Safeguarding Our Minds

This column appeared in the Laurel Leader Call on May 22, 2012:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  So said Thomas Jefferson, the architect of American liberty and its greatest champion.  Throughout his entire life, he fought every attempt by government to control the lives of the people, in thought, speech, and deed.

Today we should be just as vigilant, whether a form of tyranny originates in Washington, Jackson, or the local schoolhouse.  We must be ever mindful that state and local governments can be just as tyrannical as Washington, DC.

A Short History of Presidential Second Terms

This column was published in the Laurel Leader Call on May 15, 2012:

As Barack Obama seeks a second term in the White House, one must wonder why he would even want one.  Amazingly, almost every presidential second term has been wrought with severe problems, especially in our modern era.  And almost every chief executive seeks to go home long before the final curtain closes on his final administration.

The only exceptions to second term malaise are George Washington, who did face serious public opposition and outrage over the hated Jay Treaty in 1794, though most of the anger was directed towards John Jay, and James Monroe, whose first term was wrought with several crises – Missouri’s admission as a slave state and the Panic of 1819, but his second was relatively quiet.

We may also count Calvin Coolidge, as a second Harding-Coolidge term, where the Roaring Twenties was in full swing, and Silent Cal saw unemployment reach the unheard of level of just one percent in 1926.

As for the rest, there was no smooth sailing on the turbulent sea of statecraft.

Jeffersonian Solutions for America’s Problems

The United States faces an abundance of problems, a weak economy, an abundance of public expenditures, out of control entitlements, and an over-expansive foreign policy, to name a few. These issues are getting worse, not better, with no end in sight. In recent decades, politicians of nearly every conceivable stripe have offered solutions, all to no avail. The only real solution to America’s woes is a return to Jeffersonian principles.

Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and D.R. Francis standing on a porch circa 1903. Courtesy of the POTUS Flickr archive.

Since the days of Grover Cleveland, who ended the harsh Panic of 1893 in less than a full term in office, the federal government has used Keynesian economic theory, or intervention, to fight every economic downturn. The results have been less than spectacular. What began as a severe recession in 1929 became the “Great Depression,” the worst economic calamity in American history. Many people will be surprised to learn that the Great Depression came after the government stepped in with its bag of tricks. It did not end until the latter half of the 1940s.

After the Panic of 2008, the government bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion. In 2009, the Obama administration kicked in another $800 billion in a stimulus designed to jump-start the sagging economy. A total of $1.5 trillion in stimulus money has been apportioned. The economy is still in a state of mild depression with a net job loss during the Obama presidency.

Grover Cleveland and the Same-sex Marriage Debate: State vs. Federal Power

As a historian of American politics, I am most often asked how this or that historical figure would think about modern political issues.  Many times the answer is an easy one, but others not so much.  The issue of gay marriage would certainly fall into the latter category.

So, you might ask, how would Grover Cleveland, as President of the United States, have dealt with the issue in the late 19^th century?

The subject of same-sex marriage was certainly not on anyone’s lips in his day, nor can it be found in any letters or papers to my knowledge.  But we can ascertain Cleveland’s probable thoughts on the matter by understanding his political thought.  He was a steadfast Jeffersonian President who believed in the cardinal principles of that philosophy, two of which were the absolute will of the people and respect for the individual states.

As Thomas Jefferson had vowed in his first inaugural address in 1801, his administration would support “the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.” President Cleveland also swore, on numerous occasions, to maintain respect for the states in their independent and sovereign character.

The state governments control the process of marriage by issuing licenses and sanctioning the procedure.  Nowhere in the US Constitution is marriage mentioned, thereby making it off limits to meddling by Washington politicians.  So for Cleveland, the question should be left up to the people of the states to decide, expressing their will at the local ballot box.

And as of this writing, the people in 32 states have voted down same-sex marriage, many of them overwhelmingly so, representing every region in the country.  Where it has been put to popular vote, not one single state has accepted it.

Mississippi had the highest vote totals against the practice, with 86 percent.  Tennessee and Alabama also had vote totals over 80 percent.  That was to be expected in the Bible Belt South.  But other reliable Republican states have also voted, unsurprisingly, to forbid it, many with totals in the 60s and 70s.

Yet what has been surprising to many is the fact that the mostly Democratic states of Colorado (56 percent), Nevada (69 percent), Wisconsin (59 percent), Michigan (59 percent), and Hawaii (69 percent), overwhelmingly rejected it.  Even California, where one would think it had a fighting chance of passage, voted it down with 52 percent of the vote.

The people of the states have spoken on this issue, and the results of their suffrage should put an end to the debate.  Grover Cleveland would have wholeheartedly agreed.

Reshaping America with Jeffersonian Values

The United States began its existence as an independent nation during a pitched battle over what direction the federal government should take and which party – the Hamiltonian Federalist or the Jeffersonian Republican – would rightly carry the banner of the American Revolution. This first ideological fight took place in President Washington’s Cabinet, which found itself torn between Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. The philosophical clash that began in 1789 continues today.

Hamilton’s arguments prevailed during both the Washington and Adams administrations, but Jefferson struck back with a great victory in 1800 and stopped the Federalist onslaught. The nation was governed, for the most part, by Jeffersonian principles for the next sixty years, and, despite some historians’ beliefs to the contrary, Hamilton’s entire big government program was eventually repealed.

However with Lincoln’s election in 1860 – Old Abe being from the school of Hamiltonian thought – and the secession of the Jeffersonian South, the Republican Party re-instituted all of Hamilton’s ideas – a strong central government, a national banking system, fiat currency, high tariffs and internal taxes, direct aid to corporations, loose construction of the Constitution, and suppression of civil liberties, with little opposition.

Paternalism’s Foe: Grover Cleveland

Politicians, pundits, and scholars have wrestled over a central question throughout American political and constitutional history:  What role should the government have in the lives of ordinary citizens?

For Jeffersonian Conservatives, such as Grover Cleveland, the government has no business involving itself in areas outside its limited, constitutional role, and should never take a position as a “custodian;” the people should be free to pursue their own dreams without government interference, to rise as high and as far as their God-given talent, abilities, and determination will carry them.  Success or failure depends on the individual.

Some liberals on the other side of the political spectrum believe the government should play a vital role in the lives of the people, from cradle to grave. They believe the lowly masses cannot take care of themselves.  For Democrats, government must step in and take up the role of caretaker.  As Nancy Pelosi said in 2011:  “I view my work in politics as an extension of my role as a mom.”[i]  This progressive viewpoint is known as government paternalism, and has been defined as “a policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.”[ii]

Grover Cleveland: the Bedrock of Conservatism

Whenever friends and family find out the subject of my new book, one of the first questions I am usually asked is: “Why Grover Cleveland?” My answer: “Why not?” For Grover Cleveland, who served as both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, was one of the greatest conservative statesmen in American history, a steadfast advocate of Jeffersonian political principles, the bedrock of conservatism. The Last Jeffersonian: Grover Cleveland and the Path to Restoring the Republic is an examination of the true nature of conservative thought, exemplified by the public life of Cleveland, and a pathway to a restoration of the republic crafted by our Founding Fathers.

During my first semester of graduate school, at the University of Southern Mississippi, I became seriously interested in Grover Cleveland and his political life after reading a less than stellar biography. As I delved deeper into his policies, I soon realized that the career of this forgotten statesman offers answers to modern America’s most pressing political issues, such as the public character and behavior of our politicians, direct governmental assistance to the people, actions during an economic depression, foreign intervention, and upholding political principles. It is only with the study of history, and the solutions Cleveland provided for us, that we can solve our problems and restore the constitutional republic.

A Strong, Conservative Leader to Restore the Republic

America is at a crossroads.  The 2012 election, as well as those in the very near future, could very well determine what kind of nation we will leave for posterity.  Yet, while on our current political trajectory, America is in danger of losing the constitutional republic created by the Founding Fathers, and once lost, it might be gone forever.

My new book, The Last Jeffersonian: Grover Cleveland and the Path to Restoring the Republic, examines the true nature of conservative thought, the present direction of the nation, and the changes we must make in order to preserve our great political heritage.  Exhibit A in achieving these three goals is a study of the public career of Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22^nd and 24^th President of the United States, from 1885-1889 and from 1893-1897.

As a great public servant – mayor, governor, and president – Cleveland confronted many of the same troubles we face in our time – the public character and behavior of our candidates, the role of government in the everyday lives of the people, the burden of taxation, the distribution of wealth, government involvement in an economic depression, spending, constitutional interpretation, and complex foreign affairs.

The Choice: 1964 and 2012

This week President Barack Obama, in a tough bid for re-election warned the American people that the 2012 race for the White House would be the starkest since 1964.  So let us re-examine that famous presidential election in light of the campaign the Obama team has in store for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney:

They said he was crazy, mad, a loose-canon, an extremist, a warmonger.  The nation was warned over and over and over again, by Democrats and their friends in the media, that if Barry Goldwater won the presidency in 1964, Armageddon might be the ultimate result.  Surely he would plunge headlong into a war in Vietnam that might bring in the Chinese or worse, the Soviets.  Social Security and any aid from Washington would be taken away.  The country would revert back to the nineteenth century, if not the eighteenth.

The only logical choice was the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, who assumed the office tragically on November 22, 1963 when the beloved John F. Kennedy fell to an assassin’s bullet.  LBJ would carry the nation forward, not backward.  Progress would be the order of the day.

“Game Change”: Historical Revisionism At Its Finest

Last week, HBO, the home of the great intellectual Bill Maher, released its much-anticipated film about the 2008 presidential election, centered mainly on John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. It became clear during the course of the film that HBO’s main mission was to smear Governor Palin, brand her a stupid woman with no business on a national ticket, and blame her for McCain’s loss to Barack Obama.

It is true, McCain did need a game-changing pick for VP. He did not excite the base and without the strong rightwing of the Republican Party, his goose was more than cooked. He desperately wanted Senator Joe Liebermann, Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, which he saw as a national unity ticket of sorts, not a terrible idea in the abstract, but it would have been a political train wreck with a conservative wing deeply suspicious of him. So he went with Palin.

HBO attempted, and largely succeeded, in making Palin look like an ignoramus, something the Left enjoys doing to anyone on the Right. We are all dumb, they say, while Progressives are the smart ones, never mind the fact that they have nearly bankrupted the country. Julianne Moore does a fine job in portraying Palin as clueless, totally devoid of any intellectual firepower, a religious zealot, and a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Such an “irrational” VP nominee only hurt the ticket and Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist, played by Woody Harrelson, even apologizes to the presidential loser, depicted by Ed Harris, for suggesting her.

But let us be fair and honest (something HBO is not): Sarah Palin did not lose the 2008 presidential election; John McCain lost the 2008 presidential election, simply by being John McCain.

McCain was behind in the polls before his selection of Governor Palin, but with the aggressive pick and the nice convention bounce, he led in some polls by as much as 8 to 10 points. She energized the base like no one else could.

In late September, the opportunity to hold the lead and win fell right into the campaign’s lap, but the geniuses running McCain’s operation, as well as the nominee himself, were apparently too dumb, or shocked, to realize it. The Panic of 2008 scared Republicans nearly out of their wits. Many erroneously believed that the financial crisis would cost them control of the White House, as the nation would blame Bush and, by association, all Republicans. So they panicked and jumped on the administration’s socialistic solution to calm markets.

But they had it backwards. Coming out against the bailout would have won them the presidency.

Opposing the bailout bill would have done a number of positive things.

First, it would have endeared McCain to much of the American public, who, by more than four to one, rejected the bailout plan, a scheme rightly seen as a rich, fat cat protection act.

Second, such a move would have backed Obama and the Democrats into a corner and put them on the defensive. Liberals could not have opposed the bank bailout, nor could Obama, who had to follow the lead of Pelosi and Reid. Had McCain come out swinging against the bill and blasted it with a strong populist message, he would have surged in the polls, and left Obama in the position of trying to defend a bill that 80 percent of the people vehemently opposed.

Third, it would have given McCain authentic separation from Bush, who was a major drag on the ticket, with unpopular wars and the fiscal mismanagement of the government that had cost the party control of Congress in 2006.

Instead, McCain remained McCain and fumbled the ball on what should have been a game-winning drive. With both major candidates supporting the same plan, and McCain looking weak by offering to suspend his campaign and travel back to DC to work on the problem, many independents shifted to Obama, while some conservatives simply stayed home. With no clear-cut differences in the two nominees, why bother? I seriously considered sitting it out myself, but in the end cast my vote against Obama and for Sarah Palin.

HBO’s “Game Change” is chock full of errors and smears. There is even a scene during a McCain rally when someone from the crowd yells “Kill him,” as Obama’s name is mentioned. This is yet another lie that liberals continue to run with, and one that has been completely eviscerated. Not only has no evidence ever surfaced (which never gets in the way of a good leftwing smear), but the Secret Service even investigated the incident thoroughly and determined that no such invective was ever hurled. But that did not stop HBO from propagating a bald-faced lie.

Yet HBO succeeded in continuing the Left’s assault on Sarah Palin, with whom they have a manic obsession. Nearly four years after the election, liberals cannot get enough of Palin, and even Obama is using the former Alaska governor in re-election campaign ads.

Sarah Palin is, without question, the most slandered, battered woman in American political history. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves. Their hypocrisy is appalling. But if they think they are going to shutdown the “momma grizzly” they are sadly mistaken.