THE WORLD SERIES: 1916 REPLAYED?

By Edwin Cooney

The just completed  2018 World Series was hardly a duplicate of the 1916 fall classic, but the result was pretty much the same.

Each year as the names of the participants become clearer, the media, the cities,  mayors and local celebrities proclaim their favorites and the denizens  of the other 28 major league cities whose favorites have been eliminated resignedly but usually gracefully pay respectful interest in the outcome of the event. Mayors and governors often indulge in public bets with each other. Fans are invariably encouraged to take advantage of the odds on the series out of Las Vegas. After all, where baseball matters most, the significance of the outcome intensifies. Usually, there’s something significantly unique about each World Series.   

In 2018, the American League Red Sox played the National League’s pennant winner  the Dodgers for only the second time in 102 years.

In 1916, the World Series and indeed the world itself was so much more informal than today. An example of what I mean can be found in the very name of the Brooklyn franchise. Although they were officially the Brooklyn Dodgers, their manager, a lovable roly-poly gentleman by the name of Wilbert Robinson, was known as Uncle Robbie. Thus, the Red Sox played the Brooklyn Robins, not the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Red Sox manager, Bill Carrigan, like Uncle Robbie, was a catcher during his playing career.

Boston hosted Game One of the 1916 series on Saturday, October 7th. The venue was the Braves field, home of the 1914 National League champions and World Series victors known as “The Miracle Boston Braves.” The reason for the switch was because the Braves’ field had a larger fan capacity than Fenway Park. Thus, 36,117 fans were on hand as Ernie Shore took on Richard (Rube) Marquard of the Brooklyn Robins. The final score was 6 to 5 with the Robins scoring 5 runs in the ninth to make it close.

Game Two took place on Monday, October 9th after rain spoiled play on Sunday the eighth. The big story was the pitching of Babe Ruth who started and completed a 14 inning game. Ruth struck out four batters and walked just three in front of 41,373 Bostonians. No World Series game would go more than 14 innings until — guess when! The big left hander who would become known for his hitting rather than his pitching, was pitching in only his second full season in the Majors.

The third game which was played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 10th before 21,087 would be the Robins’ only series victory. The final score was Robins 4, Red Sox 3. Jack Combs became the first pitcher to get World Series victories for both American and National League pennant winners. In 1910 and 1911, he’d pitched and won games for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. One-hundred and two years later, Game 3 would be the only victory for the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Red Sox..

On Wednesday,  October 11th, before 21,662 Brooklynites, the Robins scored twice in the first inning, but that’s all they would get off Red Sox left-handed pitcher Hubert Benjamin (Dutch) Leonard. The Sox won 6 to 2.

On Thursday, October 12th (Columbus Day), Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan announced that should Boston win this day, it would be his last as manager. Then, before a World Series attendance record crowd of 42,620, Boston became baseball’s World Series champions for the second year in a row, for the third time in five years, and the fourth time in their history. Note: the Boston Americans or Pilgrims (take your pick) won the first modern series over the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903. They would win their last in 1918 until the year 2004!

I’m sure most readers know few of the men among those in the Red Sox and Robins of 1916, but two names still shine today in the baseball hearts of fans everywhere. The leading Sox pitcher with a 0.64 earned run average was Babe Ruth. The Brooklyn Robins’ leading batter for the series with a .364 mark was a former Kansas City left-handed dental student by the name of Charles Dillon (Casey) Stengel.

As for the two managers, Bill Carrigan of the Sox would retire to his native Lewiston, Maine where he would become a successful banker. Note: Ten years later, Carrigan would be brought back to lead the Sox out of their doldrums. Sadly, the game Carrigan had known and conquered had changed so much that after three seasons he returned home from the baseball wars for the last time. (One winces to recall that banking during the early 1930s wasn’t doing so well either!) Fortunately, Bill would survive until 1969 in his native Lewiston, Maine. 

