MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2015

YOGI — THE BIG LITTLE FELLOW!

There are occasions that compel one to fall in line with everyone else. Hence, this week I’m doing exactly that.  Like countless writers all over America, I’m paying a fond tribute to a remarkable human being. I’m doing so with gladness and sadness, with a smile and a tear, with longing for yesteryear, but as one who is at peace with the completion of the “Yogi Berra story.”

The story began on Tuesday, May 12th, 1925 in the Italian working class section of St. Louis, Missouri.  The third of four children born to bricklayer Pietro and Paulina Berra, his full name was Lawrence Peter Berra.  His original nickname given by Mama Berra was “Lawdie.”  The nickname we all know and love, Yogi, was given to him as a teenager by Bobby Hoffman, a neighbor boy.  After seeing a movie featuring an Indian snake charmer, young Hoffman (who also later played major league baseball in New York for the Giants) remarked that the Indian Yogi snake charmer “walks and looks just like Lawdie Berra.”  The name stuck.

Yogi’s best friend growing up in St. Louis was Joe Garagiola who was born on Friday, February 12th, 1926, a little less than seven months after Yogi.  At age 16, Joe was offered a $500 contract to sign with the hometown St. Louis Cardinals.  The Cards offered Yogi $250 to sign also, but Yogi turned them down.  Following the Yankee’s loss to the Cardinals in the 1942 World Series, the Yankees offered 17-year-old Yogi Berra $500 to sign with them and Berra snapped it up.  Ironically, it was Joe Garagiola who was the first to play in a World Series. The next year, Yogi played in the 1947 series against the Brooklyn Dodgers and made a name for himself in World Series history.  In the third game held at Ebbets Field on Thursday, October 2nd, 1947, Yogi became the first player in World Series history to hit a pinch-hit home run.  It was a solo shot in the seventh inning off Ralph Branca.  Yogi played in fourteen World Series of which the Yankees won ten.  During a banquet speech in 1954, Joe Garagiola quipped, “You know, Yogi has never really experienced the finer things in life. For instance, Yogi has never watched a World Series game on television!”

Just before spring training in 1949, Yogi married Carmen Short, a pretty young St. Louis waitress.  They went on to have three sons, Tim, Larry and Dale.  Dale would one day briefly play shortstop for the New York Yankees while his father was the Yankee’s manager.

Yogi’s easygoing way often masked his competitive intensity, an essential aspect of anyone’s personality who competed as successfully as Yogi did throughout his eighteen seasons as a Yankee catcher and occasional outfielder.  As entertaining and thought-provoking as Yogi’s observations and malapropisms came to be, they made an impression because of his success as a top flight professional on a continuously successful championship team.

Perhaps in recent years former opponents such as Carl Erskine, Hank Aaron, Bill Mazeroski, Willie Mays and even Sandy Koufax have chuckled at Yogi Berra stories and Yogi-isms along with the rest of us, but you can bet your Topps Yogi Berra baseball card that there was nothing funny when the 5 foot 7 inch, 195 pound Yogi Berra stepped to the plate -- especially when the bases were occupied by his Yankee teammates.  Although Yogi wasn’t built like your prototype athlete, he was as quick as a cat behind home plate. In fact, he was sufficiently fast enough on the bases to score from first base on a double. Although he stole only 30 bases during his nineteen major league seasons, his speed was adequate enough to cover enough real estate in the outfield to justify keeping his late 30’s bat in the early 1960s Yankee’s lineup with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Bill Skowron and Elston Howard.

Yogi was dead serious on the diamond, but off the field he demonstrated almost daily what his great Brooklyn Dodger catching opponent Roy Campanella observed about baseball players: “You’ve got to have a lot of little boy in you to play this game!”

Thus, Yogi was a natural to advertise the chocolate drink Yoohoo and he was enough of a celebrity to do commercials for Camel cigarettes and The Money Store along with his friend and fellow Yankee Phil Rizzuto.

Since everyone is sharing Yogi stories in part to ease their sadness, here are a few of my favorites.

It was especially hot during spring training in 1957.  After a game one day, Yogi emerged from the Yankee clubhouse in a seersucker suit.  Spying Yogi, the wife of Yankee’s owner Dan Topping, a gorgeous beauty, asserted,   “You look nice and cool, Yogi!”  Yogi’s response was: “You don’t look so hot yourself, Mrs. Topping!”

One day when Carmen Berra was out of the house and Yogi was home with his three boys, there was a knock at the door.  One of the boys called to his father who was upstairs to tell him that two men were at the door about the “venetian blind.”  Yogi, apparently thinking that the two gentlemen were soliciting for the blind people of Venice, Italy replied, “Ah, give ’em a couple of bucks and send ’em on their way!”

During the off-season between 1984 and 1985, Yogi’s lifelong pal Joe Garagiola dropped by the house for an evening of food, perhaps a few libations, and some baseball talk.  Yogi proceeded to tell Joe about what it was like to manage under the notorious George M. Steinbrenner.  There were stories about their differing evaluations of players.  There were stories about late night and early morning calls from the boss over changes in the lineup.  Finally, there were Steinbrenner’s complaints about Yogi’s strategies during games.  The more Yogi talked, the hotter Joe got in defense of his old friend.  Finally, Joe told Yogi that he ought to remind the owner about which one of them actually played major league baseball.  Joe further advised Yogi to remind “the boss” who it was who had managed World Series games and was in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  “You’ve gotta tell him off,” Joe finally insisted with considerable heat.  Yogi took another sip of his drink and replied:  “Aw, no, Joey, I can’t do that. George and I just agree different!”

Yogi and Carmen were very close.  She was always looking out for Yogi’s best interests.  Although she rejected the idea of naming their firstborn Yogi, Jr, she herself always called her husband “Yogi.”  However, according to Joe Garagiola, after 30 years of marriage, Carmen received an anniversary card signed “Yogi Berra.”  “Why,” she demanded of her husband, “do you sign your last name to my anniversary card?  Do you think I might get an anniversary card from another Yogi?”

Yogi’s life, as magical as it seems to have been at times, had its low points.  There was his childhood poverty, the gibes he took as a young player from teammates and other players for his looks and undoubtedly for his ethnicity.  There was the shabby treatment he received after the 1964 World Series when he was suddenly and dramatically fired by Yankee General Manager Ralph Houk.  There was the cold way George Steinbrenner fired him in 1985 which caused Yogi to stay away from Yankee Stadium for fourteen years. Finally, there was the disappointment Yogi must have experienced as a parent and a professional when his son Dale was charged with using drugs during the 1980s.

Mostly, however, there has been that special magic.  That magic consists of an abiding trust, respect, and love from his fellow professionals, as well as from plain people everywhere who appreciate that combination of talent, hard work, and wisdom which that big little fellow from that working class hill in St. Louis demonstrated throughout 69 years.

Yogi Berra first appeared in a major league game on Sunday, September 22nd, 1946.  On Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 at age 90 years plus 143 days, Yogi passed into another dimension beyond our ken.

His plaque is in The National Baseball Hall of Fame.  However, his deeds will remain in all of our hearts as long as we live!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

KIM DAVIS — HEROINE OR HOLLERER?

By Edwin Cooney

Try to set aside whether you concur or reject her cause.  Is Kim Davis a genuine heroine or is she merely a “hollerer”?  It isn’t simply a question of agreement with Mrs. Davis’s moral outrage.  It is rather a question of the substance of her behavior.  Kim Davis did after all risk the comfort of anonymity and her personal freedom from incarceration by challenging the writ of the highest court in the land.  She took a risk most of us wouldn’t take.  By so doing she has, without a doubt, subjected herself and others close to her to the discomfort of personal ridicule, and even threats to her well-being.  One should readily grant that to put one’s self into such a position takes courage.  Courage is, of course, an essential element of heroism. The question, therefore, is twofold: Is the price she’s willing to pay equal to the damage caused by the consequences of her defiance?  (In other words, is she willingly paying an adequate price for defying the law of the land?) Second, is her defiance a question of principle or politics?

Had Kim Davis defied the ruling and then resigned her position, she would have demonstrated as much principle as defiance.  However, by not resigning her position and thus retaining its pecuniary compensation, she benefited from the privileges she has as an officer of the very legal system she regards as guilty of an immoral act.

There are two other factors that haven’t been adequately covered in the reports I’ve seen on the controversy created by Mrs. Davis.

Let’s assume for a moment that gay and lesbian marriage is an abomination of Christian doctrine.  Is Mrs. Davis responsible or accountable for the souls of others?  Additionally, where in scripture is it stated that nations as entities have any moral accountability?  Even though the “almighty” destroyed ancient Israel for its sins, modern Israel not only exists, it possesses atomic bombs sufficient to give any modern day Babylonia one hell-of-a jolt.  Perhaps our leaders as individuals are subject to spiritual rewards and punishments, but insofar as I’m aware, America as an entity is beyond payment of the wages of sin.  If not, America is in real trouble because many of the most devoutly righteous among us still insist that we need be neither humble nor apologetic about the employment of slavery against blacks or the genocide against native Americans which we utilized to assist us in becoming so prosperous.

Another aspect of Kim Davis’s defiance that doesn’t get enough play is how her defiance of the law is noble yet the defiance of our immigration laws by the refugees from other nations is punishable by deportation.

Compliance of the law is a vital factor in our unity, our prosperity and even our safety.  Defiance of the law is only noble when the person who defies the law asserts three factors:

(1.) That the law or ruling in question has passed the test of legal legitimacy and is primarily a matter of recognizable and reasonable morality.

(2.) That the legitimate rights of no person will be damaged by your advocacy of the current law’s elimination.

(3.) That the advocacy of a change or changes in the present law doesn’t nearly represent self-righteous contempt for the opinions and values of others.

Mrs. Davis’s contention passes the first of the above assertions.  There’s no doubt of her sincerity on moral grounds!  As for numbers two and three, Kim Davis’s actions fail to meet their test.  The legitimate rights of gays and lesbians would be damaged if her defiance should be upheld.  As for the third test of arrogant self-righteousness, the politicization of Mrs. Davis’s contentiousness on the part of a number of the current GOP candidates makes their perception as to the superiority of Mrs. Davis’s stand obvious. Therein lies a blatant inconsistency on the part of most of the GOP presidential candidates: immigrants fleeing political terror in their homeland who violate our laws should be subject to deportation. Mrs. Davis’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling which constitutes the law of the land should be applauded as good old-fashioned patriotism. I say that’s nuts!

History may well compare Mrs. Davis’s act to that of John Scopes who agreed in 1924 to participate in a test case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging Tennessee’s Butler Act which made it a misdemeanor to teach evolution in the state’s public schools.  Unlike Kim Davis, Scopes appears to have had no deep convictions on the morality or immorality of the teaching of evolution.  Thus Scopes (unlike Mrs. Davis) fails the first of the three above assertions.  However, his act was neither a threat nor was it contemptuous of the rights of others.  History records an irony here.  The only politician prominent in the case against Scopes was a lawyer for the prosecution, the three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan.

I’ve never met anyone who regarded John Scopes as a hero. As for Mrs. Davis, whether a heroine or a hollerer, you can be sure of one thing:

To paraphrase the late great Lloyd Bentsen in his 1988 Vice Presidential debate with his Senate colleague Dan Quayle — “Kim Davis never knew John Scopes.  Kim Davis was never a friend of John Scopes.  And Kim Davis is no John Scopes!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE PRESIDENTS WE ELECT

By Edwin Cooney

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a commentary on why we have elected some of our most effective presidents.  This week, I propose to focus on the brands of presidents we’ve elected.  The question is: does Donald J. Trump fit in?

Under the United States Constitution, the President is the head of the Executive Branch of the government as well as Commander-In-Chief of our armed forces.  The establishment of the presidency, its offices and its prerogatives, was the primary business of every president between George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt from 1789 through 1901.  To that end, we elected two types -- or brands -- of presidents. The general or war hero presidents I call Brand One. The lawyer or legislator presidents were Brand Two.  Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and even William McKinley were regarded as war heroes.  The two Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Van Buren, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln were lawyer/legislator presidents.  These two traditional “presidential types” were generally administrative with the general mission to expand our national domain and maintain our national safety, stability, and prosperity.

Suddenly, there came a bolt out of the blue: Theodore Roosevelt.  Like four previous vice presidents, John Tyler of Virginia, Millard Fillmore of New York, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, and Chester A. Arthur of New York, Roosevelt merely succeeded to the presidency.  In the nomenclature of the day, he was our fifth accidental president or “…another version of his accidency!”

It was September 1902 when the Anthracite coal miners union went out on strike.  They threatened that if their demands consisting of a wage increase and national recognition of their union weren’t met, millions of people, especially in the northeast, would feel the chill of Jack Frost right around Election Day of 1902.  Republicans who were adamantly anti-union needed to be re-elected. Teddy Roosevelt needed them to be re-elected in order to be electable in his own right as president in 1904.  His four previous “accidental” predecessors had failed to be elected in their own right.  TR would change all that by involving the traditional prestige of his presidential office in an issue that had social, economic, and political repercussions.  Having suffered a severe leg injury in a recent carriage accident that had resulted in one death, TR dramatically appeared in a wheelchair to publicly recognize the legitimacy of the strike.  The office of the president would no longer be a mere administrative office from that time on.  Thereafter, in one way or another, the President of the United States of America had to be a problem solver.  The immediate strike emergency would go to arbitration during which the anthracite coal miners would return to work.  Even if the legitimacy of the union movement was three decades away, the nation had a new phenomenon — expected presidential activism.

In the wake of the unpredictable Teddy Roosevelt, we elected an attorney without legislative experience named William Howard Taft, and a college professor (Woodrow Wilson). We also elected Warren Harding (a newspaper man), Calvin Coolidge (a lawyer and a governor), Herbert Hoover (a mining engineer and philanthropic businessman), Franklin Roosevelt (an aristocratic political experimentalist), and Harry Truman, the first president since Andrew Johnson to lack a college education. Then we elected still another war hero and general we simply called Ike.  Ike’s successors, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G. H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Obama attained the presidency by the inspirational light of one or more predecessors.

As I see it, what makes the Trump candidacy unique and ensures its potential demise is its apparent total lack of connection with or even respect for the experiences and forces that compelled the sum and substance of both our past and present.  So far, Mr. Trump appears to believe that he can solve all problems by merely ordering them to be solved.  His candidacy, so far at least, glorifies fear, nurtures frustration, and feeds political activism with little more than suspicion.  The energy of his candidacy is indignation.  Still, that may indeed be enough to secure the nomination of the 21st Century Republican Party which has been venting its spleen since the night Barack Obama became president-elect and addressed that jubilant celebration in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. I’m convinced that Mr. Trump will have to rise above his own sense of self and his own reckless willfulness in order to actually achieve the presidency.

As of this writing, most people agree that Hillary Rodham Clinton has had a terrible summer.  If Mr. Trump doesn’t change course in some spectacular way, come Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, he’s going to make Hillary’s day.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SO, YOU DON’T LIKE POLITICS! — REALLY? TRULY?

By Edwin Cooney

Perhaps my most consistent pronouncement over the years, whether I’m discussing civic affairs with academic types or with my watering hole friends, has been that I like politics and politicians.  The inevitable response to that is: “How can you? They’re all a bunch of crooks!”

Then the person I’m talking to will start naming the crooks: Franklin Roosevelt, (“the root of all evil”), Harry “S for nothing” Truman (Joseph Stalin one upped Americans when he referred to Harry Truman as “that noisy shopkeeper”), Lyndon Johnson (that “wheeler dealer” who stole his way into the Senate back in 1948), Bill Clinton (that womanizing gangster) and Rod Blagojevich (the former Illinois governor who was caught selling President-elect Obama’s Senate seat). Actually, not many people name Rod because they can’t pronounce his last name.  Additionally, they might name Richard (“Tricky Dick”) Nixon (who one of my college professors used to call (“rigid Ricky”), Spiro Agnew (the opinionated VP on the take), and Bob MacDonald (the former Virginia governor who is about to do jail time for influence peddling.)  Usually these “crooks” have their political affiliation in common.

The problem is that most people are convinced that in order to benefit from politics you have got to be a politician or one who finances politicians.  The truth is that politics is more fundamental to human nature then are politicians!

The political practitioner is one who has mastered the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.  A lot of politicians aren’t really politicians.  The best politicians are job applicants, sweetheart seekers, sales and advertising personnel, and, above all, kids.  When my youngest son was still a tot he once got his mother to let him out of his room by insisting that all he really wanted her to do was to let him sit on her lap and put his head on her shoulder.  Believe it or not, she bought it.  The next step was to be allowed to go out and play.  He got that, too!  That didn’t happen all of the time by any means, but in this instance mama needed affection and little Ryan needed to play, thus the two former antagonists cut a one-time deal.  Now that’s Politics 101, plain and simple!

Politics, whether or not you like it, is the most fundamental part of a free society. George Washington strongly urged two of his Virginia neighbors, Tom Jefferson and Jemmy Madison, as well as his top political and financial aide, Alexander Hamilton, to refrain from party politics.  His reasons were all legitimate.  Political parties would distract the Congress from responsible legislating, create jealousies amongst the people, spread false alarms, and invariably entangle us in the politics of other nations.  The problem was that President Washington didn’t offer an alternative to political parties and politics in his famous Farewell Address back in 1796.

I’m not sure that politicians are the real corruptors of politics.  The legitimate business of a politician in a free society is to create methods and institutions that respond to the people’s legitimate practical living and functioning needs.  Good government is the legitimate goal of good politics.  Politics usually gets sour when it comes under the influence of wealthy financiers regardless of their personal or corporate ideologies.

Between the end of the Second World War and the early 1980s, national politics was, for the most part, about who could most effectively stop the advancement of World Communism.  Most members of Congress grew up affected by two common experiences, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the soul-rattling experiences of World War II.  The major difference between Republicans and Democrats was strategic rather than moral.  Sure there were pockets of moral contention such as McCarthyism and the struggle for civil rights, but for the most part, off the floors of the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats genuinely liked each other.  Deal-making and compromise were a part of the political process.  Beginning with the Reagan Revolution, all of that has changed.

Politics has gone from the possible to the personal.  Liberals and Conservatives alike play “gotcha” politics.  I’ve played it in these pages now and then.

Between now and November 8th, 2016, twenty very willful people will clash over their desire to get to the top of the “greasy pole” where symbolically sits the “presidential chair” as they used to refer to it during the early and middle Nineteenth Century.  That means a bunch of powerful egos will be punctured and a number of powerful and well-healed Americans will be disappointed.  Successful people aren’t used to being disappointed -- thus we have the comfortably unhappy.

Yes indeed, I’ve always liked politics and politicians.  However, this generation of politicians is harder to like because they take themselves, their agenda, and their feelings way too seriously.  Politicians, many of their financial backers, and talk show hosts grew up without having to face the challenges of Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation” – namely, national Depression and world war.  They are not used to coping with forces beyond their control.  Thus, they turn to theory rather than good government to master what irritates more than harms them.  As I see it, when you say you’re proud to be a Liberal or proud to be a Conservative, you’ve switched your allegiance from “Old Glory” to the banner of a political movement.  The airwaves and the internet will, for the next 15 months, be full of ego bashing which once was a mere element of politics but today has sadly become its main ingredient.

I think most people feel deep within themselves that they are above politics.  The truth is that we have all benefited and we expect to benefit in the future from the legitimate fruit of politics — effective government.

FDR put it best in a 1938 Fireside Chat:  “…the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to maintain the interests of the people and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.”

That’s solid advice from perhaps the greatest politician in history.

As for the nature of 2016 politics, only one word suffices — “yuck!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK — TIME AND OPPORTUNITY MARCH ON, HAND IN HAND!

By Edwin Cooney

I don’t much like to think about this topic let alone write about it.  However, this topic is one of two things each and every one of us has in common!  We are all born and we are all going to die.  As formidable as the second observation is, the second observation is as natural as the first.

Before proceeding with this topic, let me share with you what compels me to think and ultimately write what’s here.

On Wednesday, August 5th, 2015 one of the most companionable men I’ve ever known died unexpectedly at the age of eighty-five.  Sure, he had lived a long time, but it was still way too soon.   His health was pretty close to robust.  He was still an excellent bowler and he was a fine fellow “well met!”  He was funny, interested in the thoughts, feelings and needs of others, and generously helpful and thoughtful toward practically all who knew him.  He was also a reader of these weekly musings.  Suddenly, on Friday evening, July 17th, 2015, he became ill which was diagnosed as severe pancreatitis.  Within days of being stricken and hospitalized, his condition was evaluated as out of control.  Being a man possessing the capacity to face the “unfaceable,” Will decided to let nature take its course and slipped away into that dimension the rationalists and the logical amongst us label simply as death.  Will’s passing leaves a void in the lives of his widow and his surviving son and daughter as well as in the lives of his many friends.

On Wednesday, August 12th, just one week later, former President Jimmy Carter who will be 91 on October first announced that he has cancer which is spreading throughout his body.  While he has yet to make the details of his diagnosis public, such a diagnosis is to most of us a pretty clear sign that “Mr. Jimmy,” as his Plains, Georgia neighbors call him, is likely headed beyond the reach of the love millions across America and around the globe feel toward him.

The above incidents force me to face, however reluctantly, my own mortality.  Somewhere I read that the late Winston Churchill titled the planning for his own funeral “Operation Hope Not.”  However, Mr. Churchill (who more than once in his life put himself well within the reach of death) demonstrated the brave man’s assertion: “He who is afraid to die is not fit to live.”  While I certainly find that assertion way too harsh and judgmental, it is a rather bracing observation that compels analysis.

Birth is beyond our control and death, while it is not beyond our capacity to summon, is beyond our capacity to comprehend.  As such, whatever it consists of or may command of us staggers our imagination.  Millions of us, “Mr. Jimmy” in particular, cope with both life and death through our religious faith.  Others merely surrender to the inevitability that life lasts only so long. They are often offended by those whose religious faith directs them to indoctrinate those who are solely energized by the rational or provable realities of existence.

Ah, but therein lies the key!  If life is beyond our capacity to summon and death is beyond our capacity to comprehend, both are one in the same.  We can’t summon life before we’re born because we don’t exist within the dimension of life.  We are incapable of comprehending death and thus fear it, because that state of dimension is beyond rationality or comprehension.

Recently, I received the happy news of the birth of a granddaughter.  Little Olivia’s birth, as happy as it is, was beyond either her control or comprehension.  Her contentment or happiness in her life will depend on a lot of things that aren’t clear.  If she has good health, loving parents and grandparents (which she has) and lives in a safe and prosperous social, political and spiritual environment, she will likely be quite content dwelling in this new dimension of life she herself never had the capacity to choose for herself.

A number of years ago, I was told about a young lady who was born a quadriplegic.  In addition to paralysis, she suffers frequently from spasms and backache.  “I’m trapped in my own body,” she observed as she was assisted during a meeting from her wheelchair onto a cot where she could rest to regain the energy to sit upright again for a few hours.  Others who are perfectly healthy are born in Sudan or were born and lived under Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.  These circumstances were beyond their comprehension since pre-life comprehension doesn’t exist.

Thus, here is our irony: because we’ve never experienced death we’re sure that at best it is eternal sleep. (Even the religious among us pray that they and their loved ones will “rest in peace.”)  As for life, it is physical, rational and scientifically provable. It may be the only dimension that contains illness, sorrow and physical, emotional or spiritual pain and uncertainty!  As such, life itself might be the dimension to avoid as beyond comprehension as it is it awakens us from our prenatal slumber.

The source of our sorrow over the passing of the departed is the realization that we’ll never see or be with them again in this life.  The joy of a new birth is a new opportunity to be close with and show love for a life blooming before us.  No one, least of all the one who is affected by it the most, summons life.  No one, not even the most rational or brilliant among us, can be absolutely sure of his capacity to comprehend death.

It is right that we want to live as long as we can, but as inevitable as death is, it is as natural as being born.

It is even possible that birth is far more dangerous than death!  More than once I’ve heard it observed that hell exists solely on earth rather than in any spiritual realm!

I’m convinced that if we live as fully as we possibly can and utilize love, life’s greatest gift, as effectively as we can, our individual end is likely to be surprisingly gentle and perhaps, just perhaps, even welcome!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHAT MAKES US ELECT ANY PRESIDENT AND WHAT MIGHT THAT PORTEND FOR 2016?

By Edwin Cooney

What do you suppose compels Americans to elect any one person President of the United States of America?  Well, according to the Constitution of the United States, we must -- hence, we do!  So, let’s start from the very beginning and see what our motives are and what they might portend for 2016!

In 1788 and 1792, we elected General George Washington of Virginia.  As for why Washington, the short answer is that the new nation didn’t collectively know anyone else.  Ben Franklin was on his last crippled legs.  John Adams, cranky and quirky as he was, probably was the best known across the nation other than Washington and Jefferson -- who wasn’t in the country in 1788.  Jefferson was busy representing us in Paris, hanging out with Maria Cosway, another diplomat’s wife, and having one hell of a good time.

As for the election of John Adams in 1796, Adams was, after all, Washington’s Vice President so he had to almost automatically be the most qualified man available.

As for 1800, which would be labeled America’s second revolution (or the Revolution of 1800) because it was the first time we “threw the rascals out,” powerful men like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (despite their political differences) said it was time we did just that. By Election Day 1800, Adams had successfully ended our quarrel with France so we didn’t need him anymore.  Besides, he’d agreed to those awful Alien and Sedition Acts which made criticism of the president a punishable offense during an international crisis.  Thus, in the name of civil liberties, that prickly old man had to go.

Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson was a hell of a lawyer, writer, scientist, and strict constructionist of the Constitution.  Hence, we elected him.  Had Jefferson violated the Constitution by purchasing Louisiana from Napoleon Bonaparte, there would have been pure hell to pay.  Americans might have even dumped him in 1804 for Aaron Burr, his ever wayward and unpredictable vice president!  If we elected Jefferson to purchase Louisiana, history does not record it!

Skipping ahead to 1828, we elected Andrew Jackson because he was the greatest soldier since Washington.  Jackson offered no political program except that he hated aristocratic elitists like John Quincy Adams, and wayward Indian tribes.  Besides, old Quincy Adams was as pompous and irritable as his old man!  Jackson was exciting and unpredictable and he knew how to handle the Indians.  So, we elected him.

Surprisingly, we elected James Knox Polk in 1844 because he agreed to annex Texas no matter what Mexico thought and especially if it helped the cause of slavery.  Polk’s ultimate political legacy was that he kept all of his major campaign promises.  Still, he would leave office in 1849 exhausted and increasingly unpopular.  Though he was only 53 the previous November 2nd, he would be dead by June of 1849.

Interestingly, the election of perhaps our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, exacerbated rather than salved the crisis at hand.  Had we elected Stephen A. Douglas (known as the “little giant” because he was only 5 feet 4 inches), the benign John Bell of Tennessee, or President James Buchanan’s feisty vice president John C. Breckinridge, also from Tennessee, there might have been still another compromise rather than secession throughout the spring of 1861.  Because of who he was and how he conducted his office, Abraham Lincoln was the right choice.  Or was he?  Is war ever a good choice?

The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt over the incumbent Herbert Hoover on the surface seems to be the most genuinely responsive presidential choice for the solving of a major national problem.  However, although FDR promised during the campaign that he would do something about those who were speculating with “…other people’s money,” most Americans voted for him because his name wasn’t Herbert Clark Hoover.

Harry S Truman won in 1948 because he knew how to campaign better than his GOP opponent Thomas E. Dewey.  Ike won over the far more eloquent and intellectual Adlai Stevenson because, like Washington, Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant, he was a deserving war hero who could protect us should enemies “foreign or domestic” challenge us.

Jack Kennedy was far more exciting and glamorous than Richard Nixon who was glamor minus.  Besides, Americans invariably value entertainment over “do nothing” boredom!

For that and other reasons, Ronald Reagan defeated the earnest incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980.  After all, Carter was originally elected primarily because he was a political outsider and immune to Washington’s ways.  Hence, when Carter appeared to be less than competent, a trait he had promised the people to demonstrate on their behalf, it was time for him to go!

The election of President Barack Obama was a combination of a desire for change and the dawning of a new era of tolerance and cooperation in a country that was beginning to taste the bitter flavor of an oncoming recession.  Thus, when during the presidential campaign his opponent John McCain appeared uncertain as to how to handle himself -- let alone the growing crisis -- the “black man” was in!

As for what it all means? We usually don’t elect a president because he (or perhaps she) proscribes a solution to a national or international problem.  Seldom is there an overwhelming consensus on a specific solution to a domestic or foreign policy matter. Richard Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam wasn’t the reason for his 1968 election over Hubert Humphrey.  However, his reputation for having had sufficient foreign policy experience under President Eisenhower may have given him a decisive advantage over Humphrey in that otherwise too-close-to-call political campaign.  Reagan, who promised to balance the budget which was a trillion dollars when Jimmy Carter left office, tripled it with worthwhile military expenditures.  Thus, America may well be ready for — take a deep breath now — Donald J. Trump.

A look over the 17 GOP presidential candidates doesn’t indicate that any of them, especially Mr. Trump, offers compelling solutions to our healthcare needs, the dangers in the Middle East, issues concerning immigration or even how to secure Social Security for yet unborn retirees.  What Trump seems to offer disillusioned voters is an opportunity to settle scores with the whole of our political establishment — especially the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Historically, politicians insist that they are really capable businessmen at heart.  Of course, we have elected two pretty good businessmen during the 20th Century — Herbert Clark Hoover and James Earl Carter.  Politicians are supposed to be bad for the country, but the best politician we ever elected saved more people’s homes, businesses and ultimately their country from the ravages of depression and war than any businessman president.  As Casey Stengel used to say: “You can look it up!”

The Trump possibility could be as infectious as the 1992 boon was for (Henry) Ross Perot in view of the fact that he has yet to promise not to run as a third party candidate should the GOP snub him.  (The late great comedian Will Rogers once observed that “…old men are contrary --- and rich old men is awfully contrary; they’ve had their own way so long…”)

Here’s something to ponder!  If soldiers, businessmen, lawyers, and politicians aren’t worthy of election — who is?

Here’s another possibility and it may even be a likelihood in view of how so many Americans feel about today’s leaders and would-be leaders: perhaps nobody is worthy of our trust.  If such is the case, perhaps we have lost the capacity to trust.  If that’s the case, whose problem is that — ours, or those who dare to try to lead us?  Is it possible that we’re just too good to be led by anybody?

If we’ve lost our capacity to trust or to believe in any leader, if we’re really and truly too good to be led, what matters about the whys of our past and what value is there in our future?

If that question doesn’t cause you to at least pause and consider it, then you and I should agree to never again discuss history, politics or tomorrow’s unknown treasures!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY