PRESIDENT’S DAY - THE HOLIDAY THAT CELEBRATES NO ONE.

When I was a youngster we celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12 and George Washington’s on February 22nd.  The schools, the newspapers and the TV used these holidays as occasions to remind and educate Americans about how George Washington led the Continental soldiers in the American Revolution and went on to become not King but our first President and established the federal government.  And similarly, Abraham Lincoln was rightly praised as the man who saved the union and abolished slavery.

Then the interests of the economy, and the desire to have three day weekends, ran into the inconvenience of two major holidays in the same month.  You see neither Washington’s nor Lincoln’s parent had the foresight to consider national holidays when they conceived and gave birth to these great men.  So the political and business and labor leaders of the post WWII era decided in their wisdom that we should celebrate these holidays not on the 12th nor the 22nd but on a Monday in February (certainly not two Mondays in February).  Now it could have been called Washington-Lincoln day but no that was too simple.  The advocates of honoring other Presidents such as Jefferson and the two Roosevelt’s entered into the national discussion and the resultant idea was President’s Day -- one Monday in February. So folks would have a three day weekend between New Year’s and Easter, and people could honor and celebrate all the Presidents or at least those that regions and population groups and ideological organizations wanted to memorialize.

Initially there was some effort to expand the base of honorees.  Jefferson was lauded for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence (some quarter century before he was President) and his Louisiana Purchase.   Teddy Roosevelt was celebrated for his Rough Rider charge up San Juan Hill (a few years before he became President).  Wilson was remembered for trying to prevent another World War (he failed) and of course in the post WWII era Franklin Delano Roosevelt was memorialized for leading our nation through the Great Depression and the Crusade to defeat fascism and Nazism.

But celebrating a number of Presidents one, two or three dozen never caught on.  Just as the American people seem uncomfortable considering more than two candidates for the office of President they seem incapable of honoring a multiplicity of holders of the office.  By the time right wingers had a hero to celebrate in Ronald Reagan, their  victor of the war against communism, President’s Day had already become just another excuse for retail sales (using images of Washington and Lincoln) or bargaining chips with unions over which holidays would be paid.

No one every seemed to push the idea of honoring the office of President.  Just as Arbor Day and even now Earth Day have lessened in the public consciousness, Holidays seem to need a people connection or a tie-in to a major event.  Independence Day presumably will not disappear from the popular mind as Armistice Day has - although there is a real effort to make it Veteran’s Day a remembrance of those who fought for our country but it has to compete with another Holiday - Memorial Day.   The latter was first recognized after the Civil War and the Nov 11th holiday came after World War I.

And so now we have a day in February when we no longer focus on Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.   And, we don’t honor others, e.g. FDR and Reagan.  In the two hundred and twenty-three years that the United States of America has existed we have had some 43 men serve as President -- some great, some good, some mediocre and some downright incompetent.  But a nation that has been populated by hundreds of millions of people, and that prides itself on such a longevity of constitutional succession in its highest national office, surely could have found a way to honor those chief executives.

Winston Churchill said of America that we always do the right thing after we try everything else. Maybe it’s time to try a new approach to honoring our Presidents’ with a Holiday.  Maybe Washington/Lincoln day in Feb and Roosevelt/Reagan day in a month that has some meaning to both of them and needs a holiday.  If we continue this mythical Presidents’ Day to honor all  the Presidents we will continue to have what we have now -- a Holiday that honors no one.

20 February, 2012

IS THIS ANY WAY TO PICK A PRESIDENT?

Joseph Stalin, the 20th century Russian dictator, is reported to have said that it didn’t matter who controlled the voters what mattered was who controlled the vote counters.  In this year’s Republican presidential primaries and caucuses that certainly is becoming the case.  The first caucuses in Iowa were won by Romney - Oops not exactly.  He won on caucus night according to the state Republican headquarters but when all the paper ballots were eventually rechecked it turned out that Rick Santorum had won.  This announced some week after Romney got the full media benefits off being proclaimed the first winner.

Now we have the results of the Maine caucuses.  The precincts in Maine are allowed to set their caucus dates and at least one county delayed to Feb. 18th when it was hit by a sever snowstorm this past Saturday.  The Republican state party has declared Romney the winner of the caucuses by 194 votes based on 84% of the caucuses.  The party leadership holds that if you didn’t get the results of the straw poll into them by Sat at 6pm the results don’t count.  As for the snowstorm county too bad you don’t count either.  Sure helps to control the vote counters.

Money today owns our politics and our politicians.  We always saw millions buying ads and paying for campaign expenses as a way to dominate the process.  Now large scale multiyear contributions to those who control the counting can also have its benefits.  Of course these caucuses use paper ballots and the aficionados of paper, the Luddites who fear machines, say that paper guarantees an honest count.  I beg to differ.  Paper ballots are more prone to chicanery - to loosing the paper, to smudging the ballot and now we just delay reporting returns.  It’s not easy to lose a machine or erase an electronic cartridge secretly.  I would rather trust the firmware inside the direct recording electronic voting machines used in my county of Delaware (Pennsylvania) than the paper coming out of a box being counted with some sheet of results being phoned into a state headquarters.

Is this any way to choose the President of the United States - the leader of the free world?  No

We need a national direct election with nominees being chosen in national (or five regional) primaries with standardized rules as to a ballot access and with minimum percentages need (40%) to win or we hold a run-off.  What would be so bad about a possible four votes: Primary, Run-off Primary, General Election and run-off election?  The likelihood of those four occurring in one year not strong but if so why is so bad for the American people to focus on who should be their President four times and focus as a nation voting for the one elected official who represents the entire nation.  Instead we use primaries that are based on states, counties and congressional districts to allocate delegates to conventions that haven’t really picked the candidates in sixty years.

Patrick Henry said back at the time of the Revolution - We are not Virginians, or New Yorkers nor Massachusetts men we are all now Americans.  He was right and we should vote like Americans in a national election to choose our leader.  And while we’re at it let’s change the term of office to six years with a single term limit so that the Congress (which should also be term limited) has no incentive to emasculate the President.

12 February 2012

The Politics of Bullying

We have become a nation where bullying not only is too common in school hallways and playgrounds but in our politics and public meetings.

As we saw in the Congressional town halls of 2010 those angered by the lies being spread about the health care reform bill were loud, rude and nasty to elected officials and other citizens.  There was no evidence of respect for the office of the persons conducting the meeting and no civility toward neighbors who were present and perhaps on the other side of the issue.  Instead there was simply an attempt to loudly bully those in attendance to either join in harassing the elected official or keep silent.

And that continues today. While once was considered standard at a political rally or a peaceful demonstration to cheer,  jeer and exhibit enthusiasm is now common at community governmental meetings to shout, scream and accuse elected officials of lying. This reached the extreme when a Congressman shouted at the President during the State of Union address “You Lie”.  Citizens shout at their local officials until they do what the citizens want.  We were a nation whose body politic was formed around the concept of representative democracy.  People voted in elections and accepted the results of the election.  If those who won did not perform to the expectations of the majority they were ousted in the next elections.

Today as soon as the ballots are counted the losing side declares the winners illegitimate.  The losers than practice the art made famous by former Speaker Gingrich in 1995 - the politics of personal destruction.  Rather than debate an idea the losing side demonizes and seeks to personally defame and destroy the individual who represents that idea or party.  Epithets are tossed around and accusations with no basis in fact are issued like dogma.  Some of the charges are a distortion of an underlying fact but most are simply made up.  And, if the attacked party attempts to reason with their attacker they can’t because anything they say in their own defense is twisted and used against them.  When the shouter claims the sky is green and the elected official says no it’s blue the attacker responds you know it’s black when there’s a storm.  You cannot reason with irrational people; you cannot present facts to those who refuse to understand them. As the Bible says none are as blind as those who will not see.

The result of this bullying politics is to drive good people out.  Those who will not fight fire with fire stay home - they may vote but that’s the last time they are heard.  They will not seek or accept office because understandably they don’t want to make themselves the targets of the bullies.   When the Communists took power in Russia in 1917 and when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 it was through the tactics of bullying.  They silenced the opposition using force when verbal bullying failed.

One of the many reasons I support the people of Wisconsin in their effort to recall Governor Walker is to show people that there is another way.  Vote those you disagree wit out.  We need more recall provisions in our various state laws and we need more states with initiative and referendum.  We also need term limits for legislative officials.  But with those reforms must come a societal acceptance of the results of the elections.  Let those elected show their stuff and then let the electorate take the appropriate actions to replace them if they wish to.

If we no longer accept the legitimacy of our elections - and the right wing efforts to suppress voting by enacting photo id laws and reducing the number of polling places and restricting absentee voting will only increase the seeming illegitimacy of the election results - we will soon lose the right to hold elections.  If we don’t adopt a constitutional amendment to require full transparency and total disclosure of campaign contributions and limit the size of personal and corporate contributions our democracy will become an oligarchy of the very rich.  And we will find that when Patrick Henry cried “Give me Liberty or give me death” he never assumed that two hundred years later we might get neither.

22 January 2012   

Our Political System isn’t Working !

The founders in the 1770's-80's saw America as a new model of how people could rule themselves.  It was, they believed, the first attempt at a republican form of government since the city states of Greece and the ancient Roman Republic.  In fact many feared that the 13 state 3 million people nation would be too big to govern itself effectively.

The USA soon became a symbol to those in Latin America and Europe who wanted to defeat absolutism and monarchism.  America became the example around which Bolivar and the South Americans rallied as they won their independence from Spain; the French revolted to overthrow the monarchy and in the 1840's many in central Europe began democratic revolutions (that failed).  By the end of the 19th century America was seen as the “best hope of mankind”.  The twentieth century - the American century - saw the US lead in the wars against monarchism, fascism, Nazism, militarism and then communism.  And in all those the democracies prevailed.

Today the vast majority, of the 191 nations on the planet, are democracies or have democratic style institutions and the dictatorships that remain use democratic modeled constitutions and institutions to appear legitimate.

But, something has gone wrong with the American system.  When this political system started it was based on civil debate of issues. There were great divisions over issues such as where to place the capitol, how to pay Revolutionary War debts and ultimately the issue of slavery.  All the disputes, except slavery, were resolved through civil discourse and political debate and most often compromise.  Not so with the issue of slavery - its extension or its elimination.  In the 1970's when the matter of abortion and the Supreme Court decision of Roe v Wade became viral many compared it to slavery as a moral issue that in the political arena did not lend itself to civility or to compromise.

Today every issue has become like the slavery and abortion issues.  Political debate is strident, nasty, combative and abusive in every arena: the Congress, the state legislature and the local municipal councils.  Town meetings consist of citizens shouting at elected officials, calling them liars and spewing forth their version of the facts.  Citizens come to meetings today armed with what they believe to be factual and they will listen to no one produce facts that contradict them.  Ronald Reagan used to say that “facts are stubborn things”.  Today everyone believes that they are entitled to their own facts, not just their own opinions.  If a group comes to a meeting believing that the sky is green and the elected officials can prove it is blue then the people call the officials liars and jeer at them. 

Without the ability to engage in civil discourse - to respect each other’s opinions but to recognize incontrovertible facts our system will not work.  Without the ability to develop consensus and sometimes compromise our system will not work.  And you cannot develop consensus and compromise if everyone insists that their version of the facts is the only correct version.

Lack of civil discourse has torn nations apart, sometimes for centuries (e.g. Ireland). And, it threatens America’s standing in the world--not as a military or economic super power but as the symbol of democracy to the many who venerate that symbol (e.g. the Libyan, Burmese and countless others fighting for their liberties).

I do not know how to restore civil discourse to our political system.  Those who do not engage in name calling and visceral attacks seem to lose elections which encourages others to so engage.   It might help if our schools went back to teaching civics so young people had some understanding of how the system works.  It might help if our schools were better at teaching history so our young people understood the founding of the nation and how it came about and how slavery almost tore it apart (and did cost 600,000 lives in a Civil War).  It might help if our religious institutions instead of being involved in every issue battle began fighting for a return to a more civil and respectful system.

Monday we celebrate the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He dreamed of an America where brotherhood and freedom encompassed this nation from New Hampshire to California.  Today that dream is under attack, not just from those who would repeal programs or restrict rights, but from all who damage the American psyche and system with their negative ads, their false facts; their media ratings based attacks and their disrespectful treatment of the President, Congressmen, Mayors and local elected officials.

Perhaps all we need is for everyone to remember the words of what is truly our national hymn: “America, America, God shed his grace on thee; and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”. 

14 January 2012