James M. Redwine

Presidential Campaign

Richard Nixon

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It is 4:30 a.m. and I just spent the last three hours watching a PBS special on Richard Nixon. It may be that years of working the night shift followed by several hours of college classes makes normal sleep abnormal for me. At least I prefer that explanation to what my father told me when I asked him why he was up and down most nights, “Son, when you get old you just can’t stay asleep”. Regardless, I am awake and the PBS documentary reminded me of a Gavel Gamut article I wrote in about January of 2007 about Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. That article is set out below. Gentle Reader, I trust you remember it.

What almost twenty more years has done to my impressions of the turbulent Sixties and Seventies is soften some edges and made others more acute. Once again, just like my sleep habits, I prefer to ascribe those changes to factors other than my age. Anyway, I was intrigued by President Nixon’s self-imposed catastrophe wrought by a series of his seemingly inexplicable wrong decisions that changed Americans’ views of our own country and our role in the world. Most perplexing to me was how unnecessary and silly many of Nixon’s Watergate cover-up decisions were. Nixon was highly intelligent and disciplined. He was a tireless worker from a lower economic class family who knew right from wrong. Yet, he chose the easier wrong over the harder right at virtually every stage of the “Third-Rate Burglary” that brought about his own demise and our country’s imbroglio. It is a fairly obvious allegory of the old, “For want of a nail, a horseshoe was lost”.

One take away I got from the PBS special was how my view of Nixon’s frailties was softened by today’s events, such as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and President Trump’s comments about it or, perhaps, the bombing of Iran or the sinking of the Venezuelan drug boat. I kept watching President Nixon digging a deeper hole for himself and the rest of us as my thoughts conjured up President Trump. Nixon went from winning every state but Massachusetts to resigning in disgrace. As a side note, Nixon’s first Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, had resigned in disgrace only a year before.

I do not predict nor am I soliciting any contemporary resignations, but the lessons of history should be heeded by those who lead us. Maybe some type of epiphany is called for. I know I had to reevaluate what I thought I had learned when I lived through similar times. Perhaps President Trump who is about my age was up watching the special too.

PARDON ME, PRESIDENT FORD
(Week of January 8, 2007)

President Gerald Ford died December 26, 2006.  In a life filled with public service, he will always be best known for his pardon of President Nixon in 1974.

President Nixon personally chose Gerald Ford to replace the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew who resigned in 1973 amid disclosures of bribery while Agnew was Governor of Maryland. Vice-President Ford served under President Nixon until Nixon resigned in August of 1974.  One month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford issued him a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while president.

At the time, I and most Americans were calling for a complete investigation of the Watergate debacle and especially Nixon’s involvement in it.  It was a time of a media feeding frenzy and blood in the water.  President Ford took the unprecedented step of going personally before Congress and flatly stating that President Nixon and then Vice-President Ford had no deal to pardon Nixon if he would resign.

I recall how dubious I was when President Ford stated that he issued the pardon only to help our country to start healing from the loss of confidence caused by Watergate. Yet, after a few months I began to have second thoughts about my initial reaction to the pardon.  I began to see how much courage it took for President Ford to go straight into the anti-Nixon firestorm sweeping the United States.

As a country, we were almost paralyzed by the partisan fighting at home and the War in Viet Nam.  We needed a new direction and a renewed spirit. Surely President Ford with his twenty-two (22) years in Congress knew he was committing political suicide by not giving us our pound of flesh.  Still, he put his country first.  Of course, the country rewarded his sacrifice by booting him from office and electing President Jimmy Carter to replace him.

But during the campaign of 1976, when President Ford came to Evansville, Indiana on April the 23rd, I took my son, Jim, out of school and we went to the Downtown Walkway to cheer the man who put country above self. For while William Shakespeare may almost always get his character analysis right, when it came to President Ford, “The good he did lived after him.”   Julius Caesar, Act III, sc. ii.

Even President Carter, one of America’s most courageous and best former presidents said of President Ford:

“President Ford was one of the most admirable public servants I have ever known.”

And when it came to the pardon of President Nixon, Senator Ted Kennedy, while admitting that he had severely criticized the pardon in 1974, said that he had come to realize that:

“The pardon was an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.”

So, President Ford, since even your political opponents came to appreciate your courage and goodness, I am confident that you have long ago “pardoned” all of us who doubted you back when we needed your leadership.

70 X 7

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Peter eventually made it to the rank of saint; although he may have paid a heavy price for it. Peter was uncouth but Jesus stated he was the foundation of Jesus’ church. According to the New Testament, Jesus and Peter had many one-on-one conversations about theological matters, including forgiveness. In Matthew, Ch. 18, vs. 15-21, Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

In other words, both Donald Trump and Hunter Biden are clothed with a robe of get out of jail free cards based on our Constitution’s Presidential Pardon Power. Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, is not correct; America was not founded on Biblical principles but on principles of the European Enlightenment. Its army was led by George Washington who owned slaves and its Constitution was drafted by fellow slave owner James Madison who was Washington’s staunchest supporter. Washington’s physical presence and Madison’s great mental prowess were two of the main building blocks of our country. The President’s Pardon Power was inserted into the Constitution, probably, because most of the Founding Fathers who had a foundation in the history of the monarchies of Europe expected George Washington to become America’s first king and the Pardon Power was most likely a vestige of the European “Divine Right of Kings” to have the “Final Say” in matters calling for mercy. Instead, we might seek guidance from our Founding Fathers and such other secular authorities as Professor Joseph Campbell who taught mythology and literature at Sarah Lawrence College for many years. Unfortunately, Professor Campbell passed away in 1987, but in his 1972 book Myths to Live By at pages 188-189 Campbell wrote:

…. “The modern Western concept of a legal code is not of a list of unassailable divine edicts {such as the Code of Hammurabi or the Ten Commandments for examples} but of a rationally contrived, evolving compilation of statutes, shaped by fallible human beings in council, to realize rationally recognized social (and therefore temporal) aims. We understand that our laws are not divinely ordained; and we know also that no laws of any people on earth ever were.”

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump must navigate America’s Constitution where Article II, §2, clause 1 provides, “The President shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in cases of Impeachment.”

Pardons are granted by democratically elected Presidents. Over the years thousands of pardons have been granted. President Biden has pardoned his own son after repeatedly and publicly stating he would not. Donald Trump may pardon numerous January 06, 2020 defendants after repeatedly and publicly stating he would. Some people find both Presidents’ actions repugnant. If so, they may work to change the people-made Constitution or work to elect somebody else or impeach whomever the country has elected. After all, our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a democracy based on free will.

 

No Blood, No Ratings

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Tuesday, October 02, 2024 on CBS was a disaster for the TV networks but a breath of clean air to American voters. Unlike the mud wrestling between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on ABC on September 10, 2024, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance engaged in a civil and substantive debate on important issues: Immigration, the Economy, Reproductive Rights and the Middle East. The post-debate analyses by the national media of the presidential debate was like hearing post-game comments from a home-town fan.

If Harris and Trump explained their positions on any issue, I did not hear them. But I did hear the media chortle over the competing charges of lying, criminal intent and incompetence. The commentators were simply giddy with the prospect of selling advertising by regurgitating gossip. In contrast, Walz and Vance never called one another a crook or a liar and several times agreed that the other candidate had a good position on important national problems. The media hated it. The talking heads wrote the entire vice-presidential debate off with the disdainful description that it was “Mid-Western Nice”.

Harris is from California; Trump is from New York. In between is America. My wife, Peg, once had a tee shirt that depicted the United States as New York (along with the rest of the east coast states) on the east edge, California (and Oregon and Washington) on the west edge and everything in between just a black hole. The caption read: “A Bostonian’s view of America.” Apparently, many in the national media see the United States that way. And the inhabitants between the east and west coasts are seen as unassuming simpletons who do not have the sense to come in out of the rain or to cast aspersions on all with whom they disagree.

Midwest Nice, or as your mother might admonish, “Say something nice or say nothing”, just does not “bleed to lead”. On the other hand, filling an hour and half debate with invective, whether based on fact or based on nothing, can ramp up interest in the populace. Turn on, tune in and enjoy the scrum; we should not concern ourselves with policy or solutions. That is so boring.

In about a month, two of the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency will be chosen to lead our national government for the next four years. It might be refreshing if between now and November 05, we in the “Fly Over” part of America could be called upon to do more than just finance the choices those on the coasts make for us. A little Mid-West Nice from everyone might ease the national angst.

Believe It Or Not

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How does a new religion get started? Islam fourteen hundred years ago? Christianity two thousand years ago? Judaism twenty-four hundred years ago? The Romans and Jupiter twenty-five hundred years ago? The Greeks and Zeus three thousand years ago? The Egyptians and thousands of gods four thousand years ago? Gentle Reader, these are just my guesses; you are, of course, free to make your own estimates or consult Google as you see fit.

However, my actual concern is the religion of presidential politics as practiced currently on cable TV in America. And I know when these new beliefs began. With FOX News, the new Defender of the Conservative Faith arrived when Donald Trump came down that golden escalator in 2015. As for CNN and MSNBC, their faith in a Liberal Deliverance was restored only a couple of months ago when Kamala Harris arose like the mythical Phoenix from the ashes of Old Joe.

As best I can tell, the liturgy of these conflicted beliefs relies heavily on denigrating whichever candidate a particular TV network does not like. Portentous warnings from talking heads claim that the election of the “wrong” candidate will cause crops to fail and Taylor Swift to become the new Pied Piper of American youth.

These dire warnings from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and even occasionally, PBS, have become as ubiquitous as commercials and as vociferous as a Pentecostal sermon. CNN convenes numerous panels of “Never Trumpers” who have heard directly from on high that a Trump election will immediately boot America from our Promised Land. And FOX asserts that a Harris win will reign fire and brimstone all over our democratic Garden of Eden, or at least, everywhere but New York and California.

But, just as one religion after another from the dawn of recorded history has appeared and disappeared, we can all pray that this election will end before Armageddon begins. I foresee hope for salvation from this endless cacophony of vapidity, FOOTBALL! As we Americans have done since the first football game was aired on TV, we clutch at the hope our team will rise above the fray. We can seize onto the faith in our champions on the gridiron and set aside the ennui brought on by the gaggle of gloom bearers on TV. Unfortunately, football season only lasts through the Super Bowl in February of 2025. Of course, the networks are doing their best to force us to buy every game and the new Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness rules are sorely testing our faith.

And, of course, whoever wins the election will be subject to four years of damnation from some of the disappointed anchors. Those sore losers will likely begin endless recriminations for venal sins they assert just over half of the electorate will have committed by worshipping a false idol. As for us in the captive viewership, maybe the INSP network will have enough Gunsmoke reruns to sustain us until the next two graven images are nominated four years from now.

Existential Threats

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An existential risk, in general, is one that could cause the collapse of human civilization, such as nuclear war. An existential risk to democracy is one that could bring about the collapse of individual liberty, such as fascism. This is the theme of The New Republic magazine cover that morphs Donald Trump’s face into Hitler’s. It is, also, the theme of numerous politicians and cable news commentators who have called Trump an existential threat to our American democracy and called for him to be stopped at all costs. Twenty-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks gave up his own life to try.

In like manner, many politicians and cable news commentators have asserted Joe Biden is corrupt in his personal life and, as president, he has “weaponized” his Justice Department against his political opponents and must be ousted from office. He has been demonized as “Crooked Joe” and vilified as a threat to our democracy due to his advancing age. Although many of us also feel Father Time creeping around.

Some supporters of Biden and some supporters of Trump are indistinguishable in their vociferously clanging brass, or as Ecclesiastes, Ch. 9, v. 17 might say their “… shouting of ruler(s) among fools.” What we need instead are, “The words of the wise heard in quiet ….”

But America may have been blessed with the curse of a near miss on July 13, 2024 when former President Trump somehow survived an assassination attempt and gave both Trump and Biden and their supporters one of life’s greatest and rarest gifts, another chance. And America, itself, would be the beneficiary if we do not squander it.

Biden and Trump are neither one dogs but they might want to reflect on some more wisdom from Ecclesiastes, “But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion,” Ch. 9, v. 4. In other words, even though both men are old they still have the opportunity to go out like lions if they choose wise leadership over foolish rhetoric and actions. Instead of speaking and acting like petulant children they should follow First Corinthians, Ch. 13, v. 11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” And all it took was one near miss for both of them to have the chance to finally grow up.

Former President Trump is the one who was shot and survived, but Biden is intrinsically entwined by circumstances with Trump’s fate and fortune. Much like many paired adversaries, the fate of one is the fate of both. And Biden is being “shot at” by his own Democrat Party that is pressuring him to simply give up “for the good of the country.” Of course, if instead of standing up and fighting Biden steps aside, whoever replaces him will come from the ranks of those who have also ascribed to the assertions that Trump is an existential threat. Regardless, for now both Biden and Trump are the candidates and just as all of us, they have had that ever present gnawing thought in the middle of the night, “Why didn’t I do or say that differently? Oh, how I wish I had the chance to change what I said or did.” Well, Trump and Biden do now have that chance. They both, even as elderly public servants, have been given the golden gift of an unexpected chance to re-make their personal and public personas. They could take their guidance from that great philosopher, William Shakespeare, whose Prince Hal put off juvenile behavior and clothed himself in royal responsibility. As King Henry, the onetime feckless rogue made himself into a great leader of England upon his father’s death and astonished his people:

“… he (Prince Hal) may be more wondered at by breaking through the foul and ugly mists of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
”Henry IV, Part I, scene II.

Of course, one person will win in November, but whoever the candidates may be they both can rise above the current ad hominem viciousness and provide our country with hope, guidance, wisdom and leadership. Most of us will not get a reprieve from life for our sins and bad judgments. But occasionally life does shoot-at-someone-and miss. Say a cancer diagnosis that turns out to take years instead of days or an unexpected heart attack that we survive. How we respond determines how we expend the rest of our lives and how our family and friends evaluate whether we are honorable in our second chance behavior.

When it comes to Donald and Joe, they now, even at or near 80, have the totally unexpected chance to modify their behavior, and in doing so, help save their country. Such a rare treasure should not be squandered on the shoals of egotistical ambition. Perhaps when each of them awakes in the middle of the night now they will say to themselves, “Thank you for this once in a life-time totally unexpected opportunity.” Then each might become the leader even their opponent did not expect.

Democracy At Risk

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Lake James, Indiana. Photo by Peg Redwine

Donald Trump did not find fault with his election victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though many Americans were astonished. However, four years later President Trump and many others questioned President Joe Biden’s victory. Some Trump supporters even marched and more on January 06, 2021 in protest as still sitting President Trump verbally urged them on.

Former President Trump is now seeking the presidency again, but some are protesting his right to do so. These never Trumpers are asserting that Trump is now prohibited from running by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that provides:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

As many of us learned in high school, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were ratified by Congress soon after the Civil War. Generally, the 13th prohibited slavery, the 14th provided for Due Process for Blacks, including citizenship, while the 15th gave Black men the right to vote.

I do not know about you, Gentle Reader, but I had never given a moment’s thought to Section 3 until after January 06, 2021 and until former President Trump announced his intention to run again. I do recall Alabama Governor George Wallace who defied the United States Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 in Brown vs The Topeka, Kansas Board of Education that ordered an end to school segregation. In Wallace’s inauguration address on January 14, 1963 he declared, “…segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. Yet, Wallace was allowed to run for the presidency only five years later in 1968 without anyone raising the 14th Amendment. America’s voters made their free democratic choice and rejected Wallace’s racist position.

The first time I heard mention of Section 3 being used to keep Trump off the ballot I remember my bemusement. Then, as the tiny tinkling of the anti-Trump candidacy tocsin became a loud tolling of ballot disqualification, my bemusement became concern.

Some who advance the preemption of Trump’s second term warn that our democracy would be in danger if he is reelected. These self-anointed saviors assert that to preserve our democracy we must assure the MAGA fanatics cannot steal our self-government. And the best way to do this is to disenfranchise them by eliminating their candidate from the ballot. Well, you see the oxymoron of saving democracy by denying it to those they dislike. Yet, that is the petard the Section 3 crowd is raising. Of course, they know that just as with Bush vs. Gore 2000, the matter will end up in the tender mercies of the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. How did that work out for our democracy? Can you say Iraq War?

Politics is not Bean Bag. If you have never run for political office and lost, you may not appreciate the visceral impact it has. Most people have played on or supported some sports team and have experienced the disbelief and angst from some loss they attribute to a bad call by an umpire or referee. Well, I assure you, Gentle Reader, a loss of an election is a much more gut-wrenching experience.

As one of my brothers told me after he lost his only foray into local politics, “I cannot understand how I lost, everyone I talked to told me they voted for me”. No matter how graciously a losing candidate handles a loss, many of them wonder if, in fact, they won and somehow the outcome should have been otherwise. Ergo, Donald Trump was a part of that, “I can’t believe it!”, tradition. Was he wrong? Was he a poor sport? Was he a jerk? Yes, yes and yes. Did he take up arms against the United States? No.

Should we attempt to save our democracy by keeping him off the ballot? No! Let the voters decide. Part of democracy means allowing people to make poor choices or, at least, choices we dislike. However, democracy means making sure we all have the right to do so.