Uncle Robbie’s managerial career would continue through the 1931 season. It would include another trip to the World Series in 1920 against the Cleveland Indians. That series would go six games with the Indians winning four games to two. There would also be that incredible unassisted triple play in Game 5 by the Indians’ second baseman Bill Wambsganss. The Robins would go from World Series contenders to being losers — but lovable losers as the Mets would be later under Casey Stengel in the 1960s. The Robins would be known affectionately as “the Daffiness Boys.” (It has been said that when Robins fans were told that there were men on base, they would invariably ask, “which base?”) Robbie would leave Brooklyn after 1931 and move to Atlanta as President of the Southern League Crackers. He died of a stroke in August 1935.

As in 1916, the Red Sox would need only five games in 2018 to conquer the Dodgers of Los Angeles. Much has changed from the days of Uncle Robbie, Carrigan, Ruth and Stengel. Planes have long since been substituted for trains. Free agencies have inflated players’ pay envelopes. The layback social and political cultures have become stunningly intense.  Still, men named Mookie Betts, Steve Pearce, J. D. Martinez, Clay Kershaw, Cody Bellinger, and Manny Machado excite the imagination and increase the pulse rates of fans from Boston Harbor to the West Coast. Every World Series has at least one incredible game. In 2018, it was Game 3. Down two games to one, it took the Dodgers 7 hours and 20 minutes and eighteen innings of play to beat the visiting Red Sox by a score of 3 to 2. A total of 45 players were used between the two teams. Exhausted as both teams must have been, Games 4 and 5 followed without a break.  .

World Series play brings forth the player’s adrenaline, fills the bank account, inflates the sense of belonging and professional pride just as it did 102 years ago. The world of 1916 and the world of 2018, as different as they are, have one thing in common. The uncertain future looms in the distance, so close and so unpredictable. Red Sox and Robins’ fans of 1916 hoped to stay out of “the Great War” in Europe. Many even voted for Woodrow Wilson because thus far he’d kept them out of war. Within two years, however, hundreds of Sox and Robins’ fans would be casualties of World War I. Exactly what lies in wait for you and me is just as unpredictable as the fall of ancient European states and dynasties in the fall of 1916.

A thought occurred to me last Sunday night, October 28th, as the Los Angeles Dodgers and their fans for the second time in two years saw the visiting team win the series in their home ball park. As vital as ambition and competition are in the minds and hearts of fans and players, there lurks below the surface of immediate awareness a healthy sense of perspective. Unlike that which exists in our political culture, there is a sense of social equity, a realization that if there’s to be value in a future victory, there must be a recognition of the legitimacy of today’s champion. As thousands of Dodgers’ fans cleared out of Chavez Ravine and sadly made their way home, the Red Sox and their fans could celebrate on Dodger turf sure in the knowledge that even the most rabid Dodger fan, as jealous as he may feel for the moment, would still grudgingly salute them. That salute, as difficult as it must have been, insures the value of success when it is at last your turn to bask in its glory.

President Trump, you should be taking notes!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WAY, WAY BEYOND MERE POLITICS

By Edwin Cooney

As I’ve written on many occasions, I write these weekly musings for three reasons and for three reasons only.

First, I write to inform the reader in as nonjudgmental a way as I can, as to the who, what, where, and how historical and current events have taken place as well as about the meaning or significance of those events. Second, I write to stimulate thought as opposed to mere opinion. After all, when you are really thinking, you are often compelled to entertain conclusions which are quite uncomfortable for you. Finally, I write to entertain the reader when possible.

Also, as I’ve written numerous times, I am neither a politician nor a historian. I am a student of history. I try, on a weekly schedule, to teach my readers by passing on what I know and how it affects my thinking and my outlook on the human dynamic.

What I try to avoid doing is to deliberately anger anyone who takes the time to read and consider my musings. Nor am I interested in enflaming anyone’s prejudices or resentments.

Having considered and written all of the above, I am nevertheless obligated, as something of a commentator, to inform my readers as to my conclusions about people and events, especially when compelled by the urgency of some events and the people whose actions cause and carry them forth.

In case you haven’t guessed, my topic this week is President Trump. I am profoundly affected by his “modus operandi.” I have drawn a final conclusion about him and his leadership that I believe goes far beyond politics or the mere political. This conclusion requires that I draw distinctions between the political and the temperamental aspects of the politician versus the conclusion I will assert at the close of this commentary.

I recently read in Paul F. Boller, Jr.’s 1990s book about presidential campaigns from 1788 through 1996. He cited a dilemma that faced Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 fall campaign. He was traveling through the midwest in company with two influential United States senators. One was Bill Jenner of Indiana and the other was Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Those two men were conservatives, but even more, they were sour reactionaries. (Robert A. Taft whom Ike defeated for the GOP presidential nomination was a conservative, but he wasn’t a sour reactionary.) Ike had wanted to make a positive reference to General George C. Marshall who had advised Presidents Roosevelt and Truman during and after World War II. After all, General Marshall had chosen Ike to be the Supreme Commander of “Operation Overlord,” the June 6th 1944 invasion of Hitler’s Europe. Ultimately, Ike was intimidated by the irascibility of those two influential senators and refrained from the complimentary remarks he’d planned for a speech in Wisconsin. He later told friends that he felt “dirty” just standing on stage with those two men. Even though Ike was a moderate Republican and no conservative, he came to realize the label of “conservative” was too often applicable when the label was being used to camouflage a politician’s temperament.

President Trump has proven to be far more temperamental than he is conservative. When President Trump works to overturn Obamacare, as repulsive as that is to me and other progressives, that’s being conservative. When President Trump appointed his two Supreme Court justices, that was conservative. Even when he withdrew from NAFTA and when he denied the legitimacy of climate change, he was being a conservative.

However, when he indulges in character assassination, advocates body-slamming a reporter, or excuses these two behaviors by insisting that liberals are guilty of the same thing, he is not behaving like an ideologue.

As Bob Woodward points out in his recent book, Donald Trump believes that the most effective method of presidential leadership is the application of fear.

In my opinion, President Trump is clearly not a conservative because he has no principled guidelines or star by which he travels. Often ideology can range between silliness and deadliness. (Hitler and Stalin were political and social ideologues, but especially Hitler’s Nazi ideology was unique in that it was homegrown. On the other hand, Stalin perverted the genuine idealism of Communism into a Fascist state.)  The real value of ideology lies in a certain discipline of attitude and outlook. It is obvious that President Trump almost totally lacks discipline. Even worse, he obviously possesses absolute contempt for discipline.

Almost a week has passed since the news that the first of fourteen mail bombs to the president’s opponents was sent by one of his followers. The president insists that he’s in no way responsible for the behavior of his supporters. While that is strictly true, as a leader, he has an obligation to demonstrate civility in his political discourse to unite, rather than divide “we, the people.” He is, after all, the President of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! In the absence of his fulfillment of that obligation, there is only one possible conclusion I can come to about him.

Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, is a gangster. A gangster is one who leads exclusively according to his own will and convenience. His primary strategies are belittlement, fear, and intimidation. He’s seldom interested in political or social cause and effect. Winning is all that matters.

As the great Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once wrote, freedom of speech isn’t mischievously yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. I hope there is no indication that the President had anything directly to do with Cesar Sayoc’s mailing of those bombs, whether or not they’re deadly. It is clear, however, that he’s created the atmosphere for Sayoc’s attitudes, outlook, and action.

What is yet to be determined is whether Trump’s fellow Republicans see him as politically or socially culpable for Sayoc’s clearly criminal behavior.

Back in 1954, a number of Republicans joined in the censure of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. By so doing, they redeemed the good name of the Republican party. Unless the leadership of the Republican Party acknowledges the recklessness of President Trump, Mr. Lincoln’s party will have receded from being a legitimate political party into Donald John Trump’s personal gang.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THAT MAN NAMED DAN

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, I promised a commentary on an incredible speech from a man named Dan. His name is Daniel Greenfield. He was born in Israel and now writes editorials and gives speeches for the education and entertainment of American conservatives. Like most if not all ideological opinion makers at various points on the traditional political spectrum, his speeches and commentaries are deliberately melodramatic, designed to stir the blood of emotionally wrought up people. Nevertheless, I believe that not to respond to the nonsense I’m about to reveal would be downright unpatriotic! So, here it goes.

On Friday, January 26th, 2018, Mr. Greenfield told a South Carolina audience several things he supposedly thought they’d like to hear.

First he told them that guns don’t start revolutions, that people do. (Sound familiar?) Guns, he asserted (most likely to loud cheers), end revolutions.

Next, Dan defined what a revolution was this way: If two parties or sections of a country disagree on how a country should be led and one party or section of that country prevails and the other agrees to unite behind the chosen leader, you’ve got a nation. On the other hand, if the two sides can’t and won’t agree to unite behind a leader, you no longer have a country.  You have a “count down to a revolution.” Mr. Greenfield goes on to enlighten his audience to the reason for this pending revolution which guns will ultimately end. The reason for this count down to revolution is, of course, the sole fault of liberals.

Beginning in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s and 1980s, liberals established four immoral and disruptive ideas which they fed into the body politic.

The first was moral relativism which depends on feelings rather than rules as we evaluate our country’s traditions, laws, and mores.

The second is political correctness, which constitutes the new liberal rule book for governing our social behavior towards both institutions as well as individuals.

The third is historical revisionism about which Mr. Greenfield was less specific probably because he would have had to do some pretty fancy cherrypicking to legitimatize his point. After all, one of the most constant threads that runs through history is a generational interpretation of the past. Does anyone pretend that the scholars of the 19th Century evaluated the past as late 20th Century scholars do? After all, are their experiences the same?

Mr. Greenfield’s fourth complaint is the most far reaching and has some substance. He writes that liberals have established the “world of subjective reality.” In this world of reality there exists a “dreamscape” where saying is doing, all ideas are equal, and trying is achieving. Let’s take Daniel Greenfield’s four observations one at a time.

Of course, morality is “relative” since relativity is dependent on circumstances. When man A shoots man B, a life is destroyed but the destruction of that life depends upon both law and circumstance. If man A is a policeman and man B is in the act of destroying someone else, man B’s destruction has legitimacy. If man A is a husband and B is his wife or his estranged sweetheart, there’s damned little legitimacy to the destruction of B.

As for “political correctness,” conservatives are clearly in denial of their own code of political correctness. How far would a conservative presidential candidate get if he questioned the divinity of Christ as Thomas Jefferson did? Suppose conservative candidate Connie is discovered to have paid for her own daughter’s abortion? Not too long ago conservatives were rightly disturbed by President Clinton’s behavior, but now it’s perfectly all right and even justifiable to have elected a man who has two ex-wives and countless mistresses, because he insists that he has the stuff to “make America great again” - wow!

As for historical revisionism, Mr. Greenfield says that never before Hillary Clinton has a losing presidential candidate failed to recognize the election of their opponent. Sorry, Dan, but neither John Adams in 1801 nor John Quincy Adams in 1829 would attend the inaugurations and thus acknowledge the elections of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson respectively. As Casey Stengel would say, “You can look it up!” Additionally, Republicans in 1876 tinkered with the Electoral College so that Rutherford B. Hayes rather than Samuel Tilden became our 19th President. That doesn’t even take into consideration the bitterness of Woodrow Wilson toward Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 or that of Richard Nixon toward George McGovern in 1972. (Remember, both Wilson and Nixon were not even presidential losers!) Finally, not only did Hillary give a gracious concession speech, she also attended President Trump’s inauguration and he thanked her for coming. So, conservatives are beyond historical revisionism? Really? Really and truly?

As for Daniel Greenfield’s fourth point, the existence of the world of subjective reality, wherein lies the “dreamscape” where saying is doing, all ideas are equal, and trying constitutes achieving: therein lies some solid substance, but it is largely anecdotal and circumstantial substance. Here’s what I mean:

During the summer of 1986, my oldest son participated in an Alameda, California summer recreational softball game. His side lost 17 to 3 and, as the game was breaking up, one of the supervisors, a teacher friend of mine, kept asserting aloud that it was a good game and that neither side won or lost it. I later took him aside and told him how misleading his pronouncement was. After all, Ken was a huge San Francisco Giants fan and he and his son (ironically, also named Daniel), knew the difference between winning and losing. Winning and losing can be as misleading as right versus wrong. It depends on how goodness and badness, right and wrong, are applied and evaluated that really matters. Furthermore, all America, or at least plenty of America, loves the competition of sports and its sports heroes. “Dreamscapes,” as silly as they can be, are used by political, economic and social prognosticators from all points on the political compass.

As for that countdown to revolution, the most that can be said for that is that it is poorly thought out. After all, even these angry conservatives are the fortunate victims of pretty substantial creature comforts. Remember those antiestablishment student radicals of the early 1970s who were determined to destroy Nixon just as they had Johnson? They really and truly meant to do just that until school let out and summer vacation stilled their revolutionary ardor. As the “Establishment” subsequently observed, the Minutemen of 1776 just wouldn’t understand vacation time during a revolution!

As for Daniel Greenfield’s assertion that guns don’t start wars but rather end them, there is irony in both place and symbolism. Our man Dan was addressing a South Carolina crowd, many of whom still take pride in the April 12th, 1861 shelling of Fort Sumter led by General Pierre G. T. Beauregard. Of course, Dan’s right: General Beauregard didn’t use a gun, he used a cannon! As for General Grant four years later in Virginia, he must have ended the conflict with a gun. He must have…after all, it really and truly matters - doesn’t it!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

TRUMPISM EQUALS TRIBALISM

By Edwin Cooney

The culture war through which we’ve been passing since the era of President Carter’s abandonment by Neo-Democrats in the late 1970s has advanced to a degree that most of us, me included, have yet to fully grasp.

Traditionally, issues have been fought out between conservatives and liberals, each insisting that they haven’t really changed their principles, the other guy has changed his or the other woman has changed hers. Ronald Reagan used to give the split between FDR and Al Smith as an example. Al Smith, the “wet” “Catholic” 1928 Democratic Party presidential candidate who lost to Herbert Hoover, split with Franklin Roosevelt over his New Deal government plan. Mr. Reagan always asserted that the split between them was a principled or ideological split. “…Al Smith didn’t leave his party, the party left him,” Mr. Reagan often insisted. The truth is that it was a very personal split which began when Governor-elect Roosevelt refused to hire Al Smith’s secretary Belle Moskowitz. Tragically, Al Smith lost not only the presidency, but was the victim of bitter prejudice on the part of an anti-Catholic public. Understandably angered and bitter about his loss of office and its accompanying prestige, Smith felt that FDR was ungrateful for his assistance in transforming his invalid friend from obscurity into the Governorship of New York. The point of this story is that all politics is ultimately personal and thus we must cope today with both Tribalism and Trumpism.

Tribalism is a very, very ingrained aspect of who Americans are. What it all comes down to is that we’re all, in one way or another, fans. We’re sports fans, rock-in-roll fans, movie actor and actress fans, talk show host fans, Red Sox Nation fans, Savage (talk show host Michael Savage) Nation fans, etc. Fandom is the personalization of fanatic or fanaticism but its significance depends on how and for what purpose our individual sense of fandom is interpreted and ultimately exercised. A fan may not always agree with the decisions made by the object of its affection, but a fan seldom, if ever, objects publicly to that object’s actions. Even more, it ignores a leader’s inconsistencies no matter how blatant.

Sports and entertainment fandom is, for the most part, pretty harmless, but political fandom is rapidly, as I see it, breaking down into tribalism which too often creates a subculture with its own often extreme values and mores.

The election and inauguration of President Trump is a case in point. Donald Trump isn’t and never has been a conservative. Conservatism for President Trump is merely a convenient instrument, much as is the Republican party, for election to high public office. One of my favorite people, a man I’ll call Michigan Chris, used to assure me that no conservative would ever do what Bill Clinton did because conservatives, unlike liberals, possess a strong sense of Christian morality. Yet here in 2018, we find fundamentalist Christian preachers insisting that they didn’t support Donald Trump because he was or is a saint, but because he’s dedicated to return America to the values and mores of the Eisenhower era.

There are a number of very prominent conservatives who are absolutely baffled and bewildered by President Trump’s personalization of conservative doctrine. Their hero is still President Ronald Reagan who used his eloquent persuasiveness rather than the tactics of the worst type of ward politician to get his way. Ronald Reagan was, I believe, aloof, self-serving, and self-righteous, but he ultimately was a gentleman.

Tribalism is a social division much as nationhood. Nationhood or tribalism is the master of any political ideology. Its mainspring is loyalty rather than practicality or principle. Its doctrines, religious beliefs and practices are legitimized or delegitimized by the chief or the senior council. Tribalism as a political activity isn’t new in this country, but tribalism as a movement is what I believe we’re facing in 2018.

There have always been subdivisions of liberalism and conservatism. As the late great Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr once observed in a book about the cycles in American politics, traditionally, there are two main elements of conservatism. They are economic and social conservatism and they each have different “fish to fry.” Conservatism has a set of heroes with different agendas. Senator Robert A. Taft was primarily an international isolationist. Barry Goldwater was generally a strict constitutionalist. Bill Buckley was mostly a libertarian and Ronald Reagan was primarily a social conservative.

Likewise the history of liberalism has its own set of heroes. FDR, Truman, and Hubert Humphrey were labor union liberals. Adlai Stevenson, George Kennan, JFK and LBJ were primarily cold war activists.

President Trump has no set ideological pattern. He embraces tax cuts, business and climate deregulation, and good old “Know Nothing Party nativism.” At the same time, he’s anti NATO, and seemingly pro-dictator. Perhaps most powerful of all, he’s anti-politician even as he sits atop the greasy pole of American politics.

The primary responsibility of any tribe is self-protection. Modern 21st Century tribalism is absent of doctrine or dogmatism, but it’s loaded with self-righteous ambition and, under the guise of good old American conservatism, its goal is the socio/political defamation and destruction of all who oppose it.

Trump tribalism may well pass into history when the president’s term ends. But tribalism may well succeed as a political practice if Chief Trump wins re-election.

Next week I’ll tell you about an incredibly disturbing speech from a man named Dan.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CRACK CRACK CRACK!” THERE GOES MY LIMB, BUT I’M READY AND RARING TO GO!

By Edwin Cooney

I feel sorry for those who only dare to take a position in order to be right! In the absence of hard evidence all any of us have is instinct modified by intelligence and experience. I’m an optimistic person by nature. When I reach a conclusion about anything, much of that conclusion is based on that combination of instinct, experience and intelligence. Nor do I have to be emotionally comfortable with my conclusions.

During this week, I received two very intriguing responses to last week’s column. One was from a reader who expressed surprise that I’ve “…drunk the Kool-Aid" and had thus fallen under the persuasion of that enemy of all that’s decent, George Soros. Mr. Soros, according to this reader, has most likely sent a handsome check to Dr. Blasey Ford for testifying as she did. (I wonder how much this writer really knows about the background and person of George Soros and what makes George Soros less legitimate than either the Koch Brothers or the Mercers or even the Murdochs?) When I really think about it, it’s not too surprising that Conservatives and their purely reactionary sympathizers suspect money to be the sole force that moves people when they themselves depend upon it so much. No sensible person allows themselves to be overwhelmed by feelings when they have so much to gain by collecting money. Many of these sympathizers would rapidly change their outlook had their sisters, daughters, girlfriends and wives been victimized by a drunken teenager some 36 years ago.

Another even more intriguing item I received this week is a commentary to which I must give further study before commenting on it. The writer of this missive introduces an article suggesting that we’re headed toward the brink of civil war due to the surrender to feelings rather than duties which have been bred into today’s liberals by permissive parents of the late 1960s and 1970s. As he introduces his article, he insists that although he thoroughly disliked President Barack Obama, he always gave to him the respect due to him as a legitimate occupant of his office. (I’m assuming, of course, that this gentleman never questioned President Obama’s citizenship!) He charges therefore that President Trump’s opponents deny him even the legitimacy of his office. For that reason their lack of respect for President Trump is pretty close to treason. Thus, we’re headed toward almost certain civil war. That guy is much, much further out on a limb than I’ve ever been.

If you ask me (and you haven’t), publicly stepping out on a limb serves a vital purpose. It stimulates debate by openly encouraging people to consider likelihoods rather than merely surrendering to the obvious. Therefore, although I heartily disapprove of conspiracy theories and theorists, before closing here, I’ll jump out on still another limb.

At the bottom of last week’s limb-hopping is my belief that “where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.” Even more to the point is my belief that there’ll be a very heavy political price that’ll be payable by those who insist that what women assert as mattering is silly or irrelevant. Most of those who take that position are conservative absolutists in their individual and even collective morality.

My quarrel with President Trump isn’t that he didn’t legitimately attain his office. He’s as legitimately president as was Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes and perhaps even more so than was George W. Bush, who was practically declared president by the Supreme Court of the United States in December 2000. As a student of history, I spent many a delightful hour studying the legitimacy of such British Kings as John (1199-1216) who was forced to sign the Magna Carta denying to kings absolute power; King Henry IV who usurped his cousin Richard II’s throne in 1399 and who died in 1413 guilt ridden by that usurpation; King Henry VIII, with all his greed and cruelty, was most definitely legitimate.

Nor do I quarrel with the president’s right to destroy the Affordable Care Act, to make enemies out of immigrants and a bosom buddy out of Vladimir Putin. After all, it’s up to a free people to correct a president who has gone too far on any issue.

Finally, although I’d oppose him even if he was primarily a Conservative, a la Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or even (Heaven help me), Pat Buchanan, my objection to Donald Trump is his personal behavior. The president isn’t, as I see it, ultimately a Conservative. The president merely uses Conservatism to legitimatize Trumpism. President Trump doesn’t in the least fear fear; he endorses it as a vital aspect of legitimate power.

John F. Kennedy said in 1960 that the legitimate task of the president is to set before the American people the unfinished public responsibility of the people.

Clearly, President Trump believes the legitimate task of his presidency is to protect our borders rather than to tackle the problems in Central America which lie at the root of those border problems. Apparently, President Trump is perfectly willing to close off the borders of this country to millions of immigrants who would still like to share their energy and creativity with us rather than with the Chinese. Apparently, even in all his legitimacy, President Trump believes he can control all those who must work with him, both at home and abroad, using coercion rather than cooperation.

Free men and women cannot afford to be fearful. Fear, as I’ve written before, is merely the father of anger. You may well ask if I’m afraid of President Trump! The answer to that is that I’m leery of him and much of what he stands for, as well as of the tactics he’s willing to use to achieve his goals. However, I’m not afraid because I’m sure that sooner rather than later he’ll pay a devastating political price for what he’s been doing and for who he is.

My next limb asserts that a Democratic Congress will not seek Trump’s impeachment. They will definitely peck away at his political vitals, but ultimately they’ll do all they can to insure that the electorate in 2020 will proceed to delegitimize a possible second term.

Oh, as for that cracked limb, I forgot to mention my super parachute!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SEE THAT GUY SITTIN’ WAY, WAY OUT THERE ON THAT LIMB? THAT’S ME!

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, in an attempt to be fair, I reminded my fellow progressives (liberals, if you must) that when judging the sins of youth, as opposed to the sins of adults, we progressives usually weigh them on different scales. Therefore, I asserted, we should remember that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be evaluated the same way that we evaluate 53-year-old Judge Kavanaugh. The problem with that analysis is that confirmation to high public office isn’t a legal process, it’s a political process — or it has increasingly come to be that. Confirmation to high public office is equivalent to a job interview.

That being the case, those charged with the task of hiring someone for this position must keep in mind not only our national welfare, but the way any potential public servant’s background and experience affects it. Even more to the point, since 1969 and 1970 when President Nixon’s first two nominees to the Supreme Court,  Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell, were turned down by an overwhelmingly liberal democratic Senate, ideology has been a key factor in the United States Supreme Court confirmations. Since 1991 when President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to fill the seat of Judge Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court nominees’ personal behavior (past and present) have had much to do with each nominee’s likely approval.

Thus, in this “Year of Our Lord 2018,” more than at any time in history, election and appointment to high public office has become increasingly downright personal.

We need only to look back two years ago to know such is the case. What Democrats too conveniently forget is that Hillary Clinton’s reputation was as much a factor as Donald Trump’s during  the 2016 campaign. Trump, however, had the ultimate advantage of being a change to national leadership when many Americans, especially in key electoral states, were looking for “change” every bit as much as progressives were looking for “change” in 2008 when we voted for Barack Obama. Hillary was an old candidate even though in actuality she is 16 months younger than President Trump. We’ve known Hillary since 1992. Thus, a good portion of those who voted for Mr. Trump were simply tired of Hillary. So, as we sometimes do with our sweethearts, we often look for “a change” even though we may eventually discover that we are the ones who need to change - not our sweethearts.

Therefore, it’s not too surprising that the personal history and character, as much as any political or ideological factor of those we appoint or elect to high public office, matters as much as any public or civic experience or activity.

Last Thursday, Americans saw and evaluated the behavior of two people as they testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. Christine Blasey Ford testified that she was the victim of Brett Kavanaugh’s juvenile drunken status and teenage sexual appetite thirty-six years ago. Dr. Ford made her case in opposition to his nomination utilizing only what she remembers of her experience, and her subsequent feelings about his behavior toward her. Her testimony, though tearful and vague at times, was absent of name calling or of any purely political judgment. As likely as it appears to be that Dr. Ford is a liberal, she didn’t expound as a liberal. Her testimony reflected a state of feeling that is foreign to most males who, after all, remain the most powerful movers and shakers of American society. Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, on the other hand, was righteously angry and exceedingly precise. All aspects of his victimhood, unlike Dr. Ford’s, are well known to him. No reasonable person should deny him of his right to be angry, but the form of his anger was quite revealing.

Had Judge Kavanaugh simply denied her charge, even as he presented his calendar as evidence of his innocence, he could not have been faulted for vigorously defending himself. Unfortunately, the tone of his testimony was that of a temper tantrum. Not daring to fault Dr. Ford’s  presentation, he proceeded to attack the vehicle of that testimony — namely, the “left wing of the Democratic Party,” thus politicizing his victimhood and hers.

Even more telling was his unwillingness when appealed to, to publicly ask the White House to order even a time-limited FBI investigation of Christine Blasey Ford’s agonized charges. His behavior was pretty much the same as that of Clarence Thomas’ 27 years ago when he responded to Anita Hill’s charges by counter-charging her testimony with the assertion that he was the victim of a modern racial lynching.

As for heroes, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was front and center. I don’t know many people, especially women, who would be willing to publicly reveal such an intimate humiliation no matter how healing it may be. Even more admirable is her willingness to bear the inconveniences, threats, and insecurities that have accompanied her soul-destroying teenage humiliation. Senator Jeffrey Flake’s decision to support the Kavanaugh nomination on the floor of the Senate only on the condition that there be an FBI investigation indeed does him credit.

Regrettably, both political parties represented on the Judiciary committee came across as being more interested in appealing to their constituencies than they were in looking out for the future security and safety of the whole public. This tendency is lately being called tribalism which values party loyalty above even truth. I call it the Sovietization of American politics.

Finally, I’m optimistic enough to believe that the forthcoming FBI investigation will sustain Dr. Ford and, as a result, Judge Kavanaugh will not be confirmed by the United States Senate as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

When the Clintons were in the White House, conservatives insisted that individual morality was the mainspring of our democracy. Now that the nation is free of the Clintons, individual morality has been replaced primarily by fear and political payback.

It’s my guess that much of the anger that led to the 2016 defeat of Mrs. Clinton will, very soon, turn its wrath on those who so arrogantly stirred it up and unleashed it. Perhaps President Trump is becoming aware of that possibility since he has decided to order the FBI investigation. As I write this, there have not been any angry tweets or caustic comments emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In fact, the president’s silence has been almost deafening. His behavior has been downright gentlemanly! 

Perhaps the president realizes that there is a severe price to pay if you defame the sensibilities and the feelings of nearly half of humanity.

Therefore, I’m guessing that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s bravery may well have begun to tip the scales, perhaps ever so slightly, on we males’ treatment of our ladies! 

Hence, from way, way out on that proverbial limb…!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY