PERSONAL, BUT NOT CONFIDENTIAL!

By Edwin Cooney

Some readers have, from time to time, expressed wonderment and even fascination with my ability to address a different and, sometimes, even a new topic every week. Of course, a lot of my topics are socio/political or historical, but seldom do I experience what is generally known as "writer's block." Then came yesterday afternoon and last evening. Suddenly there it was: writer’s block. It was SUDDENLY THERE: great as day, big as life, threatening to cement me in! Not even writing partial sentences unblocked my flow of thought. Not even one of the stories I'm about to tell you helped. Then came the night and rest. Suddenly, in the wee small hours of the morning, it all came back identifying itself to me — plain as day! The key components to the solution of every riddle is twofold — knowledge of its cause and comprehension of its effect!

My problem last night was just plain fatigue. Since fatigue was the cause, writer's block had to be the effect. Like a visit from an energizing lover in the night, I was restored for the morrow!

Back in the late 1990s, when our Methodist pastor in Alameda, California, Reverend Mark Bollwinkel, would develop what one might call "preacher's block," he would make the block itself the subject of his sermon in the form of an open prayer to the Almighty! That type of sermon would open his mind to the turmoils his congregation was surely encountering while at the same time effectively making his parishioners aware of both his awareness and sympathy of their very personal and individual challenges.

Of course, when one is genuinely searching for the cause of an event or state of being, one is better served the fewer preconceptions one has about the origin of the cause during the investigation of the situation. It's also vital to keep in mind that the effects of a cause can vary.

For instance, one may reasonably say that President Donald Trump was the immediate cause of what occurred back on January 6th, 2021, but the origins, uncertainties, and anticipated resentment and bitterness about questions surrounding presidential elections go back as far as 1800 to the days of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr. 

(I expect that someone will write a comprehensive history of contested presidential elections very soon indeed. They've already been written about in summary form, but a huge study will probably be available soon at your local bookstore or on an accessible website.)

Another legitimate topic for examination right now in view of Vladimir Putin's possible invasion of Ukraine would be a comparison of the  similarities and contrasts and  the causes of World Wars I and II in 1914 and 1939.

From the very outset of my authorship of these columns I've had three overall goals: to inform; to stimulate and to entertain the reader. Although I'm a man of numerous opinions, I don't teach doctrines, be they religious or political. I may offer testimony as to the worthiness of a doctrine, but its adoption is your business, not mine! Doctrines generally reflect attitudes based on experiences.

Inquiry into cause and effect of a historic event is the key to all knowledge and understanding of any event. 

I hope my weekly interest in — and search for — cause and effect causes you, the reader, to wonder why and how even more than it enables you to know! After all, so long as you wonder, it is likely that your knowledge will be even more comprehensive regardless of the topic!

As for those "lovers in the night," bring 'em on!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CONTROLLING THE AMERICAN KILLER

By Edwin Cooney

It has been increasingly clear to me that, with our permission, the American killer is stealing our lives, our children’s lives, and our very liberty!

A few days ago as part of the ongoing discussion of whether guns or people kill other people, someone sent me a video telling the story of young Kendra St. Clair. Kendra, a 12-year-old living in Oklahoma, was home alone one day when 32-year-old Stacy Jones broke into her home. Kendra grabbed her cell phone and called her mother and her mother instructed her to get her gun, go into a closet, and then call 911. Kendra had never fired a gun before. Complying with mom's instructions, she called 911 and the operator assured her that a sheriff deputy was on his way. After some anxious minutes, Kendra saw the door knob move so she fired through the door. The bullet entered Jones's shoulder causing him to flee. He was picked up a few blocks away by deputies and charged with first degree burglary. That charge was designed to get Jones twenty years in the slammer.

The purpose of the story (aside from praising Kendra's coolness and bravery) was to illustrate that guns save as well as take lives. (Note: Kendra's tale of bravery occurred on Saturday, October 20th, 2012.)

As far as I know, it wasn't until the assassination of President Kennedy that gun control became a national issue. What most Americans really wanted to achieve, by passage of gun control legislation, was to make it unlikely that anyone else could as easily replicate Lee Harvey Oswald’s and Jack Ruby’s dastardly deeds! Since powerful and deadly automobiles are licensed, it seemed reasonable to most Americans that the power of license would control gun users just as it does the behavior of drivers. Few people resent the licensing of automobiles especially since licensing vehicles doesn’t inhibit their use or their availability. However, most people regard driving as a privilege not a constitutional right. The United States Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that the right to “bear arms" is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Some would argue that since baseball bats, knives, ropes, bombs, and many other tools and methods are potentially lethal, it would therefore be downright unconstitutional to ban guns or even to license them. 

However, I argue that the Second Amendment is conditional. It reads as follows:"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Proponents of the Second Amendment, as I see it, are too often in denial of the amendment's 18th Century culture lag. Guns were used during the 17th, 18th, 19th, and the early 20th centuries as much for food and clothing as for killing. They even appear to believe that all laws are “created equal,” perhaps even including the laws that were passed in the 1840s enabling angry Christians to kill Mormons in Missouri and Arkansas. Some of us wonder if the Ku Klux Klan constitutes a "well regulated militia.” After all, it's “regulated” not to kill white Anglo-Saxon Protestants!

All of the above arguments have been made thousands of times so there's no need to examine them more than we already have. However, there is a vital element of this whole matter that needs to be considered or our free society will be destroyed.

Opponents of gun control legislation insist that should the government succeed in regulating the ownership of guns, our very freedom would be at stake. Consider the following: First, I wonder if a people are really “free” when they are at the mercy of so many weapons? Can a people really be free when they, and their school children, are inevitable targets of gun possessors and bomb throwers?

Second, what does our primary dependence on weapons reflect about the moral priorities and values of our society?

Three, was the late, great Conservative commentator Paul Harvey right or wrong when he asserted that freedom wasn't merely permission to be absolutely free, but was rather a challenge to do as one ought to do for everyone's benefit?

Fourth, while no reasonable person will argue that guns and not people are the ultimate killers, the more weapons that are cheaply or even freely available, the more killing will occur!

Finally, the ultimate question before us isn't really gun control, it's American “Killer Control.” Remember, killers kill because they feel sufficiently powerful, resentful, and clever enough to avoid punishment for the act of killing. For many killers, due to low self-esteem, the rewards of their acts of killing are greater than their fear of retribution in the wake of their deed or deeds.

After all, many killers are beyond fear of their own mortality. Someone's death, even if it is their own, is the inevitable solution to life's woes! 

The wisdom or foolishness of possessing arms and the use of arms depends on the legitimacy and the rights of others.

There's little doubt, as I see it, that it's getting cheaper and safer to obtain and use guns than to avoid being victimized by guns or by some other deadly weapon.

It’s my guess that once we conclude that all we can do to prevent killing is to justify and accomplish killing as the primary antidote, sooner or later America is going to be as dead as George Washington!

Until we find some formula to control American killers, I suppose gun control is the only reasonable place to start, so I support it.

Since the right to make a profit appears to be as dear as life itself, I guess we’re just going to have to discover a way to make life as precious as profit.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

"PARDON ME, MR. PRESIDENT...!"

By Edwin Cooney

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution gives the President of the United States a number of powers including the power to "...grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

President Washington used the pardoning power in 1795 on behalf of two Western Pennsylvania farmers who'd led a rebellion against the government's 1791 whiskey tax in 1794. Western Pennsylvania farmers could make a lot more money selling corn that had been turned into whiskey than they could from ears of corn shipped in bulk for general consumption. Hence, they regarded the Washington Administration’s tax as a form of legal robbery. Thus Philip Vigol and John Mitchell took up arms against the tax. In 1794, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's urged President Washington to lead an army of 13,000 soldiers across the Allegheny to collect the tax. (Actually, President Washington only led the army part of the way across Pennsylvania.) Several deaths of federal troops resulted and Vigol and Mitchell were tried for treason and sentenced to hang. The reason Washington led the troops was to establish the authority of the government to collect an essential tax. Once the rebellion was put down, President Washington felt it was necessary to establish another principle, the right of the people to protest and to use the proper ways and methods to alter government policies. (Note: I've found it interesting and significant that the first tax to anger the people was not a tax issued by a socialist but rather by our most important "founding father” and perhaps the leading capitalist of the day, Alexander Hamilton!)

In January of 1833, George Wilson, who had been convicted of train robbery, was pardoned by President Andrew Jackson, a friend. However, the fly in the ointment for Wilson was that Jackson's pardon was limited to only that one charge and so Wilson refused the pardon. The court debated as to whether Wilson was obligated to accept the limited pardon and decided that they couldn't force him to accept it — so he didn't. Two separate sources tell different stories. One story says that since the pardon only covered one of the charges facing him, Wilson refused it and was subsequently hanged. Another story says that George Wilson languished in prison and reapplied to President Martin Van Buren for a second pardon. This one he accepted.

By the time James Buchanan became president in 1857, beleaguered Mormons who had literally been driven out of several states (it was legal to murder them in Arkansas and Missouri) had settled in Utah territory. There, they established a theocracy under Brigham Young. Fiercely self-protective, President Buchanan came to suspect that the Mormons were allying themselves with the Paiute Indian Tribe to harass wagon trains passing through Utah to California in retaliation for the way they'd been treated in the midwest.  Hence, he sent federal troops into Utah with the option of removing Young from office. By 1859, President Buchanan, believing that no one but Young was capable of governing Utah, pardoned Young for any role he might have played in the September 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre that cost the lives of 120 California-bound pioneers from Northwest Arkansas who were members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson, in defiance of the Republicans who had impeached him, pardoned most Confederate soldiers except those who were very rich. Johnson could never abide rich plantation owners or military personnel! 

One Union soldier named Fitz John Porter was not to be pardoned for anything. He had been involved in the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. Due to contradictory orders from General John Pope, there was confusion in the ranks and Fitz John Porter was blamed for the loss. He was cashiered out of the Union Army. Fitz John Porter fought his expulsion until, in 1882, President Chester A. Arthur restored Porter into the army. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland gave Porter a full pardon.

Eugene V. Debs, the perennial Socialist Presidential candidate, was arrested and convicted of sedition for denouncing our participation in the war against Germany. He had also encouraged potential soldiers to avoid the draft. Hence, he ran his 1920 presidential campaign from his cell in Atlanta. It would be his last campaign. By Christmas of 1921, President Warren Harding decided that Eugene V. Debs had been punished enough. Against the recommendation of Harry Daugherty (Harding's Attorney General and original presidential backer), Harding brought Debs to the White House from his prison cell and commuted his sentence. "A peaceful man should be home with his wife on Christmas Day," Harding is reported to have proclaimed. Debs' friends and political supporters were bitter that Harding had only commuted Debs' sentence rather than pardoning him, but Harding insisted that because Debs was guilty of the crime, only a commutation of the sentence was justifiable.

In 1951, President Harry Truman commuted Oscar Collazo’s death sentence to life in prison. Collazo was one of two Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to assassinate Mr. Truman on Thursday, November 2nd, 1950. (Note that the shooting occurred outside Blair House and cost the life of a Secret Service man, Leslie Coffelt.)   

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford, who had fought the Japanese in the Pacific and nearly lost his life at one point when he almost fell overboard during a storm, pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino (known as Tokyo Rose), an American broadcaster who had been a conduit between the Japanese Imperial government and Americans fighting in the Pacific. President Ford learned that much of the testimony against Iva Toguri, only one of a number of “Tokyo Roses,” was largely coerced from the witnesses by Walter Winchell and the FBI and was false, so he pardoned her.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, believing that her punishment for bank robbery was too harsh, commuted Patty Hearst's sentence. As he saw it, she had been both kidnapped and coerced. A decade later, President Bill Clinton pardoned her.

President Ford's most infamous pardon was for Richard Nixon. Many people believe it cost him re-election in 1976. (Note: I believe Jerry Ford was right, but I didn't like it at the time. I'm often wrong, you know, but it's healthy to indulge in give and take on historic events!)

As I see it, President Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich and President Trump's pardons of Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort were all reckless, selfish and abused the power of the presidential pardon. As for George H. W. Bush’s pardon of several Iran Contra figures including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Robert (Bud) McFarlane, and Elliott Abrams (an assistant National Security advisor), I would rate those as traditional and purely political.  After all, the CEO of the Occidental Petroleum Company, Armand Hammer, had just contributed $110,000 to the Republican National Committee prior to his pardon.

Presidents Washington, Arthur, Cleveland, Harding, Ford, Carter, and one of Clinton's pardons were respectable, but Presidents Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Clinton, and Trump were both nearsighted and unhealthy for their reputations and for the national welfare. Now to some mischief:

When Nixon resigned in 1974, many who opposed Nixon personally and politically asserted that they would have cheerfully gone along with a Nixon pardon had he first been tried and judged before an American jury. Should President Trump be indicted, how might a Biden pardon of Trump affect the American body politic?

Pardon me, please, President Biden, for even suggesting the above! After all, even considering such an idea makes me feel old and tired! I can only imagine what such an idea would do to you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY   

THE PROMISE, THE RISK, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESULTS

By Edwin Cooney

It was Tuesday, August 24th, 1976 and the Democratic presidential nominee, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, was ready to go even though his "official" presidential campaign wasn't going to begin until Labor Day,  Monday, September 6th, 1976. As usual, the 51-year-old Carter was confident. He was always confident at the outset of everything he did. The rewards or negative consequences of whatever happened to him politically  were less important to him than the intended consequences of any goal. All Jimmy needed was the spirit of conviction and a clear conscience regarding the well meaning of his humane intentions.

THE PROMISE — Thus, he began campaigning in San Francisco that morning before jetting up to Seattle, Washington to address a meeting of the American Legion's 1,600-delegate annual convention. He knew that what he was about to tell them wouldn't please most of them because many of them, perhaps even a majority, were, more than likely, registered Republicans. Further, since his campaign was "officially" nearly two weeks off, there would be time for whatever jolt he had to proclaim this day. It would be overshadowed by other campaign issues and events and thus be mollified. Besides, at present he did have a 30 point lead over Gerald Ford in the latest political polls!

Thus, he began his speech by stressing the need for a strong defense that would be second to none as all presidential candidates traditionally do. Then, at about the two-thirds point of the speech which had been lustily cheered, Carter paused, saying that he wanted to tell them about the hardest decision he'd made as a presidential candidate.

Asserting that national unity was a vital part of national defense, candidate Carter told the American Legion that if elected president he would grant a blanket pardon to all draft evaders living either at home or abroad. As a chorus of boos began emanating from the audience, Carter stopped talking and looked down as Legion Commander Harry G. Wiles called for order. According to the New York Times, Carter then raised his eyes and smiled and continued speaking softly but definitively. The actions, said the candidate, of those who evaded the draft in no way equaled the courage and patriotism of those who answered the draft, but it was time to put the Vietnam conflict and all of the distrust it brought with it to an end. Only in that way could we have the spirit of unanimity that a strong and ongoing national defense must provide. What follows is my personal perception of what Jimmy Carter was thinking.

THE RISK — The risk was a reopening of the divisions in the Democratic Party that re-elected Richard Nixon four years before. Since amnesty was regarded by many liberals as more genuine and thus more powerful than a mere pardon, just enough liberals or progressives might regard Carter's move as insincere as President Ford's current promise to allow returning draft evaders to avoid conviction if they rejoined the military or agreed to involve themselves in some other government service for a couple of years. From many points of view a pardon was only appropriate if a law was violated. However, many insisted that no law had in fact been broken except by military deserters who were in a different category than draft evaders. Finally, there was a risk that the resulting debate would bring down the whole Carter campaign.   

Beyond whatever immediate political cost Carter would have to pay, he knew that the nation's mood had a lot to do with its capacity to function. Insofar as he was concerned, the combination of doubt and mistrust on every topic from foreign policy, labor management issues, the status of prayer in the public schools, civil rights and wrongs, and abortion with all of its ambiguities was gnawing at the very fabric and foundation of our culture. Thus, where he had the power to alleviate our national crisis, he would do what he could. As a political “outsider," he could represent a new type of politics where a leader made decisions that had to do with good government more than they had to do with political or ideological popularity. To that end, he occasionally would appear to be in “Never-Never Land.”

Hence he proceeded to carry his own bags as both candidate and president, walk from the Inaugural Ceremony much of the way to the White House,  wear a cardigan rather than a traditional suit coat during the first national broadcast following his inauguration, minimize the use of “Hail to the Chief” during White House Ceremonies and, at least initially, avoid too close a connection to Congress. After all, Congress was loaded with politicians!

Carter was no political saint! He was capable of snubbing and meanly jeering political opponents as he did to George W. Bush at the funeral for Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife in late 2002. (Note: That particular act probably caused Walter Mondale's failure to be elected to the Senate from Minnesota that fall. Even when appointed by a sitting president to help ease international tensions, Carter often appeared to be upstaging the incumbent who had sent him on that very mission.)

THE RESULT — President Jimmy Carter was neither the first nor the last to keep a campaign promise but this particular campaign promise was special. It was devoid of straw men to knock down or of political enemies to have been conquered. Yet it was as daring as it was wise. After all, as President Ford discovered later in that campaign, Americans, even after all the SALT Treaties, were still nervous as to how any president perceived a possible threat from the Soviet Union. Many believe Ford’s unintended gaffe at the close of the second Ford-Carter debate in which he insisted Russia was no threat to Poland or to Eastern Europe cost Ford the election.

Forty-five years ago last Friday, in his first full day in office, President Carter redeemed a unique kind of promise — a promise that eased rather than increased tensions and a promise that forgave rather than challenged. it was a promise that cost little or no money, but created a path for tolerance over suspicion.

I'll write about some quite different presidential pardons next week.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHO HAS CHANGED, ME, THEE, OR NEITHER?

By Edwin Cooney

Ronald Reagan used to get a lot of political and entertainment mileage at fundraising dinners and GOP campaign events by reminding audiences that Governor Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, abandoned the Democratic Party as a matter of principle, not personal politics. The Reagan anecdote is about 75% false. Al Smith felt not only unappreciated but betrayed by Franklin Roosevelt’s unwillingness to hire Smith's executive secretary Belle Moscowitz when FDR succeeded to the New York governorship. (As surprising as it may be, it was the idealist Eleanor Roosevelt who told her husband that if he hired Al Smith's people rather than his own, All Smith and not he would be perceived as the governor of New York State.) Additionally, Al Smith felt betrayed by Roosevelt at the 1932 Convention that nominated FDR over Smith's bid for a second crack at the presidency. Even worse, FDR became president. FDR's success became personal for Al Smith and by 1936 he'd joined the American Liberty League largely consisting of conservative Democrats opposed to FDR.

There's little historically new or particularly adventurous about changing parties unless you're a prominent politician whose "political treachery" embarrasses a lot of important leaders and financial supporters. When that is the case, even if your name is President Theodore Roosevelt, Mayor John Lindsay, Governor John B. Connally or, in Britain, Winston Churchill, you'll pay a significant political price. (Note: the only one who got pretty cleanly away with changing parties was Mr. Reagan himself. In 1973, when President Nixon was seeking to replace Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, he wanted to tap John Connally, but was reminded by Republican leaders that Connally was a Democrat after all and that they wanted a Republican vice president, not a Democratic one.) 

People register with political parties for any number of reasons and, since they are often lacking logic or practicality, they can be largely considered strictly personal decisions. These decisions may be based on social or religious or even perceived financial advantage. All of these pathways to political preference can and often are altered by life experiences.

From the time I was 13 until I was 29, I was a “died-in-the-wool” Republican. Even more, although I learn to respect and cheerfully root for Barry Goldwater in 1964, I loved Richard Nixon. For years, I was constantly reminded of his poor appearance in the first Nixon/Kennedy debate and that he subsequently lost not only the presidency in 1960 but the race for Governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. Even worse, I was reminded, he was a "poor loser." He was a ski-nosed, heavily bearded, sweaty, shifty-eyed politician who could only be elected by smearing his opponent with the label of “Communism.” To me, Richard Nixon's political label of “moderate Republican” merely reflected his political flexibility and administrative practicality. One of the political highlights of my life came on November 5th, 1968 when he was finally elected president.

Throughout the next four years however, I came to see with increasing clarity his administrative and even personal flaws. I couldn't ignore, as hard as I tried, his attacks on protesting students. It became increasingly clear to me that he had no "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War but rather a disengagement designed ultimately to leave the South Vietnamese to their doom. After all, the leaders could flee to France, but the people were “expendable.” Overall, though, the Republican Party stood for good things: limited government, law and order, "workfare" rather than welfare, states rights, annual Lincoln Day dinners, Teddy Roosevelt and Ike. Then came the Watergate break-in. I hung in there until John Dean's compelling testimony and Alexander Butterfield's disclosure of the White House taping system. President Nixon's subsequent dismissal of Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus demonstrated to me the president's integral bankruptcy. What in particular bothered me was the slowness of GOP leaders to condemn GOP immorality while continuously twisting civil rights into civil misdeeds. Ultimately, the party caught up with the evidence but only when it nearly cost them public offices.

From 1974 onward, I looked to men named Henry Jackson, Hubert Humphrey and, of course, Ted Kennedy for experienced leadership. Then, along came the outsider Jimmy Carter and it was with the former Georgia governor that I hung my star during 1976. Thus it was on Saturday, October 30th, 1976 that I changed my party affiliation from Republican to Democratic. Although I considered myself well-served by President Carter, I have never been, up until Donald Trump, as much a Democrat as I was once a Republican. Beyond that, my own outlook changed. A graduate of SUNY Geneseo, I sought to be competitive in my job search and became attached to the idea of affirmative action when it pertains to the evaluation of minority educational and job opportunities. As I was rejected for teaching positions due to my lack of sight, I lost faith in the "anyone can do it" assertion of Conservative Republicanism.

Today we live in a far different world than we did back in the 1970s except for one crucial factor.

When I was growing up race, religion, and politics were topics not engaged in during polite conversation. Today, all three topics are not only open for discussion, they are verbal weapons as much as they are anything else. Since then, I've discovered the reason for this screen of politeness. Race, religion and politics were the domains for all of our secret aspirations and motives. Politics then and now are too personal to be revealed to others until such times as it is practical to reveal them and take action in support of them.

In the meantime, we can tell ourselves that the outrageous behavior last January was equivalent to the “Minutemen" of Lexington and Concord. Additionally, we can tell ourselves that the Confederacy wasn't treasonous, but was only about “states rights.” Then, we can equally love "Old Glory" and the stars and bars. As to the question of who has changed, I say neither me nor thee!

Hence, the ultimate question has to be, when will all of us change?

I'll give you my best guess soon.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

FROM THE WATER'S EDGE WHERE POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT INTERSECT

By Edwin Cooney

Although I was very hopeful that Joe Biden would prevail in the 2020 election, I wasn't much disturbed by or resentful of President Trump's hostility to the result announced on Saturday, November 6th, 2020. After all, it takes men and women of large egos to risk their reputations in the public's service. I wasn't even bothered by the determination of Trump’s cabinet to stand behind the boss. What was disturbing was Congress's willingness to go over the water's edge once the election was past and there was no indication of the fraud President Trump was proclaiming in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Even more painful was the unwillingness on the part of those who had served alongside Joe Biden in the Senate for 37 years to publicly congratulate him thereby allowing him the satisfaction of having the support of his colleagues who themselves would appreciate his support were they about to take on high executive responsibility. Another way to say it is that partisanship was sadly replacing political collegiality, the political and emotional membrane that makes our system work.

Of course, 2021 wasn't the first time an outgoing president refused to celebrate the success of his opponent. (Note: Scores of losing presidential candidates in American history including such notorious names as Aaron Burr, Strom Thurman, Henry Wallace and George Wallace have been disappointed for themselves and for their causes, but until President Trump, they've all maintained their dignity and their patriotism.) John Adams refused to attend Thomas Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural. John Quincy Adams refused to attend Andrew Jackson's 1829 swearing in. President Andrew Johnson stayed away from Ulysses S. Grant's 1869 Inauguration. Herbert Hoover, although he attended Franklin Roosevelt’s March 4th, 1933 Inauguration, sought to punish FDR's refusal to cooperate with him after the 1932 election by deliberately forcing the crippled president-elect to stand for an extended period of time while waiting for a Friday, March 3rd meeting at the White House to begin. (FDR'S eldest son James tells the story in his 1959 book entitled "Affectionately FDR.”)

The current crisis took on meaning in late December when President Trump began twisting arms and encouraging his angry and disappointed followers to disrupt Congress as it sought to certify Joe Biden's election. A comparison of President Trump's response to defeat with those of the two Adams's, Andrew Jackson, and especially Grover Cleveland is instructive.

Although John Adams did his best to fill open positions with his fellow Federalists before Democrat Thomas Jefferson took office, he eventually patched his and Jefferson's friendship in the coming years by resuming their once cordial correspondence .

John Quincy Adams, although he never personally reconciled with Old Hickory, nevertheless served in Congress and was at Harvard when President Jackson visited Adam's old alma mater in 1833.

Grover Cleveland cheerfully attended the 1889 Inauguration of Republican Benjamin Harrison asserting that it wasn't any good being president if you didn't stand for something and put it on the line. There was fraud during the 1888 election, but Cleveland was willing to wait for the 1892 election to get even and that's exactly what he did.

Additionally, there were protests on the part of 1960 Republicans when John Kennedy won. Many of them believed that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley rigged the Chicago vote in such a way as to deny Richard Nixon victory over Jack Kennedy. The irony is that it was Vice President Nixon who officially certified John Kennedy's election on January 3rd, 1961.

Lyndon Johnson insisted that Richard Nixon's behavior at the close of the 1968 presidential campaign was pretty close to treasonous when it turned out that the Nixon campaign convinced the widow of the late General Claire Chennault to influence the leaders of the South Vietnamese government to hold off endorsing LBJ's October 31st, 1968 peace effort which might have benefitted Hubert Humphrey's presidential effort. Still, LBJ was there as Nixon was sworn in on Inauguration Day 1969.

Without a doubt, pure politics has, more than is always comfortable, sloshed over the ragged shoreline that separates good taste from bad taste and political chicanery from good old-fashioned patriotism, but former President Trump's encouragement of Americans to disrupt the peaceful transition of power is beyond the pale.  Even worse is the willingness of many Republicans to forego the peoples' sense of political security to avoid the political vulnerability they fear within their own party.

When he lost the presidency in 1888, Grover Cleveland picked himself off the floor and won the office four years later becoming the only president to have separate presidential terms: Steven Grover Cleveland was our 22nd and 24th president. Al Gore didn't kick and scream about his 2000 defeat by George W. Bush; he simply went on to a new career.

Donald J. Trump, we're assured, has both the money and the popularity within the Republican Party to go on and claim his prize at the 2024 GOP Convention. Had he chosen to go ahead and claim his future rather than trying to spoil Joe Biden's presidency, he might well have been another Grover Cleveland.

Lyndon Johnson is said to have observed that it was wiser to retain J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director on the grounds that it was better to have Hoover "...on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in."

Whatever you think of LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon or just about any historical American figure you can name, they may have been narrow and self-centered at times, but they never stepped on what keeps us truly free — our mutual trust in our system and in ourselves.

Therein lies the real poisonous root of Wednesday, January 6th, 2021!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

LOOKING STRAIGHT AHEAD!

By Edwin Cooney

Unfortunately for President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as 2022 dawns, he's in a tough spot, although he has no one to blame for that but himself, especially considering everything Donald John Trump did to keep him out of the White House and away from those “crushing” presidential burdens which many people believe a gentleman of his age ought to be avoiding. Add to that, there's the deliberately adversarial relationship between executives and legislatures that are a traditional and even cherished institution in a republic such as ours. This adversarial institution has its legitimate aspect of emphasizing different ways of doing everything from budget management to domestic and foreign policy application. Even more, this adversarial way of doing things sells newspapers, inflames potential political candidates, encourages both famous and infamous image makers, encourages good and bad legislation, and ensures large pharmaceutical companies of healthy annual profits. Worst of all, it was founded by our "founding fathers," with insufficiently strong reservations by George Washington when he warned against it in his farewell letter. Our dilemma is that we've become too political.   

By its very nature, politics is about planned intrigue against an existing established order. Politics in small doses is not only healthy, it's essential.

However, like a doctor's most powerful drugs, in this our fourth century, it has become dangerous to the point of becoming nearly fatal to the body politic.

The fact of the matter is that as we approach the second full year of the Biden/Harris Administration, both political parties have had things their way and neither party is either grateful to the American voter or appreciative, and thus respectful, to the options and ministrations of the formerly "loyal opposition."

By both temperament and nature, an unfettered public legally and even morally (depending on what force governs one’s morals) can independently and judiciously adjust that which traditionally has regulated what does or does not constitute political fairness or morality when it comes to the public's well-being.

What kind of a society are we building when we pass state laws not only empowering but encouraging citizens to arrest one another? If it's moral to arrest a neighbor for violation of pro-life laws, how is it immoral for a neighbor to arrest another neighbor for violating a newly passed law designed to protect the environment and, ultimately, the climate? Are election results to be judged as moral versus immoral reflections of a free people's judgment?

Another interesting factor from the 2020 election is the number of Americans who celebrated elections which resulted in GOP congressional majorities but who also rejected the same election day result that favored Joe Biden's successful result.

Back around 2011, I was able to counter the fears of two fine gentlemen who were sure the country was falling apart by demonstrating that much of what was then happening had happened before.

With laws being passed by state legislatures limiting people's voting rights and encouraging and widening the policing power, I'm fearful that our sense of individual moral superiority over opposition individuals and groups of people is invariably self-destructive.

As of this January 3rd, just three days  short of the anniversary of last January 6th, we appear to be frozen in a new era of malaise that has nothing at all to do with former President Jimmy Carter. Carter, of course, never used the word “malaise” to describe the anxious situation we were in during July and August of 1979. Malaise was the phrase President Carter's opponents used with which to tar his administration and even his person on the eve of the 1980 presidential election.

Given the current state of malaise, I hereby offer a new paradigm.

As urgent or desirous or fundamental as your most urgent cause may be, give some consideration to the way the enforcement of your cause could  limit the liberty of others.

Finally, remember that three months is a long time in politics. There are forces out there, some of which are lying in the bushes, that can alternate a whole set of life-altering circumstances. Even in view of his December 2019 impeachment by the House, everyone expected President Trump to be easily re-elected in 2020, but then along came Covid-19. Should Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine or should President Biden suddenly pass significant pieces of "Build Back Better" legislation or should supply problems suddenly be resolved, Old Joe could suddenly be looking pretty spry!

Still, we have an ongoing problem. We've all become so jealous of our own priorities that the values of others mean very, very little. We may officially be the "United States" of America, but it seems that everyday we are less and less united.

It's time we begin loving someone else's freedom at least as much as we do our own.

Tell you what — you go first and let me know how easy it is and just maybe, I'll follow you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY