is time to take notice and call in the chips. This time we’re being taught a lesson we will forget only at our own peril. The idea that we don’t need government is downright silly. Too many workers aren’t getting paid. Too many services we legitimately rely on aren’t being carried out. After all, is it too much to expect  the government to forecast the weather, inspect the quality of our food and medicine, control the quality and safety of our air travel, and even pay private contractors for their legitimate services that enable these functions to be carried out?

Even worse, there exists among this cadre of largely successful Americans a list of suspicions and resentments which inevitably fuels these periodic national political temper tantrums.

Insofar as I’m aware, none of these political temper tantrums have saved you or me a dollar or made America safer.  Nor have they been in any way a gateway to a sense of national contentment.

As for President Trump’s wall, as far as I’m concerned, since he promised it to us, let him find the resources to pay for it without the support of Congress. (Note: maybe he can get a newly constituted Brazil or Venezuela to pay for it. My guess is that Mexico just won’t accommodate President Trump! Hmmm, I wonder why?)

There have been many walls in history that we have traditionally abhorred (such as The Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, and especially the Berlin Wall). What I will never understand is what walls have to do with a healthy democracy.

As for the Trump Wall, how can that be in the best American tradition? “Go figure” with me, please!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

IN WHAT AND WHY WE BELIEVE LIES THE ROOT OF WHO WE ARE!

By Edwin Cooney

In a recent musing, I drew a distinction between opinion and thought when it comes to all questions of outlook and action. Since then, a lady from the Granite State of New Hampshire (let’s call her “Granite Hills Judy”) sent me what I regard as a vitally important perspective on the importance of morality as we establish a system of beliefs.

Francisco Mejia Uribe, in addition to being a Goldman Sachs executive in Hong Kong, is also quite a powerful philosopher. Recently, Dr. Uribe quoted William Kingdon Clifford, a Victorian era philosopher, who asserted in an 1877 publication that “…We have an obligation to believe responsibly. …believing without evidence is always morally wrong,” he further asserted. Clifford offers three arguments in support of his assertion.

The first argument is that our beliefs influence our actions.

Second, Clifford insists that poor practices of belief formation turns us into careless, credulous believers who are inevitably influenced by whatever information we’ve taken in by poor belief formation practices.

Finally, as communicators of our beliefs, we have a moral responsibility not to pollute the well of collective knowledge that has been scientifically and logically gathered and investigated.

Although I’m neither a sociologist nor a theologian, in view of the above, I invite you to join me in considering the following questions.

What are the main sources of our primary beliefs? Are they spiritual or secular?

Finally, what forces compel any one of us to endorse or even alter a belief or even a set of beliefs?

Although I don’t write or talk about it much, I am first and foremost a Christian. I didn’t discover my religion; I was indoctrinated into it at birth by the men and women who cared and nurtured me. Although this indoctrination itself may be in violation of Clifford’s insistence that I diligently investigate this fundamental belief before endorsing it, my respect for and appreciation of those who indoctrinated me follows Clifford’s third argument “…not to pollute the well of collective knowledge.” Thus I guess my sense of spirituality is what has always been my most gentle guide through life.

As to what compels me to endorse or alter a belief or set of beliefs, I’m most affected by an ongoing set of behavioral circumstances. When I was young, I was most influenced by the morality of social conservatism. That gradually shifted when I came to see that conservatives, contrary to their insistence, had no monopoly on morality. Henceforth what a person or political party did for most people became more important to me than political doctrine.

Next comes the question of evidence. There are several types of compelling evidence. They are scientific evidence, empirical or evidence gained through experience, circumstantial evidence (normally regarded as the weakest type of evidence), logical evidence, cultural evidence and finally, spiritual evidence.

Scientific evidence is primarily materialistic evidence usually observable, calculable and above all, provable via demonstration.

Empirical evidence is gained through knowledge of one’s experience of human behavior given a set of conditions and circumstances. Its nature is largely psychological.

Logical evidence is that kind of evidence that is created in the wake of the occurrence of a series of activities.

Cultural evidence is largely, if not wholly, dependent upon the mores of society. I was recently reading a book that covered the history of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time. Whatever advanced Soviet Communism was defined as automatically moral. Anything anti-Soviet was immoral. On the other hand, President Reagan, as head of the world’s most capitalistic society, labeled the Soviet Union “…an evil empire.”

Spiritual evidence is largely behavioral and only measurable within a spiritual context. The belief that we ought to love our neighbor as we love ourselves lies at the center of Christian as well as other religious beliefs. Nevertheless, one doesn’t have to be religious to endorse humankind’s most precious admonition.

Sadly, we live in a time that is dominated by political, cultural and even religious fear. Fear, the father of anger, subsequently is in a position not only to pollute the well of collective knowledge, even worse it threatens to poison our attempt to gather future knowledge. Over 200 years ago, General George Washington was scolded by the president of Princeton for distributing anti-smallpox vaccine to his troops. If God hadn’t wanted men to get smallpox, asserted the clergyman educator, he wouldn’t have created smallpox. Obviously, Princeton’s good reverend (I believe his name was Timothy White) failed to realize that God gave a gift to humankind much more significant than smallpox. God gave us the capacity and willingness to use our knowledge of science to conquer many diseases.

Changing one’s mind, or if you prefer, altering one’s beliefs can be, and usually is, a painful process. After all, we invariably invest ourselves in what we believe.

I’m convinced that amongst the bravest of us all are those who really and truly dare to re-examine and even confront our beliefs, especially if we’re willing to look beyond our own prejudices.

Oh, by the way, why don’t you go first and let me know what it’s like! Remember, we’re all being watched over by Judy of the Granite Hills!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OH OH, MR. PRESIDENT - HERE COME THOSE CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST!

By Edwin Cooney

Fourteen days from today, President Trump will enter the second half of his presidency. That’s 731 days out of a total of 1461 days in a presidential term. Before I proclaim my conclusions about the president’s past, present and future, I’m going to explain my motives and purposes in making the forthcoming assertions.

First, I have an obligation to my readers to express conclusions that go beyond the scope of mere opinion. Opinions are as cheap as the proverbial “dime a dozen.” An opinion merely expresses a hope or a belief. It seldom requires either integrity or documentation. Its ultimate effect is either reinforcement or defiance. “The president is wonderful” or “the president is terrible” possess the same power. Conclusions, on the other hand, require a healthy degree of objectivity.  While I both doubted and opposed Mr. Trump’s  election, from the very outset I’ve asserted that he deserves the benefit of all reasonable doubts. Furthermore, I’ve opposed the successful election efforts of men named Humphrey, (which I now regret!),  Ford, Reagan, and two Bush’s. All these men now have my respect if not my affection.  

Only three presidents in the last 86 years since 1932, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter, have been in as much trouble with re-election looming, as President Donald J. Trump. (Note: President George H. W. Bush’s trouble wasn’t evident until the presidential primaries in the spring of 1992, while Presidents Hoover, Truman, and Carter, like the current incumbent, were in trouble at the halfway point of their presidential terms.)

Although President Trump retains support from approximately 88 percent of his fellow Republicans, there are a significant number of gaps in support of Mr. Trump’s nomination. President Trump may well be in the same situation as President Jimmy Carter in 1980 when the liberal element of the party under the leadership of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy was Jimmy Carter’s biggest political fisher. President Trump’s scorn for the last two GOP presidential nominees, the late Senator John McCain and the newly elected Utah Republican Mitt Romney, are clear signs of President Trump’s ultimate political flaw.

Writing recently in the Washington Post, Paul Waldman points out that President Trump faces the outset of 2019 minus a Chief of Staff, a Secretary of Defense, and with an Acting Attorney General, an Acting Environmental Protection Administrator, no Ambassador to the UN, and no Interior Secretary. Additionally, his former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, his first Chief of Staff, and his personal lawyer have all pleaded guilty to crimes. His presidential campaign, his transition team, and his foundation are all under investigation. Finally, there is the federal government shutdown which, apparently, the president is willing to allow to continue into the foreseeable future as long as the president sees the shutdown working to his advantage.

President Trump, although he insists it’s due to the “deep state” as well as to the efforts of professional radical liberals, is potentially in criminal trouble. Thus, the man who bragged that he would “drain the swamp” of criminally stupid politicians could conceivably find himself indictable whether he leaves office in 2021 or in 2025.

President Trump’s ultimate flaw isn’t ideological. His achievements which include the tax reduction measure he signed into law last August, his deregulation of economic and environmental laws, and his decision to withdraw American forces from both Syria and Afghanistan, although controversial even among conservatives, don’t even begin to reflect his major flaw. The fact of the matter is that his major flaw obscures his most significant achievements.

Everyone including the President of the United States is entitled to their own agendas. What they’re not entitled to is the right to freely demean or dehumanize on a continuous basis the thoughts, agendas and beliefs of others. Donald Trump, day in and day out, time and time again, carries on a belittlement of just about everyone around him who isn’t in the process of glorifying him. Hence, every quarrel he has is personal rather than professional or political. Even worse, he seldom keeps his word. One instant he insists that he’ll heartily take the blame for a government shutdown and in the next instant he blames his political opponents. Next, he shifts his position claiming that he’s proud of what he is doing and that the government shutdown isn’t really a shutdown but is merely the right thing to do given the current “national emergency.” He’s even inconsistent as to whether he seeks a wall or merely a security system. Thus, I conclude that there is no need for the current government shutdown. Here is why,

Writing in the New York Times, Glenn Thrush and Thomas Gibbons-Neff reveal to readers the existence of the National Emergencies Act of 1976 which empowers the president to declare a national emergency and take unilateral action to meet such an emergency. All he has to do is inform Congress of the emergency and document whatever actions he has employed to meet it.  Such being the case, why shut down the government? Why didn’t he sign the proposal passed by Congress in December and declare the need for  constructing a wall to meet the illegal immigration emergency? The reason is simple. President Trump believes his chronic anger is his most effective political tool to master the American body politic. His continuous childlike narcissism is contemptuous of even conservative ideology. Thus, professionals such as General Mattis  and even ideologists, such as George Will, John Kasich, and David Brooks become grist for the Trumpian mill.  

Whether we like it or not, “we, the people,” under specific provisions of our constitution, elected him and thus we deserve him. Sadly, he behaves himself in a way that any parent wouldn’t tolerate from a beloved child no matter what age. It’s too early to know if we will re-elect him and thus, it would be presumptuous and even self-serving to predict either his re-election victory or his defeat.

Traditionally, historians have rated presidents categorizing them as great, near great, average, below average and, finally, as failed presidents. So, hang on, here it goes. I’ll modify what I’m about to write by acknowledging that this evaluation can be altered by behavior and time.

Up to this point, I’ve asserted that James Buchanan was the worst president ever to take office because he traded his sense of morality for political peace. He knew slavery was immoral because he’d actually purchased several slaves so he could free them. However, ultimately he accepted the 1857 Dred Scott decision which legitimized human slaves as property because a slaveholder’s property rights were more politically valid than a black man’s human rights. I think James Buchanan knew better, but he traded principle for legality and politics. Thus, if President Buchanan is the worst president, what is there to say about President Trump?

Because President Trump’s quarrels are invariably personal, one can hardly use the traditional adjectives of great, near great, average, below average, and failed to adequately describe his presidency.

Thus, until and unless President Trump alters his behavior, he deserves the following evaluation:  So far, Donald John Trump is the most despicable president in America’s 242 year history.

No wonder, if you listen, you can hear the flutter of each chicken’s wings as it flies home to roost! 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS - TWO INEVITABILITIES OF LIFE!

By Edwin Cooney

Our annual new year’s celebrations compel many of us to contemplate the past, the present and the future or, if you prefer, beginnings and endings. Since beginnings and endings are both inevitable and constant, the question is how can we best manipulate them to our advantage?

As this year comes to a screeching halt, we find that with all the frightening setbacks we have experienced these past 365 days, 2018 has produced at least three victories over traditional obstacles to a happy future. First, just a few days ago, I read an article announcing that medical science is close to a cure of the AIDS virus. Second, the year 2018 is likely to mark the permanent advancement of women and other traditional minority groups in American politics and government. Finally, 2018 may well mark the long overdue reform of our penal system.

These advancements may seem very small to most of us who have no one important to us in prison or who have little interest in politics or have not known anyone who suffers from HIV or the full-blown AIDS virus. You can be sure, however, once you think about it, that even one of these three achievements matters to millions of people.

My thoughts about beginnings and endings are, I suppose, largely due to the passing of the gentleman Harry Potter whom I wrote about two weeks ago. I hurt for those who loved him best and I long for the days I knew him, but love and longing exist within a much larger reality.

Life is that reality. None of us choose to be born, but we’re all born into a world we didn’t create and we possess a limited capacity to control it. From the very outset of life comes the challenge to sustain life.

Even more, we assume that life here on earth, as difficult as it too often is, represents that which is most sacred. Subsequently, we are indoctrinated to fear the end of life to the extent that we establish political and legal institutions such as government, war, and legalized murder (capital punishment) to protect society in general and ourselves in particular from the ravages of outrageous death.

Perhaps the most vital as well as powerful antidote, even against the inevitable, is our outlook on life itself. Every day, men and women in the uniforms of firefighters, police, and medical personnel courageously confront conditions that could  instantly and cruelly kill them. We invariably ask ourselves, how can they dare to do that? The answer is obvious. They allow the possibilities and the necessity of life itself to drown their immediate fear of death.

Imagine for just a moment what life might be like if we didn’t fear death — especially natural death! Might that not sufficiently loosen the grip of death? Suppose death was merely regarded as a natural extension of life? Suppose further that we could comprehend the possibility that those who matter most to us will always be connected to us, especially when we’ve passed beyond the dimension of existence that we call life. I’ve just described the central element of a belief system that we call religion. The knock on religion is that it’s unrealistic! Ah, but it is only unrealistic in our earthly realm. Realists (bless both their logic and their souls!) are, I believe, too often imprisoned by their belief that logic and reason are the only effective tools we possess that are capable of moving humanity forward in humankind’s long path “…from the swamp to the stars.”

Twenty days after 2019 begins, President Donald J. Trump will enter the second half of his presidency. His major task will be to function according to the dictates of the record he has set. Two years ago, Americans largely voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Today, he no longer has Hillary Clinton to “…kick around anymore.” Thus, Mr. Trump’s 2019 beginning will invariably be affected by who he is rather than who he isn’t. We, his constituents (whether or not we approve of him and his administration — which this observer definitely does not) have an obligation to make him accountable for who he is and for what he does. Like the times themselves, presidential terms must deal with beginnings and endings. Even the most successful presidencies have suffered endings in their popularity. FDR never achieved the heights of popularity and influence he experienced in his first term after attempting, in 1937,  to “pack” the Supreme Court. LBJ lost his political way when he broke his 1964 election pledge to make Asian boys rather than American boys fight the Vietnam War. Ronald Reagan wasn’t the same in the wake of Iran Contra in the fall of 1986. Finally, both President Bush’s tripped themselves up by increasing taxes and by overestimating the threat Saddam Hussein was to our national security. 

Tomorrow will be different than today. In some ways that’s both good and bad. Some wonderful traditions may be about to die while others are about to be established. Still other traditions will be preserved after considerable struggle.

Closing his acceptance speech for a second presidential term at the GOP National Convention in San Francisco back in August 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower quoted Henry Ward Beecher when he said: “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by either the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”

I’d alter that statement to stress the handle of hope rather than faith. Hope is the seed of expectation and progress. As such, hope energizes creativity and progress.

As hard as it may be, force yourself to continue your interest in civic affairs and, to the degree you can, take part in them. Tomorrow may even fall short of today when it comes to a question of perfection. On the other hand, tomorrow just might outshine all of the eras that have come before it. You can be absolutely sure, however, of one certainty.

Tomorrow will be far from boring! You won’t want to miss the endings that make tomorrow’s substantial beginnings inevitable!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY