FOREVER BECKONS THE DAWN

By Edwin Cooney

I don’t know about you, of course, but I love “clean slates.”  Clichés such as “tomorrow is only a day away!" and “tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life!” have given me, since I was quite young, a sense of newness or redemption from yesterday’s -- and today’s -- drudgery or mistakes.  Thus, for me, a new day can be a new start.

Another gateway between the past and the future can be a vacation.  I offer this perspective from such a vantage point.

Last Sunday night, two United Airlines jets (respectively) swept me out of San Francisco and Los Angeles heading eastward toward Cleveland, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania.  This vacation not only meant meeting new people and going new places, but it also meant what my fellow Methodists often refer to as “a new beginning."  Exactly what constitutes an "old beginning" no Methodist (Wesleyan or United) has ever explained, but a new beginning has a special meaning for me during this vacation!

Shortly after I settled into Seat 24A on the flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles, twenty-two year-old Alexandra plunked her tiny self down into the seat just to my right.  A very curious and inquisitive college student traveling home to Southern California for her Thanksgiving holiday, Alexandra was fascinated when she realized that she was seated next to a blind man.

“What’s it like to live in total darkness?” she wanted to know.  So I explained, as I usually do, that total blindness isn’t dark since "dark" must be seen to be identified.

Full of energy and a bunch of presumptions and assumptions, Alexandra made the approximate 52 minutes between California’s fourth and first largest cities lively indeed.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., my trip continued as the Boeing 737 rose into the air and headed northeastward towards Cleveland.  My seatmate was Michael, a young violist with the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra.  Born in Rochester, New York, and raised primarily in Buffalo, Michael, too, was heading eastward for his Thanksgiving week vacation.  He was on his way to visit his fiancé and her family.  Michael had originally planned to fly from Boise, Idaho to Cleveland via Chicago, but a mechanical malady to the aircraft caused him to go to Cleveland via Los Angeles adding over twelve hours to his travel time.  Michael was ready for some shuteye as soon as he settled into his seat.  All of what little conversation I had with him occurred as we were making our approximate twenty minute approach to Cleveland.  Michael told me it is his hope to keep advancing from small town orchestras up to the big time orchestras in the United States, Canada, or perhaps Europe.

Strangely, the atmosphere on the "puddle jumper" between Cleveland and Erie was almost nonexistent.  Except for the flight attendant’s pre take-off and post landing announcements, hardly a word was uttered by the passengers or the crew.

A vacation, like anything else, is what one makes of it.  Still, the best part of any vacation very often is the hospitality provided by one’s host and hostess.  In this instance, my friends Chet and Linda have been more than wonderful in every way.  Chet, who attended my alma mater, possesses a rare combination of wisdom, candor, and humor along with a healthy dose of thoughtfulness.  His wife Linda is generous, creative and unfailingly attentive.

One of the most pleasurable challenges one ever has is to introduce to others the lady he has grown to love.  Marsha is an intelligent, loving, energetic little dynamo of a woman who agreed to marry me last Thursday -- November 22^nd, 2012 -- Thanksgiving Day.  My new fiancée possesses an almost unquenchable curiosity, a thoughtfulness toward others, an undying spirituality and a tremendous capacity to give and receive love.  Like Chet and me, Marsha is a graduate of the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia.  Her alertness, vitality, integrity, imagination, warmth, and compassion are out there for all to see.  As for when we’ll become one or exactly where that will happen isn’t yet definite -- but we both want it to happen as soon as possible.

Happily, sixteen days remain to this wondrous holiday.  From Monday, November 26^th until Monday, December 3^rd, I will visit with the editor of these weekly musings, my friend Roe and her husband Mark.  Then, between December 3^rd and 10^th, Lady Marsha and I will spend time celebrating her birthday and meeting friends and family in Syracuse, New York.

My memory of the two aircrafts that swept me out of California on Sunday night, November 18^th toward Monday’s ever rapidly approaching morning star reminds me once again that while yesterday may be rich in history, tomorrow’s dawn -- God’s greatest gift to us -- forever provides that clean slate on which to write tomorrow’s story.

Thus, forever beckons the dawn!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

By Edwin Cooney

'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.  

We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.  

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.  

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.  

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.  

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.  

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.  

We have abused power and called it politics.  

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition.  

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.  

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!'

The prayer you just read was sent to me by two friends believing that it was issued by the Reverend Billy Graham, who turned 94 on Wednesday, November 7^th, one day after a majority of Americans had reelected Barack Obama President of the United States.  The prayer asking God’s forgiveness for America’s sins appears to be an indictment of not only our sins, but of the social and political factors or forces represented by the outcome of our politics.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines of the above to gather that the author of this prayer believes that we once had high moral values and have allowed them to be corrupted by our appetite for the material and the carnal.  Clearly the author of this prayer believes that:

We were once morally directed by principled forefathers who have since been replaced by ambitious politicians; we once had stellar human values to a greater degree than any other people on God’s green earth; and that the values expressed by the outcome of the 2012 election represent the yelpings of a craven materialistic and Godless people who lack both standards and principles.

What the utterer of this prayer doesn’t appear to acknowledge is incredibly revealing:

That our forefathers wrote the tolerance of human slavery into Article 1 of the Constitution by valuing congressional constituents who were Indian or black as "three fifths of a white male" rather than as children equal in God’s sight; that as late as 1845, another generation of Americans justified our destruction of Native Americans as our “manifest destiny;" and, most important of all, that we’ve spent the better part of the last 112 years granting God’s children of color, children with disabilities, children of lesser financial means, children of the foreign born, and so on, the rights and the equities that George Washington, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (just to name a few) should have granted them back in 1787 and 1788 when the Constitution was written and ratified.

One doesn’t have to be religious to fully acknowledge that our societal mores have a direct link to those things the most influential among us vote for and adapt as our national policy.  Still, it’s equally true that where religion and politics intersect is where the rubber meets the road.

Thus, a prayer of this eloquence invariably has a special meaning if it is uttered by a man of the Reverend Billy Graham’s stature.  However, the real question is whether it should!  One of the major forces that governed the Protestant Reformation beginning in the Sixteenth Century was the insistence that all sincere prayers to the “almighty” are created equal.  Hence, neither the Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish clergy possesses a monopoly over you and me on what is sincere or worthy of God’s attention.

What makes the above prayer even more intriguing is that it actually didn’t come from either the pen or the heart of the Reverend Billy Graham.  It was offered to the Kansas State Legislature on Tuesday, January 23^rd, 1996 by Pastor Joe Wright of Topeka Kansas.  It was initially called “The Prayer of Repentance.”  Since then it has been attributed to the late Paul Harvey as his “on air prayer” and finally to Billy Graham.

As one who seeks to be both Christian and authentic, I find this sort of misattribution to be both presumptive and disturbing.  As I see it, every generation and every nation has sinned since the beginning of time.  Modern America has no monopoly on sin.  In short, all sins are created equal.

Hence, I believe that a prayer, offered by even the most saintly among us (such as Billy Graham or Pope Benedict XVI) has no more weight than that offered by the humblest parent or the most innocent child!

What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE REPUBLICAN WHO GOT AWAY!

By Edwin Cooney

Sometimes it’s hard for even me to believe, but I was once a devout Republican.  From about age 10 through age 30, my political heroes were primarily Republicans.  Throughout that twenty year period, I witnessed the ups and downs of Dwight Eisenhower’s, Barry Goldwater’s, Richard Nixon’s and Jerry Ford’s Grand Old Party.  Finally, feeling abandoned by what I regarded as Republican blindness in the presence of an unnecessary and costly Vietnam War and upset at the domestic political crimes and Watergate cover-ups which were committed, I left the Republican Party to join Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Democratic Party.

Modern politics is bedecked with the stories of leaders who have abandoned their original political party affiliations.  Their names are very prominent and even legendary.  They include Abraham Lincoln who left the Whig party along with just about everyone else in 1854 to join the newly created Republican party and Teddy Roosevelt who temporarily bolted the GOP in 1912 for the Progressives or “Bull Moose” party when the Republicans refused to nominate him for president.  In recent years, former Texas Governor John B. Connally, an old Democratic ally of LBJ's, became a Republican in 1973.  New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay switched to the Democratic Party in 1971. Some time after being an honored guest at Harry Truman’s 1949 Inaugural festivities, actor Ronald Reagan followed his newfound sweetheart Nancy Davis into the Republican Party -- and the rest is history.

What’s so staggering about the president’s rather impressive popular and electoral victory is that Republican leaders and financiers had been assuring America since February 2009 that Barack Obama would definitely be a one term president.  Men such as Grover Norquist, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, and Rupert Murdock (not to mention the Koch brothers and Joe the Plumber) promised us -- they crossed their hearts and hoped to die -- that this wicked, black, Marxist, socialist, foreign sympathizer (if not foreign-born “internationalist”) would be forced to pack his bags and depart 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by Sunday, January 20^th, 2013.  Somehow, it isn’t happening because something went very, very wrong.  What was it?

One of the healthier aspects of a free society is that, in order to be successful, political parties necessarily reexamine themselves in the wake of defeat, especially when that defeat spells political embarrassment as 2012 surely must. This was a party determined to unseat the man many Republicans regard as historically America’s worst president.

A month or so after President Obama took office, the GOP decided that its major goal was to insure that Barack Obama would be a one term president.  The best way to bring that about they reasoned was not to cooperate with him.  For the first two years of his administration, when Democrats had majorities in both houses, this strategy seemed to work.  After all, Obama and the Democrats were clearly answerable for whatever they passed and signed into law during 2009 and 2010, be it healthcare, banking reform or a job stimulus package.

However, in 2010, Republicans asked the people to give them control of the House.  Simultaneously, they retained control of most of the state governorships.  Thus the House of Representatives and many of the GOP state governors decided that obstruction of whatever President Obama wanted to do was their best possible domestic policy.  Just as the House led by Newt Gingrich did in 1995, the Republican leaders sought to bring government to its knees if they could.

In addition, there is the all out attack Hispanic families have felt emanating from the Republican Party in the name of ending illegal immigration.  The fact is that hard working, family-oriented, and generally anti-abortion Hispanics are rather natural cultural Conservative allies.  Up until the administration of George W. Bush, most Hispanics focused on the anti-Castro, anti-Communist policies of the GOP.  Since 9/11, with the GOP’s obsession with protecting America against the possible infiltration of "dangerous" and hostile dark-skinned, non-Christian, and anti-western immigrants, hardworking family-oriented Hispanics have felt increasingly picked on especially by reactionary Conservative elements within the Republican party.  Hence, Hispanics are far more comfortable with the leadership of a man, who, like them, has risen above suspicion and discrimination to the top of the greasy pole of American politics: to the presidency of the United States.

Perhaps post 2012 election soul searching will enable Republicans to realize two important political realities: First, continuous demonization of the activities and motives of ethnic groups, however legalistic, patriotic or well-intentioned, will never win their votes. Second and even more important, perhaps the leadership of the GOP finally understands that a party that merely obstructs is a party that ultimately fails to serve!

Ronald Reagan always insisted that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but that the Democratic Party left him.  As for me, the story is quite the opposite.  The Republican Party didn’t leave me; I got away clean.  The damndest thing about my getaway is that the Republicans didn’t even look for me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DOES ELECTION NIGHT POLITICAL GLORY REALLY DICTATE OUR NATIONAL FATE?

By Edwin Cooney

Author Theodore White once labeled our quadrennial presidential election campaigns “…rowdy transactions of passion, tumult and circus.”  Now, as the 2012 presidential campaign concludes, Americans -- regardless of their hopes, fears, prejudices and partisanship -- are genuinely asking themselves  “how does my vote really matter?”

Four years ago, sixty-two percent of eligible voters thought that voting was important enough to go to the polls, the highest percentage of the voting population to do so since 1960.  Barack Obama’s popular vote was 69,456,897 or 52.9 percent of the total vote.  John McCain’s popular vote total was 59,934,814 or 45.7 percent of the national vote.  Obama carried 28 states to McCain’s twenty-two. Out of a total of 538 electoral votes, Obama’s electoral vote total was 365 (a majority of 270 is needed to win) to McCain’s 173.

Of course, by now it's old news how close this year’s election appears to be.  Political pundants, in some cases depending on their partisanship, as usual are calling it both ways.  A budding columnist named Cooney, a firm Obama backer, thinks his candidate will collect 303 electoral votes and approximately 52 percent of the popular vote whatever that vote turns out to be.  Karl Rove (deservedly much better known and the genius of two George W. Bush victories) predicted a few days ago that Mitt Romney will get 279 electoral votes, nine more than he needs to become president.  Mr. Rove predicted further that Governor Romney will get 51 percent of the vote to President Obama’s 48 percent.  What neither Cooney nor Rove can tell you is what the total popular vote will be.

That leaves two burning questions:  How does the outcome affect the fate of the American people?  How might the outcome affect the fate of the candidates as individuals?

History clearly demonstrates that a president’s personal outlook on what the legitimate role of the government should be, both at home and abroad, can make the difference between prosperity and stagnation here at home and between peace and war abroad. 

Governmental policy, especially since the 1930s, has had a lot to do with the way we live our lives here at home.  FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama all believed that government has a legitimate responsibility to regulate the activities of major commercial and business institutions and activities.  Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the two Bush’s sought to reign in big government and stimulate the economy by giving business and industry a freer hand in conducting their activities.  If you are a Conservative, you are likely to believe that President Reagan’s firmness toward the “evil Soviet Empire” was a major factor in ending the “cold war.”  If you’re a Liberal, you’re likely gratified that President Obama saw credit card and home loan banking practices, and national healthcare reform as high priority items despite the ravaging recession throughout 2009 and 2010.  If you’re a Conservative, it matters very much to you that the George W. Bush tax cuts will be continued under a President Romney.  If you’re a Liberal, you’re likely very concerned as to what the government will do to promote environmental and consumer friendly products and activities during the next four years. 

Whether the president is a fiscal standpatter or a progressive may have a lot to do with how the government responds to future natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy which has just devastated such a huge portion of the northeast.

Tonight at midnight, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, two New Hampshire villages almost within shouting distance of the Canadian border, will be the first two precincts to begin sealing the political fates of Willard Mitt Romney and Barack Hussein Obama.  These two men, regardless of what has been said about either of them or what they’ve had to say about each other, are highly energetic, well-meaning public-spirited men.  Whatever satisfaction or disappointment one of these men experiences after tomorrow night, his self esteem and sense of personal well-being is not likely to be much affected.

History records that seven presidents (William Henry Harrison in 1841, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, Warren G. Harding in 1923, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy in 1963) all died in office.  Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were victims of assassination.  Ten other presidents (John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829, Martin Van Buren in 1841, Millard Fillmore in 1853, Franklin Pierce in 1857, Andrew Johnson in 1869, Benjamin Harrison in 1893, Herbert Hoover in 1933, Jimmy Carter in 1981 and George H. W. Bush in 1993) left the White House regarded as political failures in the wake of defeat following their four years of public service. 

As I see it, if social trends matter, if the way commerce and business are conducted is important, if what only one individual believes, does or thinks at all matters, then certainly your vote has vital national implications. 

Political success on Election Day for presidential candidates and their families has been varied in its effect.  I find the fate of one presidential couple gripping.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 1920 was the fifty-fifth birthday of Warren Gamaliel Harding.  Tall and handsome, an outgoing man who wanted more than anything to be loved, Harding spent the day happily playing golf with his friends.  That night, largely due to the ambition of his wife, Florence Mabel Kling DeWolfe Harding, his birthday celebration was crowned by his election as our twenty-ninth president.  However, his White House ordeal, lasting from Friday, March 4^th, 1921 until Thursday, August 2^nd, 1923, although by no means a complete failure, was an uncomfortable time for Harding.  He found his presidential duties to be way over his head.  Some 26 months into his administration, the president discovered that two of his closest friends, Attorney General Harry Daugherty (a long time Marion, Ohio neighbor and friend) and Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, had involved his administration in the infamous "Teapot Dome" scandal.  It was later observed that Harding’s discovery was embarrassing enough to the president to rob him of all will -- except the one to die.  His death came suddenly at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco around 7:30 on the night of August 2^nd, 1923.  “No one can hurt you now, Warren,” Flossie Harding was heard saying to the president over his open coffin as he lay in repose at the White House.  Nearly sixteen months later, on Friday, November 24^th, 1924, Florence Harding died of kidney failure in Marion, Ohio.  The Harding’s thus hold the dubious distinction of being the only presidential couple not to survive a presidential term.

The ultimate fate of Warren and Florence Harding probably mattered little to our national well-being, but it's worth noting that its course may have actually been established amidst the glory of political victory that election night ninety-two years ago!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, 

EDWIN COONEY

IT’S “WORLD SERIES” TIME -- SOMEONE, PLEASE TELL THE REST OF THE WORLD!

By Edwin Cooney

Many years ago, I had the privilege of hearing a loving grandmother assure her wondering grandson that not everyone has to be interested in baseball and that it was perfectly all right if even a little boy wasn’t interested in it at all.  So it likely is with the whole world: for camel drivers in Pakistan, sheepherders in New Zealand, drug cartel bosses in Columbia, bullfighters in Spain and Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican City.  However, for Americans, America has been the "world" at least since that Democratic newspaper publisher John O. Sullivan put God and all humanity on notice in 1845 when he declared that America possessed a “Manifest Destiny.”

Still, as the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers are locked in an intense if not deadly struggle in 2012, the world, and even much of America, has other matters on their minds.  Of course, it isn’t as if baseball hasn’t tried to engulf all humanity in its peanuts, crackerjacks and beer realm.  During the off season between 1888 and 1889, Albert Goodwill Spalding, a former star pitcher turned sporting goods king, took the Chicago Colts (now the Cubs) and a group of All Stars on a trip that included Hawaii (then a separate nation), New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanca, Egypt, Italy, France, Scotland and England.  The players played baseball when they could but were forced by circumstances to postpone some scheduled games.  Meanwhile, they tossed balls over the pyramids of Egypt and used the right eye of the Sphinx for target practice.  They viewed private hula dancing performances, rode rickshaws, watched rules football in Australia, and watched --  and even played -- cricket.  Even though “Atlas Shrugged,” neither Spalding nor the other baseball moguls hesitated for a moment to call the annual American and National League Championship series that was finally established in 1903 “The World Series.”

As for the two teams, the Giants have represented two cities, New York and San Francisco. They have been in seventeen World Series going back to 1905 when John J. McGraw’s Giants defeated Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics four games to one.  That was the year after the testy McGraw had had sufficient power to refuse to play the "upstart” American League in a World Series.  (The Boston Pilgrims had defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in a best five out of nine series in 1903 and McGraw wasn’t going to allow his Giants to be humiliated by the “Junior Circuit’s” 1904 Bostonian champions.) The Giants of New York would win a total of five World Series: 1905, 1921, 1922 (the previous two over the Yankees who were new to the World Series in 1921), 1933 and 1954.  Their New York series record was 5 and 9.  Since coming to San Francisco they have been in three World Series: 1962 (when they lost to the Yankees in seven games), 1989 (the infamous “Earthquake Series" which they lost to the Oakland Athletics), and 2010 (when they defeated the Texas Rangers in five games).

As for the Detroit Tigers, World Series competition has visited the “Motor City” a total of ten times.  Their record is four wins and six losses: 1935 and 1945 over the Chicago Cubs, 1968 over the St. Louis Cardinals, and 1984 when they swamped the San Diego Padres, four games to one.  (The Tigers have the dubious distinction of being the only team the lowly Chicago Cubs have beaten in two World Series -- 1907 and 1908).

As the Giants enter their eighteenth and the Tigers their eleventh “World Series,” they appear evenly matched.  Both teams are led by splendid gentleman managers, Bruce Bochy of the Giants and Jim Leyland of the Tigers.  The Tigers are deeper in power hitting and the Giants are deeper in starting pitching.  The Tigers can be nearly disastrous on defense and in the bullpen; the Giants’ hitting can be embarrassingly erratic.

It has become almost traditional that the mayors of World Series cities make bets.  This year, San Francisco’s Ed Lee says that if Detroit prevails he’ll do a day of public service benefit work in Detroit.  Detroit mayor David Bing, a former National Basketball Association star, has agreed to do the same in San Francisco.

Between 1952 and 1980, the World Series winner even predicted America’s political fate.  If the American League champion won the World Series,  Americans would elect a Republican.  Otherwise, the Democratic candidate would prevail.  The American League’s Yankees elected Ike in 1952 and 1956.  The National League’s Pirates elected Jack Kennedy in 1960 and the National League’s Cardinals elected Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  The American League’s Tigers and Athletics elected Nixon in 1968 and 1972 respectively while the National League’s Cincinnati Reds (probably much to the chagrin of Cincinnati’s highly Republican-leaning constituency) elected Jimmy Carter in 1976.  However, since the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies elected Reagan over Carter in 1980, all World Series political bets seem to be off!

It’s a matter of record that only twice, in 1992 and 1993, has another member of the world community of nations, Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays (of the American League), had the temerity to snatch America’s World Series Championship trophy.

Hence, I offer an observation and a question. 

Observation:  America’s world baseball supremacy appears secure for the time being!

Question:  I wonder if baseball’s championship trophy is still made in America?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY—WHERE THE VITAL AND THE OBSCURE MEET

By Edwin Cooney

Since the “Year of our Lord 1900,” Democrats and Republicans have nominated a total of 44 men and two women to serve as the vice president of the United States of America.  That includes 25 Democrats and twenty-one Republicans.  Two defeated vice presidential candidates—Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1920 and Earl Warren in 1948 (one from each party) have gone on to great presidential and judiciary glory.  FDR would be elected president four times between 1932 and 1944, and Earl Warren would serve as Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969.  Exactly why each of these candidates was chosen and what value they ultimately were is largely a matter of pure historical and political speculation.

So daunting for the Democrats was the task of defeating Teddy Roosevelt for election in 1904 that they chose two of the most obscure possible candidates to run for president and vice president.  Their presidential candidate was Judge Alton B. Parker, Chief Judge of New York State’s Appellate Court.  The real shocker however was their vice presidential candidate—he was eighty-one year old West Virginia entrepreneur and former U.S. Senator Henry Gassaway Davis.  Parker seems to have had little to say about his running mate.  Back then, the vice presidency was largely up to the bosses in both parties.  So, why did the leadership of the Democratic Party choose such an old man to run for the second highest office in the land—an office he was unlikely to ever achieve?  The answer is simple—money!  Some say Davis contributed about $120,000 (which would be about 3 million in today’s dollars) to the campaign.

The year 1920 was an open year for both parties.  Thomas Woodrow Wilson, although both old and crippled due to his October 1919 stroke, actually wanted a third term. The war weary party and nation longed for youth and glamour.  The GOP nominated on the tenth ballot of its Chicago convention the handsome and gregarious Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio.  As for Harding’s running mate, Harding and the Republican Party leadership wanted to nominate Wisconsin’s progressive Senator Irvine Luther Lenroot.  However, the bosses took Saturday night, June 12^th, 1920 off and the conservative core of the convention selected Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, who’d broken the 1919 Boston Police strike, in his place.  Thus, Calvin Coolidge and not Irvine L. Lenroot became our 30^th president when Harding died on August 2^nd, 1923.

In 1920, Democrats, meeting in San Francisco, chose former Ohio Governor James Middleton Cox as their presidential nominee even though he’d been divorced.  For his running mate, Democrats nominated the handsome and athletic Assistant Secretary of the Navy 38-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Prior to the convening of the 1920 Democratic convention there was a movement to nominate the man who had served as Woodrow Wilson’s Food Administrator during World War I, Herbert Clark Hoover.  No one knew at that time that Mr. Hoover was a Republican.  Hence, there was a distinct possibility that the 1920 Democratic ticket could have been Herbert Hoover for president and Franklin D. Roosevelt for vice president.  Roosevelt’s major appeal wasn’t his glamour, but his last name.  It was the same as his Republican fifth cousin’s, (Teddy) Roosevelt.

The 1924 Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden lasted 10 days and 104 ballots before it finally nominated John William Davis of West Virginia for president.  As the Democratic vice presidential candidate that year the exhausted party nominated Nebraska Governor Charles Wayland Bryan.  The reason for Bryan’s vice presidential nomination was largely because he was the brother of William Jennings Bryan, the party’s three time presidential nominee and former Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.  Calvin Coolidge slaughtered them at the polls that November.

In 1932, FDR’s political captain James A. Farley arranged his boss’s nomination by agreeing to put House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas on the ticket.  It was a close call for Roosevelt as back then it took a two-thirds vote of Democratic Party delegates to secure the party’s presidential nomination.  That rule had been in existence since the days of Andrew Jackson, thereby giving southern and western delegations equal or greater power than delegations from the larger states.  By 1936, the Democratic Party rescinded the two-thirds for the simple majority rule for nominating presidents and vice presidents it has today.  Ironically, in 1940, when FDR was seeking an unprecedented third term in office, he was powerful enough to force Democrats meeting in Chicago to nominate Henry Agard Wallace, his Agricultural Secretary, as his running mate.  Had the party balked he was ready to threaten not to run.  By 1944, however, the party more or less forced FDR to drop Wallace ultimately in favor of Senator Harry S Truman -- labor’s favorite candidate.

Vice Presidents Harry S Truman, Richard Milhous Nixon, Spiro Theodore Agnew, Walter Frederick (Fritz) Mondale, and George Herbert Walker Bush won nomination because they brought either a geographical or an ideological balance to the party’s national ticket.

One may reasonably assert that the fastest path to permanent political obscurity would be to be the losing vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket.  Names such as Adlai Ewing Stevenson I -- William Jennings Bryan’s vice presidential candidate in 1900; Henry Gassaway Davis -- 1904; John Worth Kern of Indiana -- Bryan’s final vice presidential running mate in 1908; Arkansas Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson -- Al Smith’s VP candidate in 1928; Senator Charles Linza McNary of Oregon -- Wendell Lewis Willkie’s Republican Party VP candidate in 1940; Senator John William Bricker of Ohio -- Thomas Edmund Dewey’s 1944 running mate; Senator John Jackson Sparkman of Alabama -- Adlai Ewing Stevenson II’s VP candidate in 1952: and, of course, Congressman William Edward Miller of Lockport, New York -- Barry Morris Goldwater’s 1964 running mate -- have few groupies political or otherwise.

As for the two female vice presidential candidate losers, Democratic Congresswoman Geraldine Anne Ferraro -- Walter Mondale’s 1984 running mate -- and Alaska Governor Sarah Louise Palin -- John Sidney McCain III’s 2008 VP hopeful -- obscurity has to be somewhat balanced by notoriety.  After all, to be under consideration for the second highest executive office in the modern world has to be not only an honor, but a significant lifetime achievement in anybody’s career.

Five losing vice presidential candidates, Carey Estes Keefauver of Tennessee -- Adlai Stevenson’s 1956 VP candidate; Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. -- Richard Nixon’s 1960 nominee; Robert Joseph Dole -- Gerald Ford’s 1976 running mate; Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr. -- Massachusetts Governor Michael Stanley Dukakis’s 1988 running mate; and Jack French Kemp -- Robert Dole’s VP partner in 1996, were chosen, in part, for their national prominence.

Estes Keefauver had led a Senate investigation of organized crime in the early 1950s.  Henry Cabot Lodge had been a prominent United States Senator from Massachusetts and Ike’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1953 to 1960. (Lodge’s grandfather Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr led the successful fight against Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations in 1919 and 1920.)  Robert Dole had served as Republican Party national chairman in the early 1970s and as GOP Minority Whip at the time of his selection for the 1976 GOP ticket.  Lloyd Bentsen was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and had beaten George H. W. Bush for the U.S. Senate seat from Texas in 1970.  Jack Kemp, in addition to his public service in the House of Representatives and in GHWB’s cabinet, had been a star quarterback for the American Football League’s Buffalo Bills in the late 1960s.

Paul Davis Ryan’s prominence is new while Joseph Robinette Biden’s prominence is extensive.  Should Ryan be the losing vice presidential candidate in 2012 his future will depend on how valuable to the ticket his candidacy is assessed as having been.  If he’s rated as having been valuable, like Edmund Sixtus Muskie of Maine (Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr.’s 1968 running mate), Ryan could be a rising star in the Republican Party.  Should Joe Biden be the losing candidate in 2012, even with his extensive experience, it’s likely that his public career will come to an end.

There are a dozen vice presidential candidates whose significance is hard to evaluate: James Schoolcraft Sherman -- William Howard Taft’s vice president who had the temerity to die during the 1912 campaign in which he was running for re-election; Vice President Charles Warren Fairbanks who served under Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt between 1905 and 1909 and who was the unsuccessful GOP VP candidate in 1916 under Charles Evans Hughes; Vice President Charles (Hell-and-Maria) Dawes, a banker and a songwriter who served as Coolidge’s vice president from 1925 to 1929; Charles Curtis, (who was nearly half Native American) who was Herbert Hoover’s Vice President from 1929 to 1933; William Franklin "Frank" Knox who was Governor Alfred Mossman Landon’s running mate against FDR’s bid for a second term; Vice President Alben William Barkley (who was called “the Vip”), a marvelous Kentucky politician and gentleman who served under Harry Truman from 1949 to 1953; Thomas Francis Eagleton and Robert Sergeant Shriver who both ran with the late Senator George Stanley McGovern in 1972; Vice President James Danforth Quayle, 1989-1992; Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, 1993-2000; Joseph Isadore Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee under Gore in 2000; and Johnny Reid “John” Edwards, Senator John Forbes Kerry’s 2004 unsuccessful vice presidential running mate.

The names of two men must have special acknowledgment here.  Ironically, neither of them was nominated by one of the two major parties for vice president, but they both achieved that office.  The names are, and you know them well, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. and Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.  Both dedicated a large part of their lives to public service and deserve to be well remembered and highly regarded.

If I had to grant an award to the most valuable vice presidential candidate of the last one hundred and twelve years, it would go to Lyndon Baines Johnson whose 1960 vice presidential candidacy probably insured John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s victory. 

Perhaps the grandest vice presidential candidate and actual vice president was Thomas Riley Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president between 1913 and 1921.  Marshall knew what the nation needed most and told wonderful stories.  “What this nation really needs,” he once observed, “is a good five cent cigar.”  Marshall, who was from Indiana -- a state considered critical to political success during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries -- used to tell the story of the couple who had two sons.  One of them went to sea and the other son became vice president of the United States.  The sad part of the story is that neither son was ever heard from again!

Someone once observed that a major political party’s vice presidential nomination is like the last cookie on the plate—-nobody wants it, but somebody always takes it.  All I can say in response to that observation is that for four men -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1900; Calvin Coolidge, 1920; Harry Truman, 1944; and Lyndon Johnson, 1960 -- it must have been a fortune cookie!  Inside each of those four cookies there must have been a ticket to the White House!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AND THE WINNER WAS…!

By Edwin Cooney

Unless you’re a history nerd like me, it’s possible, even likely, that you’ve worried more about your next dentist appointment or about your next colonoscopy than you have about the actions and personhood of Vice President Joe Biden during the past four years!  Even though some of his detractors regard him as something of a pain (guess where!), I’ve always liked the guy.

The general consensus seems to be that last week’s vice presidential showdown in Danville, Kentucky -- (of all places!) was contentious if not particularly enlightening.  This was the night for Joseph R. Biden to actually earn his six figure annual salary by bringing the president a clear political victory in this series of jousts we call political debates.  I say that because historically vice presidents have been more valuable as politicians than they’ve been as office holders or, if you prefer, as “public servants.”

Under the constitution, a sitting vice president has only one duty and that’s to preside over the United States Senate and to cast the deciding vote if that “world’s greatest deliberative body” vote is tied.  Any other duty a sitting vice president has is at the discretion or pleasure of the president.

It’s easy, and therefore tempting, to trivialize what vice presidents have and haven’t accomplished, since non-accomplishments vastly outnumber vice presidential accomplishments.  Still, at least from a theoretical standpoint, I find it both sobering and instructive when we do get a peek at how some past vice presidents have considered weighty national matters.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1850, the United States Senate was debating the admission of California into the union.  Three aging senators, Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, all of whom would be dead within two years, were debating California’s entrance into the union.  Clay and Webster, the two “great compromisers,” were working to cut a deal while Calhoun opposed outright California’s admission into the union.  President Zachary Taylor, a non politician and a slave holder, announced that he’d veto what came to be known as the California Compromise because it contained the infamous fugitive slave law provision.  Taylor believed that while the constitution protected slavery in the states, the federal government had no business getting involved in the recapture of “run away slaves.”  He made it clear that such a bill would not get past his desk.  Vice President Fillmore, on the other hand, who reportedly personally hated slavery, went to the “President’s Mansion” and told President Taylor that if the California Compromise was tied in the senate, he’d support it.  Exactly what Taylor told Vice President Fillmore, Mr. Fillmore never revealed.  However, President Taylor suddenly died after scarfing down too much contaminated cherry milk punch at the July 4^th, 1850 dedication of the Washington Monument.  Thus, the newly minted President Millard Fillmore, as promised, signed the California Compromise. Incidentally, he did so against the advice of his wife Abigail (Powers) Fillmore who had once been the president’s schoolteacher. And the crisis between the North and the South became even more of a moral crisis than a political dilemma.  Many believe that if civil war wasn’t inevitable before passage of the fugitive slave law as part of the Compromise of 1850, it became so once the former vice president signed that morally flawed bill.

According to Professor Robert A. Caro’s latest multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, the enmity some members of the Kennedy administration held toward LBJ was such that neither JFK nor RFK paid any heed to Vice President Johnson’s advice as to how to get any bill through the congress.  Hence, the martyred president’s gleaming civil rights record immediately after his assassination has not stood the test of time.  As I see it, one may well conclude that had JFK better utilized LBJ’s practical political knowledge, health care and tax cut legislation may have been passed to the nation’s benefit, and John F. Kennedy may have been a near great president rather than a mere above average president.  As it stands, Lyndon Baines Johnson, rather than John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is legitimately rated a near great president in the annals of presidential evaluation.

Historically, vice presidents have been most valuable to sitting presidents as “political hatchet men.”  Throughout the 1950s, President Eisenhower used Richard Nixon to get down and dirty with Democrats during the off year congressional elections of 1954 and 1958 while he hovered above the political playing field.

Having been useful to Ike as a political hatchet man, Richard Nixon subsequently used Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to pillory anti-Vietnam war critics until, as many believe, Agnew became sufficiently popular among conservative Republicans to be a possible threat to the president’s prerogatives if not to the president’s political security.  There are many who insist that Spiro Agnew was significant enough politically that, had Nixon protected him from prosecution for fraud and tax evasion, he might never have been forced to resign the presidency.

If Americans regard last Thursday’s nationally televised "Paul and Joe Show" as mere political chatter, than who won can hardly matter.  If neither man can gain political advantage for the head of their ticket, perhaps traditional vice presidential obscurity has a genuine national purpose!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY