Oh, but for an hour” … of a president who doesn’t just “curse the stupid darkness!“

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Two years ago – on April 4, 2016 – I posted On Reagan, Kennedy – and “Dick the Butcher.”  The post had over 2,000 words, while the “ideal” word-count for a blog post is half that.  (1,000 words or less.*)   That post in turn was a review of June 2015’s “Great politicians sell hope.”

That post came in just under 1,800 words.

Since then I’ve tried to shorten my posts.  That’s under the theory that the average blog-reader has the “attention span of a gerbil.”  So here’s a short-and-sweet version of those longer, long-ago posts.

To begin with, Dick the Butcher was a character in William Shakespeare‘s play, Henry The Sixth, Part 2.  (Who was in turn “a killer as evil as his name implies.”)  He’s the guy who famously said:

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers…“

To that I responded:  The real reason Americans don’t like lawyers – or politicians for that matter – is that they “accurately reflect our own dark side.”  Thus my thought was that the better rule would be:  “The first thing we do is kill all the clients!”

The problem with lawyers is – after all – that they’re only doing what their clients want them to do…  Which seems pretty much true of politicians as well.

But the general tenor of both “Dick the Butcher” and “Great politicians” was more positive.

Or at least it was to the point of reminiscing, back to a time when political arch-enemies -like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill – could and did sup with each other.  And this was true even though they were political arch-enemies, but not when the day’s work was done. 

(In other words, we didn’t have all the political hostility so prevalent these days.)

Which led to this thought:  Donald Trump has done one thing positive.  He’s made  real politicians look better and  better.  (See George W. Bush Reportedly Sounds Off On Trump: ‘Sorta Makes Me Look Pretty Good.’)  Which was pretty much the point of  “Great politicians.”

That post noted that our best presidents – including JFK and Ronald Reagan – were able to “sell themselves” by giving Americans some hope for the future.  It also noted that maybe today’s current crop of nasty, negative politicians simply reflect the nasty, negative voters who make up way too large a part of our population.  

(“The first thing we do is kill all the voters!”)

Which brings us to the idea that it’s better to light a single candle than curse the darkness.  (See also Better to Light a Candle Than to Curse the Darkness.) 

The quote itself is “often misattributed,” generally to Eleanor Roosevelt or “claimed to be an ancient Chinese proverb.”  But in 1960 John F. Kennedy alluded to the quote in his acceptance speech, after receiving the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party:

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

(“Oh, for a safe and sane future…”)  Which brings up the sentiment alluded to in the post-title.

It was first noted in “Oh, for an hour of Truman.”  (From April 2015.)  That post pointed out that the first “Oh, for an hour” harkened back to Andrew Jackson.   And that sentiment was said between the time Abraham Lincoln was elected and when he actually took office.  (On March 4, 1861, not the January 20th swearing-in day of today.  I.e., some 118 days after the election.) 

So anyway, that sentiment was expressed by Democrats, members of the incumbent president’s own party.  (That incumbent president was James Buchanan.  And, “Do you see the irony?)  So here’s the quote on the quote, from “Oh, for an hour of Truman:”

Lincoln found himself armed with nothing but words to stop the South from seceding before he could even take office…   President James Buchanan, nearing 70 … looked at the Constitution and saw his hands being tied by a lack of specific instruction.  The cry went up from frustrated members of his own party: “Oh, but for an hour of Jackson!”

Which is a sentiment I find myself alluding to myself, more and more these days.  But now I’m up to about 1,300 words for this post, so it’s time to wrap things up.  (Keeping in mind the average blog-reader’s “attention span of a gerbil.”  And I wonder if Moses had a similar problem?)

One point of “An hour of Truman” was that Harry was open-minded.  (“Willing to listen to ‘what the other fella has to say.’”)  Another was that he was an avid student of history.  As he said:

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know…   [G]o back to old Hammurabi, the Babyonian emperor…   Why, he had laws that covered everything, adultery and murder and divorce, everything…  Those people had the same problems as we have now.  Men don’t change.

Which is probably true.  (Sometimes unfortunately so.)  And Harry also used to say, “The buck stops here.”  But it seems we now have a president better known for passing the buck.  (Attributing to “another person or group one’s own responsibility.”)  Which leads us back to:

Oh, but for an hour of Truman (or almost anybody else)…

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President Harry Truman, and the sign he made famous…

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For the upper image I Googled “peanuts cartoon you stupid darkness.”  I found the featured image under Peanuts Cartoon You Stupid Darkness – Image Results, and specifically at and courtesy of Beings Akin.wordpress.com.  See also “You stupid darkness!” and 29 other Peanuts quotes for everyday use.”  It shows the “stupid darkness” cartoon in strip form, rather than “two-tiered.” 

Re: Ideal length of blog posts.  See How long should a post be … Yoast, What is the Ideal Word Count for the Perfect Blog Post?, and/or Blog Post Word Count: Is There a Magical Number?

The Reagan-Kennedy image is courtesy of www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/senator_ted_kennedy. The caption:  “Senator Edward Kennedy talks with President Ronald Reagan, left, on June 24, 1985, as they look over an American Eagle that graced President John F. Kennedy’s desk during a fund raising event for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at McLean, Virginia.  (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi).” 

The “W … real politicians” image is courtesy of the Washington Examiner’s April 11, 2018 article:  George W. Bush: Trump ‘makes me look pretty good.’

Re  Passing the buck.  One theory says the term came from poker.  Or consider this:

Another less common but arguably less fanciful attribution is to the French expression bouc émissaire, meaning “scapegoat,” whereby passing the bouc is equivalent to passing the blame or onus.  The terms bouc émissaire and scapegoat both originate from an Old Testament (Lev. 16:6–10) reference to an animal that was ritually made to carry the burden of sins, after which the “buck” was sent or “passed” into the wilderness to expiate them.  

Which sound more like our current “president…”  

The lower image is courtesy of Everyone Is Butchering ‘the Buck Stops Here,’ which said the phrase did not mean a president can be blamed for everything bad that happens on his watch, as used today.  Instead it was aimed at “Monday morning quarterbacking” (also known as “whining“): 

“You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over.  But when the decision is up before you – and on my desk I have a motto which says The Buck Stops Here’ – the decision has to be made.”

“Tail Gunner Joe” – McCarthy – immortalized the words “Point of order, Mr. Chairman!”

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It’s time to get back to politics.  That’s because a couple days ago I was reading the AJC – taking a morning break for an iced coffee – when something in a Pat Buchanan column caught my eye.  The column-title asked, Is Trump assembling a war cabinet?

Which is of course a valid question these days.

For once I agreed with what Pat was saying.  Mostly.  (Which is pretty rare for me, when it comes to Mr. Buchanan.)  He first noted that Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis now seems to be the “last man standing between the U.S. and war with Iran.”  Buchanan also indicated that a war with Iran was a “dreadful idea,” then said Donald Trump was nominated precisely “because he promised to keep us out of stupid wars.”  Then – after asking “what is Trump thinking” in apparently assembling such a cabinet – Buchanan wrote this:

Truman and LBJ got us into wars they could not end, and both lost their presidencies. Eisenhower and Nixon ended those wars and were rewarded with landslides.

That’s where the point of order comes in.  That is, a point of order is a rule of parliamentary procedure, by which an objection “may be raised if the rules appear to have been broken.  This may interrupt a speaker during debate, or anything else if the breach of the rules warrants it.”

The irony is that the term “point of order” was made famous – or Infamous – by Senator Joseph McCarthy during his “reign of terror” in the 1950s.  That time in our history spawned the term McCarthyism – illustrated at left – which today refers to the use of “demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.”  (But apparently the term is not used enough today to refresh our collective memory.) 

One point of order involved Buchanan’s saying that Richard Nixon ended the Vietnam War that Lyndon Johnson “got us into.”  Now, just when the Vietnam War started is a matter of heated debate, but one thing is clear:  Lyndon Johnson wasn’t the one who “got us into” Vietnam.  Another point?  We now know that it could have ended in 1968.  And it could have been ended by Lyndon Johnson, but for Nixon’s intervention.  So it’s hard to say that Nixon “ended” the war that – but for his intervention – could have ended before he became president.  Had he been an honorable man, the war would have ended and Nixon probably wouldn’t have been elected. 

Briefly, LBJ gave Nixon secret information about the Paris Peace Accords, in 1968.  In turn, Nixon twisted the information around so that it got him elected, in the presidential election of 1968.

The cost?  18,000 Americans died in Vietnam between 1968 and 1975.  (When the war ended in American humiliation.)  I covered the issue in Another “deja vu all over again?”  That post – from November 2016 – noted that the charge of Nixon’s “treason” is backed by sources including the 2012 book The Presidents Club, and by conservative columnist George Will.  (See George Will Confirms Nixon’s Vietnam Treason.)

So here are the points of order, Mr. Buchanan:

First, Lyndon Johnson inherited the war in Vietnam from past presidents including – but not limited to – Dwight D. Eisenhower.  And he could have ended it in 1968, but for Nixon’s treason.

And about Harry Truman “getting us into the Korean War:”  The facts – Mr. Buchanan – are that the (North) Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea at dawn on June 25, 1950.  The Truman Administration hesitated to respond at first.  They weren’t sure whether the invasion “was a ploy by the Soviet Union or just a test of U.S. resolve.”

Only after he’d gotten a secret communique “indicating the Soviet Union would not move against U.S. forces in Korea” did Truman next move to the United Nations.

The United Nations Security Council then unanimously condemned the North Korean invasion “with UN Security Council Resolution 82.”  At the time, the Soviet Union could have vetoed both the resolution and the use of UN forces to fight back against the invasion.  (The only reason they didn’t veto the resolution was because they had boycotted the proceedings.) 

In turn, whether Truman would have sent U.S. troops to Korea unilaterally is problematic.  But few reasonable people would say that Truman “got us into” the Korean War.  The North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese and the U.N. all had a little something to do with it too.

There is one thing we can say, with a reasonable degree of certainty.  Dwight Eisenhower never committed treason to keep a war going just to he could get elected president.

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Eisenhower speaks with men of the 101st Airborne Division, the day before D-Day…

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The upper image is courtesy of Joseph McCarthy – Wikipedia.  

Re: McCarthy’s use of the term “point of order.”  See also Point of Order (film) – Wikipedia, about the “1964 documentary film by Emile de Antonio, about the Senate Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954.”

 Re “1975,” and the Vietnam war ending in American humiliation:  The caption of the photo to the right of the paragraph reads:  “A VNAF UH-1H Huey loaded with Vietnamese evacuees on the deck of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Midway during Operation Frequent Wind, 29 April 1975.”

Re:  “President’s Club.”  The full title: The Presidents Club:  Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy.  The quotes from the book are from the “October Surprise” section, from page 236 to 249, about Nixon committing treason to get elected.

Another point?  LBJ couldn’t have won the election anyway.  On March 31, 1968 – seven months before the election – he had already withdrawn from the race:  “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”  And re:  Harry Truman, as compared to Lyndon Johnson’s – “I shall not seek” – bowing out of the 1968 presidential election.  The search-engine phrase “why didn’t truman run in 1952” indicates that technically he could have run, but had already served nearly two eight-year terms.  That is, he took office on April 12, 1945, with the death of President Roosevelt.  (In other words, 82 days into what would have been Roosevelt’s fourth four-year term.)  The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution – limiting presidents to two terms – made an exception for Truman, but at the time his approval rating stood at 22%.  See e.g. Why didn’t Truman run for re-election in 1952 – Answers.com, and/or Truman Does Not Run for Re-Election, Eisenhower Elected.  Thus as to the wording of the phrase “both lost their presidencies,” I must say, “Well played, Mr. Buchanan!” 

The lower image is courtesy of Dwight D. Eisenhower – Wikipedia.  The full caption:  “Eisenhower speaks with men of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division, on June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.”