Franklin Roosevelt

My brother, Philip Redwine, that is Philip spelled with the Biblical one “l”, graduated from the Oklahoma University Law School while I was an undergraduate at Indiana University. When I asked him what he had been taught he told me the entire process boiled down to “learning to think like a lawyer”. When I excitedly quizzed him about that arcane and mysterious subject he replied the whole three years of law school could be summarized by the following story:

“A client asked his attorney for advice as to whether he should file for a divorce. The client told the attorney that each time he tried to climb the stairs to the second floor of the couple’s home his wife would kick him back down. The man said to the attorney, ‘Doesn’t that show she doesn’t love me anymore?’ The attorney reflected on the situation and thoughtfully responded, ‘Either that or she just doesn’t want you upstairs.’”

So, to think like a lawyer means to objectively consider a situation from all sides and apply any relevant analogies to it. After three years of my own legal education at Indiana University, then ten years practicing law and forty years of being a judge, my conclusion is my brother was right and that lawyer-type analysis requires imagination and objective open-mindedness. I respectfully suggest we may want to try this approach to our COVID-19 impacted situation as some of our greatest legally trained presidents might have done. Yes, we must act now but we should do so with wisdom, courage and imagination.

Vision and objectivity have certainly been displayed by several of our greatest non-legally trained presidents. George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt readily come to mind. However, I would like to discuss with you a few of our legally thinking leaders who helped guide us through tough times by having the ability to seize opportunity from crisis by winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Thomas Jefferson saw the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806 as a means of expanding the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific and discovering the untold resources of our country. Jefferson did this at a time when most Americans still feared, or too much admired, Great Britain. And he had to maneuver the funding through a skeptical Congress.

Abraham Lincoln was faced with the possibility of California seceding from the Union and with slavery remaining as a state option even if the South were defeated. He boldly issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and that same year signed the bill funding the Intercontinental Railroad. Lincoln did not live to see the golden spike driven at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, but his use of grants of public lands and issuance of bonds helped preserve the Union he so admired.

Franklin Roosevelt saw the need for a great infusion of public funds for the education and re-employment of our out-of-work Americans during the Great Depression. Thanks to his vision America was much better prepared to respond to Japan and Germany in World War II.

John Kennedy started us on the elliptical route to the moon as financed with public monies. The vast number of jobs, products and conveniences the Space Program brought are still being enjoyed by our citizens.

I do not cite these heroes’ legal training as required for a novel approach to the Novel Virus. Millions of Americans can see that borrowing trillions of dollars to help people for a short time merely delays the pain. A cure requires applying our resources with a long view. We can invest in ourselves for the future while helping those in need now.

One need not be a lawyer to see an issue such as COVID-19 from all sides and apply similar solutions as were used in similar prior crises. President Eisenhower was a West Point trained soldier who planned the greatest military invasion in history and could envision the benefits from a German Autobahn-type interstate highway system for America. And my friend, Warren Batts, is not an attorney but a rock ’n roll musician who suggests we could build a national high speed railway passenger system utilizing the middle portion of our already existing interstate rights-of-way between the separated lanes of traffic.

What we need, from our lawyers and non-lawyers combined, is the vision to prepare for our new society as it will surely be transformed by the Corona Virus. We will be changed but we can transform not regress. New skills can be taught using public funds as we did with the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Space Program.

I realize these are not new ideas. That is my legally thinking point. You, Gentle Reader, will surely have several similar suggestions of your own, which I encourage you to share.

Our governmental systems, federal and each state, are designed to avoid rash decisions. We use systems that divide power into three generally equal branches that check one another’s powers and demand debate of important issues. Our fettered freedom created and maintains history’s most propitious culture. It is good to be an American. Of course, our system’s Holy Grail of restraining abuses of power results in diffused responses and partisan debates. That is also good as it helps prevent imprudent, irreversible actions. A concomitant element of our democratic system is that when faced with emergencies we often approach problems as a free people that the theoretical benevolent dictator might resolve quicker and better. COVID-19 comes to mind.

With this unprovoked surprise attack in January 2020 Americans responded as our system of government required. And as human beings one of our first reactions was to seek someone to blame. In a country designed to be a caldron of debate, assessing blame is a perpetual condition. We can call for charity for all but the better angels of our nature often seek partisan cover.

However, we have now had five months to accumulate evidence and analyze the problem. Maybe in hindsight some of our decisions could have been better but hindsight is only worthwhile if it is used to make better decisions now. Another, more cynical way to state this is: Never let a “good” crises go to waste.

I am reminded of what Jack Welch, the head of General Electric Company when it truly brought good things to life, said when one of his employees made a million dollar mistake. When Welch was asked if he intended to fire the employee Welch replied, “Of course not, I just paid a million dollars for his education.”

We have already lost about 100,000 people and are spending trillions of our treasure trying to help families and businesses. Most economic experts agree such an approach is necessary but almost all of them are chagrinned it is. In like manner, most medical experts side with the decisions to require social isolation to avoid spreading the virus, especially in certain at risk populations. But most scientists realize such preventative measures are themselves quite harmful.

Examples of military, economic and social disasters that have been used as opportunities for long-term good are legion. Gentle Reader, you will immediately think of many but I would like to cite just a couple.

President Abraham Lincoln abhorred slavery but was trapped in that most typical political snare, the realization that the ideal of equality was hostage to reality. Therefore, until he could issue the Emancipation Proclamation in January, 1863 under the guise of freeing slaves in the “belligerent states” as a military strategy, Lincoln had to publicly assert what the public would support. As Lincoln had said in a letter to newspaper magnate Horace Greeley only six months earlier:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it,
and If I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it;
and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
[August, 1862]

After years of arguing against slavery Lincoln saw the “War Between the States” and the military advantage of freeing only those slaves in states at war with the Union as an opportunity.

Similarly, during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress devised the Civilian Conservation Corps that used public funds to employ and train out-of-work young people to create and build public works. The CCC supported families, cared for natural resources and built marvelous public works such as Osage Hills State Park in Oklahoma. Another of the marvelous public works products was Hoover Dam built between 1931-1935. Roosevelt and Congress took a crisis and used it to develop millions of acres for agricultural and recreational purposes.

The reality is America did not avoid COVID-19. If there is anyone to blame, what good does it do to waste our energies and resources pointing our fingers and wringing our hands? Many people are already sacrificing, working, researching and striving to help themselves and others survive. As Patrick Henry exhorted his Colonial colleagues when the British were coming:

“Our brethren are already in the field.
Why stand we here idle?”

Or as that great public works president Theodore Roosevelt said:

“It is not the critic who counts …
The credit belongs to the [one] who is actually in the arena.”

In other words, let us recognize COVID-19 not only as the terror it is but also as an opportunity forced upon us. If we must spend trillions of dollars of our treasure helping our 35 million who are unemployed through no fault of their own maybe we can invest in new Hoover Dams while educating and re-training the unemployed for our new society. For many economists predict at least a third of that 35 million will not be able to return to their old jobs or businesses. Yes, we should help one another but most people prefer an opportunity to a dole. Our world is not going to return to 2019. Perhaps we can prepare for the “Brave New World” fate is casting upon us. America need not become the Rome described by Edward Gibbons in his classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With the proper and imaginative application of our resources perhaps we can transform, not decline.

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