WHAT AM I MISSING?

By Edwin Cooney

As I sit down to write this column every week, I’m usually energized by a message or a story I wish to convey to the reader for his or her knowledge or enlightenment.  This week, I’m uncomfortably flummoxed and I’m seeking your help.  

A few days ago, I got a response to last week’s column from a reader encouraging me not to be a globalist but to be a nationalist.  He went on to say that America is in deep trouble and the only way America can hope to recover is by electing Donald Trump our next president.  Well, I can accept that as a working hypothesis, but then he went on to urge me to read a recent book entitled “The Angry White Male” by Wayne Allyn Root.

My response to (I’ll call him) Mr. O’s suggestion to read such a book is that it is offensive.  I still feel that way!  However, I’m not entirely sure my response is healthy.  In my responding email to Mr. O, I suggested that whites, blacks, Hispanics (just to name three groups) all suffer from such scourges as unemployment, underemployment, and outrageous threats to their persons. Why should I read about the plight of “angry white males”?  I find such a suggestion to be extremely racist.  I suggested to him in my response that we ought to be concerned about everyone’s pain. In his response he agreed, but put off a defense of his suggestion for another time.

All of us look at the world from our own beings and circumstances.  We are “us ” and the rest of the world are “they.” However, most of us are taught as a part of our spiritual or religious orientation some version of the Golden Rule.  We obey that golden rule as long as we don’t endanger our social, economic or political advancement and well being.

For the first time since 1968 when former Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket, white men apparently believe that at last they have a candidate of their “very own.”  (Note: in 1992, when (Henry) Ross Perot ran as the Independent Party candidate, he made it clear to the American voter “If you’re a racist, I don’t want you or your vote.”)  With all that the white American male has accomplished and been handsomely rewarded for achieving, it seems to me to be absurdly painful and shameful that he paints himself as a victim now that minorities are finally likewise accomplishing and being rewarded.  I’m sure it’s especially galling that an American of African descent has twice been elected President of the United States.  It’s my guess that historic event is the real rub!

Black militancy is unfortunately far more understandable than this new white militancy.  Of course, too often it is just as racist as what I’ll call “Trump militancy,” but at least it has an historical context!  All militancy, whatever its justification, is usually counterproductive and should be avoided.  Unfortunately, racial animosity in our history goes back to the 1830s and for reasons both understandable and regrettable has poisoned our national serenity.  Thus, it seems to me, that in 2016 we ought to be seeking the root of our dilemmas rather than the justification for our anger, as well as the root of the ills that affect all of us.

“Angry white males” labeled as a social or political category of citizens is racism pure and simple!  That, however,  doesn’t mean that an angry white voter is even close to being a racist.  After all, there’s a lot to be worried and thus angry about in the two-hundred and fortieth year of our American age!

If someone separates himself from you because of your ethnic or racial heritage , he does so because of who you are rather than anything you’ve done or believe.  No matter who you are, you are as pure as the most innocent baby there ever was and ought to be assumed as such unless you start judging others.  Then, of course, you deserve the animosity of everyone — angry white men included!

So, what am I missing?  Should I read the book?  I think not as I have no interest in becoming an “angry white male!”  I may be an angry parent, citizen, and I am a male, but I don’t have to be angry to be a a “true red, white, and blue” American citizen!  As for Mr. O.’s admonition that I should be a nationalist rather than a globalist, history shows that intelligent knowledge and planning in the international field ensures American peace and prosperity.  There’s little wisdom in pre World War II isolationism.

Race as a topic for study and redress is a legitimate one and even essential when it comes to pointing out unique differences or inherent injustices toward races of people throughout our past.  White Americans collectively remain far and above the most powerful, wealthy and freest people on God’s not-so-green earth!  We are all alike in that we are of some racial or ethnic origin.  We are all winners and losers in various aspects of life. Individually, as parents concerned for the future of their children and as citizens worried about the safety and prosperity of their country, white Americans have not only the right, but the duty to gripe!  However, their anger as a group is a little silly and it’s damned unpatriotic!

Want an example of a silly, angry white male?  Mr. Donald John Trump - that’s who!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE ROOT OF OUR VOTES!

By Edwin Cooney

It has become traditional when facing a complex choice to look for “the root of the matter.”  Next November 8th, “the root of the matter” will be your vote and mine.

 As we individually prepare ourselves to cast a presidential vote this fall, I think it’s essential that we master the most difficult human skill.  Specifically, I mean the capacity to separate or, if you will, discern small but significant factors when choosing candidates for public office — especially for the office of President of the United States.  In order to do that, it is vital to separate what we suspect to be true versus what we know to be true whether about social or political circumstances (the cause and effect as well as the application of public policies) or assessing the abilities of political candidates to successfully perform the duties of the office to which they may be elected.

At the core of everyone’s vote is one’s individual set of values and beliefs.  As I see it, what affects too many votes is our limited knowledge of the choices available to our elected officials once they are in office and our general preconceived comfort zones when it comes to those options.  Too often, we are too comfortable with what we personally believe to look beyond our prejudices.  Even worse, we actively form opinions that support our general suspicions.  Then we justify our opinions because they are convenient to us.  In other words, we function within our comfort zones preferring the convenience of opinion to the challenge of exploration and thought.

Over the next two and a half months, Americans will be deciding our national fate.  Each voter will make a value judgment based on our present and will prescribe a direction for our future.  Some may even decide not to vote. Their decisions will depend (on the surface at least) on what they believe about a number of issues.  These issues include whether participation in a global economy will provide prosperity or whether our economic future can best be served by largely ignoring the world and re-establishing a powerful domestic industrial economy; how we are affected by our current immigration policy; whether global warming is real or merely a governmental and liberal scientific establishment hoax; whether NATO and the United Nations are  now obsolete and therefore useless; whether government is a useful instrument or at the heart of all our problems; and, finally, which is more significant: that Hillary Clinton is a “lying crook” or that Donald Trump is increasingly demonstrating insufficient knowledge about vital national issues along with a tendency to make egotistical-based decisions. Frankly, the above five issues are far more important than the personal fate of either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. 

An ongoing concern of mine is the quadrennial existence on the presidential ballot of third and fourth party presidential candidates. Of course, it would go against everything we believe in were we to make them illegal. That would be outrageous, of course, but I can  think of only once when a third party affected an election outcome and that occurred in 2000. However, I consider Jill Stein’s and Gary Johnson’s  appearance on November’s ballot to be more of a distraction than a constructive factor in the coming election.  Of course, I’m more receptive to the Johnson candidacy than I am to the Stein candidacy.  After all, Governor Johnson is more likely to take more votes from Mr. Trump than Dr. Stein may take from Mrs. Clinton.  Still, the reality is that neither Governor Johnson nor Dr. Stein is going to be elected president.  However, even if either were elected, he or she would be seriously handicapped when it comes to forming an administration.  Nor is it likely that their agendas would command significant backing in a congress made up of the two traditional parties.  Neither has much support in the political or in the vitally important academic or socio/industrial communities.  Sure, Republicans might join a Johnson administration and Democrats are more likely to join a Stein administration, but it’s important to keep in mind that the two major parties have broader sources of prepared national leaders than any third party.  Until a third party demonstrates that it can elect a president, its existence is purely negative.  Third parties are often vital in parliamentary systems of government.  Under our federalist system, they are pretty useless insofar as this observer is concerned.

Whether or not we choose to believe it, the person who becomes president is a reflection of who we are. Even if you decide not to vote, you have voted with your indifference.  After all, indifference can be very powerful.  Perhaps someone’s indifference has affected some aspect of your own personal life.

I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton this November because I particularly like her.  I’m voting for her because I believe we need a progressive Supreme Court, a tolerant immigration policy, a proactive response to climate change, a flexible and practical foreign trade and diplomatic policy, and, finally, a government which is supportive rather than suspicious of you and me.

Insofar as I am aware, Dr. Stein and Governor Johnson can’t offer the above agenda because they can’t be elected.  Mr. Trump won’t respond to the above prescriptions because, after all, he’s Donald Trump!  There are a lot of voters who insist that third and fourth party candidacies are harmless and that they are healthy for the American body politic.  I’d like to believe that, too, but then I remember those 95,000 Florida votes for Ralph Nader.  Next, I think of who might not be on the Supreme Court had Al Gore been president.  Then, I remember weapons of mass destruction.  Next, I think of the climate change policies that might have been implemented. And then I think, I think…never mind!

“Go, Hillary!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DATE OF THE SUMMIT - DATE OF THE VALLEY

By Edwin Cooney

Forty-eight years have past since the night of Thursday, August 8th, 1968.  On that historic night, Richard M. Nixon approached the summit of his dreams as he accepted, for the second time in his life, the presidential nomination of the Republican Party.  The absolute summit was three months, 31,775,480 popular votes, 32 states, and 301 electoral votes away from his lifelong dream of occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Exactly six years later to that very night, President Richard Milhous Nixon entered the valley of despair and disgrace as he announced that the following morning he would resign the presidency.  His given reason for resignation was that he had lost his political base of support in the Congress.  However, his loss of that base was largely due to the web of illegalities and deceptions he had spun for himself because he had come to loathe a significant percentage of his national constituency.  Of course, it wasn’t entirely his fault. After all, he was president of a restless, demanding people who themselves often felt under siege.

Few of the past 100 years of American history have been tranquil for presidents or their national constituents.  Perhaps only the year 1926 was mostly devoid of national trauma.  About the most exciting event of 1926 occurred when the St. Louis Cardinals upset Babe Ruth’s Yankees in the World Series.  The country was at peace and was prosperous led as it was by “Silent” Calvin Coolidge who was spare of frame and of speech and as honest as his actual given first name: John!

The year Mr. Nixon approached the summit of his dreams was, as is this political season of 2016, a time of considerable turmoil.  The undeclared Vietnam War, struggles over civil rights and personal privacy, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Francis Kennedy exemplified that turmoil.  August 8th, 2016 find Americans once again in turmoil -- social, political and even spiritual turmoil.  The culture war has been raging since Roe vs. Wade was decided on January 22^nd 1973 (which was also the day LBJ died) and during the time President Nixon believed he’d ended the Vietnam conflict “…with honor.”  Americans today are almost consumed with fear of ISOL, increasingly suspicious of Muslims, blacks, and police and especially of politicians.  On to today’s stage stroll Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Thus, the question is how can we use the Nixon trauma to our mutual benefit as we prepare to elect a president this November 8th?

Hillary Clinton is largely mistrusted as a liar and a crook in the same way many politicians have been throughout our history.  Donald Trump, on the other hand, brings to the national debate an ill-mannered evaluation of the State of the Union and a host of seemingly ill-considered solutions to some of our most vexing problems.  Even more, his willingness to take as personal effrontery every political difference with practically every opponent is disturbingly Nixonesque.

Richard Nixon was, as he took his first oath of office in 1969, pretty much of a standard middle of the road to rightward-leaning Republican.  Furthermore, there were understandable reasons why Mr. Nixon was so mistrusted by traditional liberals such as Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman and even by some GOP liberals such as Chief Justice Earl Warren and Nelson Rockefeller.  Nixon’s political skulduggeries against past political opponents coupled with his aloofness and his suspicion and resentment of the working press had nearly terminated his career.  Finally, Mr. Nixon’s aloof and brusque personality was no match for the handsome, erudite and politically ambitious Jack Kennedy in 1960.  Mr. Nixon’s resentment left its mark and became politically radioactive when he finally became president.

However, as one compares Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, Nixon appears almost affable and even Reaganesque!

Two factors in Mr. Trump’s persona are of considerable concern.  First, there is his almost unfathomable willingness to defame and dehumanize all who confront him whether it be Hillary Clinton or John McCain.  Then there’s his policy of proscribing major changes such as the abandonment of NATO because he believes NATO members aren’t paying their fair share of that organization’s costs.

Back in January 1962, President Kennedy, during his State of the Union Address, made an observation concerning the United Nations that fits Mr. Trump’s attitude toward NATO today.  Said Kennedy:  “…I see little merit in the impatience of those who would abandon this imperfect world instrument because they dislike our imperfect world.  For the troubles of a world organization merely reflect the troubles of the world itself.  And if the organization is weakened, these troubles can only increase.”

As we pass through August 8th, 2016, we must face the possibility that a free people will choose Donald Trump as our president.  After all, Mr. Trump isn’t yet responsible for any ill-considered policy, foreign or domestic.  His attitudes, and even more his actions, demand that we wonder out loud and persistently whether Mr. Trump is about exploiting our woes or healing our hurts!  Up to this point, it appears the former is more likely than the latter!

Sadly, the trauma of Richard Nixon’s ascendancy into the valley of despair and disgrace announced on the night of Thursday, August 8th, 1974 that became official on the morrow of August 9th, remains with us most beneficially as a warning of what could come tomorrow.  Turmoil and trauma are, after all, the lot of every powerful nation. The most powerful antidote to turmoil is wisdom.  Richard Nixon’s tragedy therefore must be told and retold with a minimum of prejudice but with a maximum of objectivity, truth, and force.

However, there is a small drawback to my prescription of reasonable and responsible restraint in our wise judgment of and attitude toward our fellow citizens.  The truth is that American’s taste for controversy and suspicion is invariably far more exciting than wisdom.  Wisdom, after all, can be quite boring, especially when Americans would just as soon be entertained!

What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

DO WE REALLY CHOOSE THE PRESIDENT?

By Edwin Cooney

Last Thursday, a lady who I suspect will vote for Mr. Trump, wondered out loud, “why don’t we do better than we do when it comes to choosing presidential candidates?”  My immediate response to her was “we don’t choose the candidates, they choose themselves. Were we, after all, to actually “choose” a candidate, we’d entice presidential candidates from their preoccupation with private or public affairs.  That, however,  doesn’t happen.  We merely select from candidates who have already chosen themselves to lead us.  It always has been that way and I’m guessing that it’ll likely always be that way!”  From Washington to Obama and their opponents, Adams to Romney, there runs a common thread: personal ambition.  No one has ever forced even one candidate to seek the presidency.  Even more, it’s highly likely that there are many people out there who don’t even dare to run even although they possess sufficient wealth and political status!  Thus, in 2016,  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, whatever their motives, agendas and backgrounds, have one thing in common, a driving ambition for personal socio/political satisfaction and gratification. Consider this! Only 43 people since the spring of 1789 have achieved the American presidency.  That’s 43 individuals out of approximately eleven generations of Americans,  My estimation is that approximately one billion Americans have populated this continent since George Washington reportedly agreed to accept unanimous election to the newly minted office of President of the United States.  Some, perhaps even most, believe that Washington accepted election totally out of duty. However, knowledge of human nature reminds some of us that duty, when it encompasses our perceived abilities and talents, is an ever-tempting and self-energizing nectar!

Thus, between 1789 and 1831 when the first national political conventions were held with representation from most of the states, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and even Andrew Jackson were chosen largely by a combination of state legislatures and party congressional caucuses before their ultimate election by the electoral college.  

For the next 100 years, presidents were chosen largely out of the public eye by the political and financial structures of the Whig, Republican, and Democratic parties.  Remember, United States senators weren’t popularly chosen in most states until 1914.  That tells those of us who are students of history that very few men elected president during that time (with the exception of military leaders such as Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Grant) were known nationally before the expression of their party’s preferment.  Sure, newspapers reported the speeches of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, William Jennings Bryan, the “also rans” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but there were few ideological differences between the unsuccessful and successful candidates which were discernible to the public of that era.

Eighty-three years have passed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seated in a small metal wheelchair (according to one report I once read), inserted a small bridge between his two front teeth to prevent him whistling when pronouncing the letter S, next inserted a cigarette into his long ivory cigarette holder and went in front of microphones to deliver his first “fireside chat.”  The purpose of that Sunday night, March 12, 1933 address was to assure the public that banks, which were about to reopen, were safe to receive deposits.  The president’s rich tenor voice and cultivated Harvard accent gave a combination of warmth and learned authority to his reassurances that today we would describe as sufficiently “presidential.”  Ever since that broadcast, the person of the presidency has become equally if not more real to the American people than the institution itself.

Since 1932, candidates for president have been forced by multiple cultural and political circumstances to endure a political and personal grilling that is intellectually, emotionally and even spiritually invasive and dehumanizing. Hence, it is essential to victory that candidates grasp for a socio/political advantage during a presidential campaign.  Thus they’ve come to rely largely on both sensationalism and ideological agendas sustained by money and media.

As I listened to Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic nomination last Thursday night, I passed through a few somewhat conflicting moods and thoughts.  As I listened to her describe her heartfelt agenda, I passed through an instant of boredom. After all, her work on single payer healthcare while first lady adequately and permanently stamped her as a liberal in my mind. Next, as she threaded her way through the agenda she will face as president, I felt re-assurance that this lady really gets it — it, being the essential cooperation any successful president needs to accomplish priorities throughout his or her term — because like it or not, the business of politics requires the skills of a good politician.  (Note: good politicians must sometimes be both warm and ruthless. Some examples include Mayor Fiorello Laguardia of New York, Mayor Richard J. Dailey of Chicago, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, FDR, Truman and, of course, LBJ.  As for President Obama, his successes have occurred when he has let others do the political wheeling and dealing, thus leaving the application of policymaking and inspiring up to him.)  

No, we, the American people, don’t consciously choose our presidential candidates, but we do create the atmosphere and fertilize the socio/political soil in which they ultimately thrive.  Our presidential candidates are the fruits of our creation offering themselves for our selection - or, if you prefer, for our election.

Here’s the truth!  We’ll be more successful in creating a higher quality of presidential candidates when we recognize  three essential realities.  We must modify our own political agendas in recognition of the legitimacy of our neighbor’s welfare, recognize that freedom accommodates the natural and benign needs of others, and realistically evaluate and respond to the multiple societies with which we must engage around the world.

There’s little evidence right now that we are ready to consider those three vital restraints before election day, Tuesday, November 8th, 2016.  If we don’t, Mr. Donald Trump may well be President Donald John Trump come January 2017.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DEMOCRATS, WHERE IS YOUR HEART? WHERE IS YOUR SOUL?

By Edwin Cooney

As Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their 47th quadrennial National Convention, like their Republican cousins, they face a daunting question.  While the Republican Party is the victim of an outside hostile takeover, Donald Trump by name, Democrats are about to nominate one of their very own: “Lady” Hillary Clinton.

If the GOP’s cranky negativity, panicky nativism, homophobia, racism, and unprincipled ambition are the major forces behind the capture of their party by the self-absorbed Donald Trump, what forces must energize the Democratic party in 2016?  Even more, what can they do about it?

As I see it, the Democratic party hasn’t been a powerfully potent political force since Lyndon B. Johnson began running out of gas in 1966.  By 1968, its ability to govern was shattered over the war in Vietnam.  Domestically, it was pretty much intact, but so split and guilt-ridden by “LBJ’s war,” and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s “police riot” during the 1968 Convention, that the party lost its political nerve. Thus, it crumbled under Hubert Humphrey, who deserved much better, and has never been the same since!  Gone is the Democratic Party structure that once drafted progressive legislation in Congress.  Although barely defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968, the party’s zest for passing or even sustaining social legislation seemed to evaporate almost the instant Richard Nixon lowered his right hand after taking the oath of office from retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren that historic Monday, January 20th in 1969.

Over the next two years, conservative Republicans and key Southern Democrats slowly but surely began dismantling LBJ’s Great Society beginning with the Office of Economic Opportunity and cutbacks for LBJ “Model Cities” expenditures.  Sure, Democrats mightily resisted administration Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, the Nixon administration’s healthcare proposal, which they saw as meager in comparison to that of Senator Ted Kennedy’s, and Nixon’s Vietnamization policy. However, the party’s ability to advocate, pass and sustain progressive legislation was permanently stymied.  By the 1972 presidential campaign, the Democratic Party had instituted reforms that prevented party leaders from setting party strategies and policies.  State presidential preference primaries had stripped the big city and state bosses of their once unchallenged authority to assess the qualifications and likely vote-getting abilities of potential presidential candidates and, on that assessment, to nominate a successful presidential candidate.  By 1975, the immediate post Watergate era, the congressional seniority system, a historic congressional institution, was history.  While not all of these reforms were bad, they limited the traditional authority of experienced congressional leaders of both parties.  However, Republicans, with the increasing popularity of their conservative doctrine, were more successful in passing their party’s agenda due to party discipline.

Thus, as they enter the 2016 presidential campaign, Democrats have little to brag about when it comes to social legislation.  Additionally, healthcare or if you prefer “Obamacare,” successful and historic as it is, remains controversial. Hence, rather than a solid record of progressive achievement to point to, Mrs. Clinton is in a position where her major challenge over the next three months appears to have more to do with who she is rather than anything she or her party stands for or has accomplished!

In his 1981 Inaugural Address, President Reagan asserted that government doesn’t solve problems; government is the problem. The popularity of that presidential declaration was such that Democrats, instead of challenging the new president’s proclamation, surrendered to it. That surrender, of course, didn’t save them from being bombarded with anti-big-government  slogans. Hence, Democrats, especially those in the northeast, midwest and far west, have been permanently on the defensive for nearly fifty years.  Many Southern Democrats, on the other hand, vulnerable to the popular mores of the Bible Belt, oil magnates and the military industrial establishment have dragged their feet thus abetting at crucial points the national conservative movement which they used to back New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society proposals and projects.  That’s why I insist that the modern Democratic party appears to have lost its heart and perhaps its soul.

As to the significance of Hillary Clinton’s integrity, as I see it, many of those questioning her trustworthiness, if they are honest with themselves, have supported other presidential candidates whose promises and assertions have been far from candid.  For example, there are still a lot of voters, Republicans who are enraged over Hillary’s “lack of integrity,” who still excuse the antics of Richard M. Nixon who was forced to insist, during a November 1973 news conference in Florida: “I am not a crook!” Nor did Ronald Reagan ever redeem his promise to balance the national budget! George H. W. Bush, as I recall, never did adequately distribute those “thousand points of light” he once so eloquently promised. We have yet to discover the weapons of mass destruction that threatened our national security and led us to the second Iraqi War under President George W. Bush.

Policymaking is the responsibility of strong leadership.  Mrs. Clinton, even with all her knowledge and experience, has yet to demonstrate her capacity to prepare, present, and sell a national agenda.  Between now and November 8th, it is essential that she get across the following points:

(1.) The 2016 presidential election is about people not politics;

(2.) A specific agenda rather than a mere recital of our fears, foreign and domestic,  is what will strengthen our prospects for peace and plenty;

(3.) Our prosperity, safety and peace matter more, much more, than the personal liabilities, assets or fates of either presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton is a well-meaning politician who has demonstrated a commitment to progressive thought and policymaking.  Before her unsuccessful attempt to lead her husband’s first administration’s effort to pass single payer healthcare in 1994, no First Lady actually led an effort on behalf of a major domestic policy issue before the Congress. That historic fact is to her everlasting credit!

Despite all the breast-beating as to Hillary Clinton’s character, when all is said and done (someone once observed that in most instances more is said than done), this election is unequivocally about us.

Character does matter, but character comparison has seldom if ever mattered when comparing presidential candidates.  How many Republicans have you heard admit that Nixon and Agnew were “SOB’s, but at least they were our SOBs!”  Even more to the point, if character is what really matters, Jimmy Carter should definitely have had a second term as President of the United States.

Hillary Clinton is not my favorite possible Democratic party candidate. I would have preferred Senator Sanders, but she is “the candidate.”  Her intellect is keen, she treats political opponents within the traditional rules of political competition and she is in the tradition of progressive or forward-looking responsible policy changes.

Hence, I urge Hillary to: fight fiercely but fairly! Passionately advocate and explain your proposals. Avoid being defensive. Let the country observe your capacity to listen and learn and, be seen doing both. Finally, vigorously defend your party’s modern progressive liberal heritage.  An excellent way to do that would be by publicly echoing some of FDR’s most powerful words from his 1936 acceptance speech in Philadelphia: “Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference!”

To the extent that Hillary Clinton follows the above admonition, she can recapture the heart and soul of the Democratic party and thus deserve victory on November eighth!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

NOVEMBER’S REPUBLICANS — WHO ARE THEY?

By Edwin Cooney

As Republicans open their 41st quadrennial convention, one question stands out above all others!  Who are they? Like their Democratic kin-folk, factionalism is a necessary and often valuable aspect of voter appeal.  In past years, Republicans have nominated candidates for president and vice president who occupy opposite fringes of the party’s ideological and cultural constituencies. Never, however, has such a fringe nomination been such an alteration to traditional party values than that of Donald J. Trump.

Up until Mr. Trump began upsetting the table that holds the bonafide credentials of American “solid citizen conservatism,” it appeared that the traditional ideological combination of churchgoers and chamber of commerce types would be the ones to challenge Hillary Clinton’s presidential legitimacy.  Suddenly all predictable bets are off and the GOP elephant (I’ve named him Abe in these pages) finds himself “buffaloed” as he attempts to clear a path to Republican success next November eighth.

More than Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, Wendell Willkie in 1940, or Barry Goldwater in 1964, the nomination of “the Donald” flies in the face of traditional Republicanism.  Consider the following:

Up until recently, most Republicans supported free trade (minus all tariffs) in concert with “the new world order” of international affairs and expectations.  Mr. Trump, who’s wealth suggests that he knows more about business than most other business people, insists that the United States needs to return to eighteenth century protectionism to stimulate job creation here at home.  He reasons that if it costs corporations more to compete in foreign markets due to the tariffs they will then pay, they’ll begin bringing good jobs back to America.

As for international relations, Mr. Trump insists that as a “no nonsense wheeler dealer,” he can do business with the Russians and North Koreans, because, after all,they’re “real” and he’s “real.”   It’s amazing to this observer that a potential president should appeal to voters on the basis that he shares the mentality and traits of such leaders as Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un.  (Somehow I can’t imagine Truman insisting that he’s like Joseph Stalin. Neither can I imagine Eisenhower or Kennedy advertising himself as comparable to Nikita Khrushchev!)

Meanwhile at home, Mr. Trump is sure he can make Congress do his will because, after all, he’s a businessman!  Many Americans have long believed that the government should be run as a business, which fits hand in glove with Mr. Trump’s oversimplified concept of what makes a free society work.  This belief is close to the heart of millions of Americans despite the fact that presidents with successful business backgrounds (Hoover, Carter and G. H. W. Bush) all served only one term and were defeated for re-election by Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and William Clinton respectively, none of whom had much experience in business.

Last Friday, Mr. Trump announced his selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.  Governor Pence’s selection from an ideological point of view is an excellent move, at least on the surface.  Still many crucial voters will be wondering, what does the Trump/Pence team portend for public policymaking?  Therein lies the potential genius —  or foolhardiness — of the Trump candidacy!

Political opponents customarily and invariably seek to contemptuously drive wedges between presidential and vice presidential doctrinaire histories.  In 1988, Republicans delighted in wondering when the debate between “liberal” Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and “conservative” Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen would take place.  (One even got the impression that Republicans might pay for such a televised debate.)   

The Pence nomination represents the party’s ideological tradition which is its intellectual and spiritual representation for a considerable segment of society.  However, Mr. Trump’s appeal is more to our fears than it is to our hopes or even to our enterprise.  Donald Trump is far from the first politician to appeal to our fears. Presidential nominees including FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ all, to some extent, appealed to voters’ fears.  FDR appealed to our fears of continuing economic depression.Truman appealed to voters’ fears of the possible destruction of enlightened progressive government.  Ike appealed to voters’ resentment over the ongoing war in Korea.  JFK, in 1960,  appealed to Americans’  fears of Russian superiority in space and national defense.  The crucial difference between Trump’s appeal to fear and the earlier appeals is most apparent in the crudity of its roots and in its thrust.

Mr. Trump’s appeal to voters’ fears widens the number and types of people we should legitimately fear.  The wholesale dehumanization of minorities, women,  foreigners, non- Christians and others amounts to little more than a demonstration and ultimate legitimatizing of just plain bad manners.  Furthermore, it legitimizes rather than outlaws “political correctness.”  Don’t ever let any political ideologue pretend he doesn't have a sense of political correctness. Christians and social conservatives both preach rules of conduct one must apply in order to be a solid citizen.  The only reason political liberals or progressives have a reputation for “political correctness” is that they have traditionally believed that social morals are equal to spiritual morals and that social mores and issues really and truly constitute a just society.

The GOP’s appeal this fall will invariably be that what matters most is the individual’s priorities and feelings.  The idea that America has any kind of a collective responsibility will simply be labeled socialism or despotism.

Mr. Trump’s crude and ill-mannered appeal for votes is obviously a substitute for both principle and knowledge. It is my guess that the 41st National Republican Convention will reflect the understandable resentments of the American people far more than it will seek to energize the creativity and generosity of “we the freest people” in history.

Back in 1884,  New York Governor Grover Cleveland (a Democrat) ran against Republican James G. Blaine of Maine.  Both of the candidates brought a serious flaw into the campaign.  Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock.  Blaine appeared to have been guilty of an involvement in public scandal.  Ultimately the public decided Cleveland’s error was more tolerable because it had nothing to do with public policy.  Hence, the question is whether a lack of vital operational knowledge or occasional political deviance will most likely demean or enhance  our future safety, prosperity, and peace.

My guess is that your future and mine ultimately matters more than Hillary’s integrity or Trump’s ill-mannered and crude ambition!

The instant Mr. Trump is nominated on Wednesday, July 20th, what Donald Trump is all about will ultimately define who the Republicans are for the foreseeable future. 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

SO, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT!

By Edwin Cooney

I begin with a confession.  I’m a sucker for social, political, and sometimes occasionally even moral rogues!  Their backgrounds and motives are often most instructive.  The point of all this is that today, July 11th, 2016 is the 212th anniversary of the fatal duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.  Although like Burr, Hamilton was a political rogue, he died a hero.

Hamilton’s heroism comes not from the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey where, shortly after 7 a.m. that hot July morning of Tuesday, July 11th, 1804 the ball from Vice President Aaron Burr’s dueling pistol entered just above his right hip, traveled through his liver and lodged against his spine.  His heroism stemmed from his career as one of the Founding Fathers of our Constitution, as a designer of our monetary system while serving as George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, and as the mastermind who created a plan for paying off our Revolutionary War debt.

Vice President Aaron Burr was also a brilliant man.  The grandson of the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards, Aaron Burr was a first rate political practitioner.   It was Burr who helped bring New York State into the Jeffersonian electoral column in 1800.  Burr, a graduate of Princeton University, was ahead of his time on social issues such as women’s rights and municipal administration.  Both Burr and Hamilton were extremely ambitious and willful men thus making permanent enemies.  Both were manipulators and womanizers.  Hamilton publicly confessed to having an affair with Maria Reynolds, a married woman, while he was Secretary of the Treasury.  Both men were educated far and above most Americans of their time.  Hamilton was loved by George Washington but despised by both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Burr had the permanent enmity of President Jefferson after refusing to withdraw his name from consideration during the electoral vote tie with Jefferson during February of 1801.

Both Hamilton and Burr became distracted by the slings and arrows of political fortune and misfortune.  Frustrated by their pending political demises, both were ready to believe their honor was at stake at the slightest provocation. The conflict that led them to the dueling ground at Weehawken, New Jersey was over a commentary by Dr. Charles Cooper in an Albany, New York newspaper.  Hamilton paid for his distraction with his life.  Burr paid for his with his reputation.  Although he would serve out the remaining months of his vice presidential term remarkably well, Burr would be arrested in 1807 and charged by the Jefferson administration with treason. The treason charge was about an alleged scheme designed to conquer western territory from Mexico and then to create a new empire with Aaron Burr as its president. Burr was acquitted of the charges in a trial adjudicated by Chief Justice John Marshall, a Jefferson cousin but a political opponent of the president.  The point of all this is the tone Hamilton and Burr inadvertently set for adversary politics in the centuries ahead.  (I’ll perhaps write more about the duel in the near future if readers are interested.)    

A hundred years ago when President Woodrow Wilson and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes faced each other, little was known about them in comparison to what we now think we know about our 2016 presidential candidates.  Wilson, the incumbent, ran on the slogan “he kept us out of war.”  Hughes ran as a progressive Republican and was only narrowly defeated.  As close and significant as the 1916 election was, the American voter chose between two men he barely knew. Not until FDR’s splendid radio voice became familiar to Americans during the 1930s did Americans experience the sound of a presidential voice.  Even then, most Americans didn’t know that FDR mostly used a wheelchair to get around and that it was his struggle with polio that was a motivator for his outlook and his accomplishments on behalf of the less fortunate among us.

Today we know (or think we know) a lot about the candidates, their backgrounds and their motives.  Yet, as much as we brag to the rest of the world about our liberties and our system, as often as we beg for God’s blessing on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day and Ronald Reagan’s birthday, we’ve become dangerously cynical of the electoral process.  (Note: Ronald Reagan shares a birthday with guess who?  That’s right, it’s Aaron Burr.  Burr was born Friday, February 6th, 1756.  Mr. Reagan was born Monday, February 6th 1911.  Alexander Hamilton was born Tuesday, January 11th, 1757.  That’s a little too close to Richard Nixon’s January 9th birthday, wouldn’t you say?)

The question is, who’s at fault?  The answer is “we, the people,” that’s who!

To begin with, too few people bother to educate themselves about what it takes for a bill before Congress to become a law.  How can we begin to repair a system that we’re not interested in enough to understand how it works? 

Second, we have come to judge practically every issue as to whether it is conservative or liberal and thus we depend on “ideological talking points” to sustain our conclusions.

Third, we make moral issues out of practical matters.

Fourth, we poison moral issues with social prejudices.

Fifth, we erect straw men and women to demonize.

Like Hamilton and Burr, we’ve distracted ourselves with irritants rather than seeking perspectives and solutions to really vital matters.  I can name you previous presidential Trump-like bullies and Clinton-like liars.

Of course, we will elect a political rogue next November!  If we didn’t elect a political rogue, it would be more difficult to feel superior to a genuinely capable leader.  Indeed, “the people” must rule!  After all, absent the scourge of royalty, it is from our ranks that come forth the presidential rogues!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY