From the Archives: Obama’s announcement prompts question, Is gay marriage a ‘new right’?

Obama’s announcement prompts question, Is gay marriage a ‘new right’?
May 9, 2012 4:02 PM MST

With President Barack Obama’s surprise announcement today that he supports the rights of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed, political pundits are debating whether this was a calculated move designed to help the president’s re-election bid, or whether it will help presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, instead.

Obama’s statement came on the heels of North Carolina voters decisively adding a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage and civil unions in that state. The president said, perhaps with that news in mind, that he thinks legalizing gay marriage should be decided on a state-by-state basis, without intervention from the federal government – or, presumably, through judicial decisions by the courts.

Some opponents of same-sex marriage assert that the Founders, in drawing up the Constitution, did not intend its protections to include gay individuals who wish to marry each other.

‘Life, liberty, or property’

Since the Fourteenth Amendment is usually cited by those who believe the Constitution does, in fact, protect a right to same-sex marriage (“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”), opponents of gay marriage argue that the post-Civil War amendments were intended only to extend constitutional protections on the basis of race and that their authors would not have also extended those protections on the basis of sexual orientation.

To be fair, there are also people who favor extending equal marriage rights to all citizens but who argue that this should be done legislatively, because, they say, courts should not be creating new rights not present in the language of the Constitution or the minds of its authors.

Since the “new rights” meme is so common, it may be useful to consult a different analogy (unrelated to race) to reveal why this objection is logically flawed.

The argument of the opponents of same-sex marriage is that it is an entirely new concept and therefore courts should not extend the right of marriage to gay people.

‘Not a new concept’
Yet “marriage” is not a new concept, and it may be engaged in legally by most, but not all, people who desire opposite-sex marriages.

In every state except Mississippi and Nebraska, any adult from the age of 18 may wed another person without parental permission. (In Mississippi, the legal age to freely marry is 21; in Nebraska, it is 19.) In many of the states, the marriageable age was once 21 but has been changed to 18.

In all these states, the legal age of majority is 18 – people who have reached that age can enter into contracts, buy and sell goods and services, own a home, join the military, pay taxes, vote in elections and – in some cases – serve in elective public office, including the state legislature.

If someone in Mississippi sued for the right to marry at the age of 18 or 19, it would not be unreasonable for a court to rule that the current prohibition on marriage there before the age of 21 is unconstitutional, because it deprives that person of a liberty (to marry) guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nobody would argue that that court was creating a “new,” previously non-existent right. It would simply be expanding the pool of otherwise eligible adult citizens who can enjoy that right.

That is because, for virtually every other person in the country older than 18 years of age, marriage is legal and available to them.

‘Extending a right’
The point is that judges who recognize the right of gay couples to marry are not creating a “new right.” Rather, they are extending a right that is already recognized for all other adults.

“Marriage” is legal for all adults, except those who are gay or lesbian. To recognize that being gay or lesbian is no impediment to marriage is no more creating a “new right” than to say that 18-year-old adult citizens of Mississippi should be able to marry today rather than wait three years.

There may be compelling arguments, on policy grounds, to continue to prohibit gay marriage. Seven states, the District of Columbia, Canada, several European countries, and South Africa (among other governments) have rejected those arguments, if they exist.

But one argument that does not stand up to scrutiny is that same-sex marriage is a “judge-created right.” With President Obama’s return to a position he first held in 1996, the political debate over the rights of gay citizens to marry takes a new direction.


Publisher's note: This article is part of a series to mark June as Gay Pride Month. It was originally published on Examiner.com on May 9, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: JFK was 'cautious, conservative' says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato

Publisher's note: Today would have been the 100th birthday of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

This article is drawn from my Examiner.com archives. It was originally published on Examiner.com on October 15, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

JFK was 'cautious, conservative' says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato
October 15, 2013 1:37 AM MST

On the eve of a press conference announcing new scientific evidence related to John F. Kennedy's assassination, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia moderated a panel discussion about November 22, 1963, featuring three witnesses to the event and two authors of books on the topic.

The UVA Center for Politics hosted “The Kennedy Half Century” in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom on October 14, and Sabato hinted that the revelation the next morning at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., will be related to the acoustic evidence of the gunshots in Dealey Plaza.

The panelists were Wesley Buell Frazier, a co-worker of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Book Depository; Sid Davis, a journalist for Westinghouse Broadcasting at the time who rode in the presidential motorcade's press bus; James C. Bowles, then a communications supervisor for the Dallas Police Department and later sheriff of Dallas County; former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, author of Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA and publisher of the web site JFKFacts.org; and Henry Hurt, author of Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

'Life after death'

After the two-hour discussion, Sabato spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about his new book, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy, which is scheduled to be published on October 15.

The book, he said, “has been a five-year project,” which he undertook in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's murder.

Although people are quite interested in the assassination and its theories and counter-theories, Sabato emphasized that “two-thirds of the book is about President Kennedy's life, presidency, and then his legacy through nine successors.”

He defined “legacy” as “a kind of life after death. Kennedy's words and deeds were so powerful that his successors of both parties have used him to accomplish their own agendas, and some of them very cleverly.”

The best, he said, was Ronald Reagan, who “used Kennedy even better than Lyndon Johnson did. Johnson distorted the Kennedy legacy, certainly by the middle of his full term.”

Sabato said his aim in the book was “to focus more on President Kennedy's life than on his death” but he recognizes that “you can't understand the legacy until you understand the assassination because it created so much of the Kennedy myth.”

Lincoln's legacy

By way of illustration, he recounted an anecdote he discovered that “stunned” him when he came across it.

One day, Kennedy had invited a Lincoln scholar to the White House to give a lecture. He asked the historian, after the speech, whether Lincoln would be so highly regarded had he not been assassinated.

“The historian immediately answered, 'of course not' because he would have had to deal with the nitty-gritty of Reconstruction, he wouldn't have had the martyrdom conferred by assassination, and several other reasons,” Sabato explained, reporting that “Kennedy said, 'Exactly what I thought' and apparently made a comment to Jackie later on, 'well, if I'm going to die, this would be a good time.' That was shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The same principle that affected Lincoln's legacy “applies to Kennedy,” said Sabato.

'So many women'

“Had he actually faced the challenges of the sixties, had he lived through two full terms, for one thing, his marital infidelity could have come out. There were so many women, it's amazing that it didn't come out during his short presidency. All kinds of things could have happened.”

By Sabato's estimation, Kennedy would not “be nearly as highly regarded,” in part because “presidencies tend to deteriorate in the last two or three years of an eight-year term.” Kennedy, he said, “never had to face that and he died at a peak moment of American power, economically and militarily.”

Kennedy also would not have achieved as much of the domestic agenda that was completed by Lyndon Johnson, he said.

Although Kennedy would have beaten Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, Sabato surmised it would have been by a narrower margin than Johnson's eventual victory – “55-45 instead of 61-38.”

The difference, he pointed out, was that “Kennedy was much more cautious than Johnson by nature. He would have stopped at the Civil Rights Act. I don't think he really would have pushed for the Voting Rights Act or the Open Housing Act unless he were forced to” do so.

'Budget hawk'

As Sabato did research for his book, including interviews with people who worked in Kennedy's administration, what struck him was “just how cautious he was. He was fiscally cautious. The only reason he was worried about his across-the-board tax cut was because it would increase the deficit. He was a budget hawk in a lot of ways.”

On foreign policy, too, he was “a hawk.”

That was why Reagan cited Kennedy so often, Sabato said: “Because he could adapt that rhetoric to his fight against the Evil Empire.”

He recalled that JFK had criticized the Eisenhower administration for a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union that turned out to be non-existent, “which he later admitted after the election. He was the hawk” in comparison to 1960 rival Richard Nixon.

John F. Kennedy, Sabato concluded, “was a very different kind of Democrat. People have forgotten it. They've mixed him up with Bobby in the later years and then Teddy's career. Jack Kennedy was the moderate, or moderate-conservative, in the family.”

In the same interview, Larry Sabato commented on the current gubernatorial race in Virginia and candidates Ken Cuccinelli (R), Terry McAuliffe (D), and Libertarian Robert Sarvis.

Bill Clinton Came to Charlottesville

Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton

About one thousand supporters of gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe gathered at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville to see and hear former U.S. President Bill Clinton deliver a get-out-the-vote pep talk on behalf of his friend and former fundraiser.

While Clinton was the big draw, the program also included speeches by Democratic Party of Virginia chair Charniele Herring, House Minority Leader (and 57th District Delegate) David Toscano, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Ralph Northam, former Fifth District Congressman Tom Perriello, and former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann.

Here are pictures (on Examiner.com).

Here's the video:

More coverage from Aaron Richardson in the Daily Progress, NBC29, the Newsplex and Steve Szkotak of the AP (via Washington Post).

McAuliffe faces two opponents in the election for Virginia governor on November 5: Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis.

Bill Clinton Coming to Charlottesville

Paramount Theatre, Charlottesville

After noting Hillary Rodham Clinton's birthday yesterday, I was reminded that her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, will be in Charlottesville this week.

Clinton will take part in a campaign rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe at the Paramount Theatre on the downtown mall. 

The campaign stop is part of a series this week that included events in Dale City, Hampton, and Richmond earlier today, as well as events in Blacksburg, Herndon, and Norfolk and on Monday; Harrisonburg on Tuesday; and Roanoke as well as Charlottesville on Wednesday.

The Charlottesville event is scheduled for 10:45 a.m., with doors to the venue opening at 9:30 a.m.   Tickets have been made available on line and at local Democratic party headquarters on a "first-come, first-served" basis and NBC29 reports tonight that tickets are still available.

Washington Post reporters Ben Pershing and Laura Vozzella write that the Clinton-McAuliffe campaign tour serves a dual purpose:

Boosting turnout to put McAuliffe in the governor’s mansion is only part of the agenda for the longtime friends and political allies. The other is to hold up Clinton’s presidency, particularly his focus on creating jobs and reaching across the aisle, as a model for what McAuliffe hopes to accomplish as governor.

McAuliffe has stopped in Charlottesville several times while campaigning this year, including a visit to Piedmont Virginia Community College on May 6 as part of the official kick-off for his bid for governor.

In the election on November 5, McAuliffe faces two opponents: Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Libertarian nominee Robert Sarvis. Polls will be open that day from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Gerald Ford's Views on a Hillary Clinton Presidential Run

Hillary Clinton at the 1996 Democratic National Convention

Today is former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's 66th birthday. In 2016, she will be 69 years old, the same age that Ronald Reagan was when he became the nation's oldest elected president. Still, Clinton -- also a former senator from New York and First Lady during the two terms of Bill Clinton -- is widely seen as a likely presidential candidate to succeed Barack Obama.

Clinton is not the only potential Democratic candidate for 2016. Vice President Joe Biden has made known his desire to run for his current boss's job. Others whose names have been suggested are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

I was intrigued, while recently reading a book about former President Gerald Ford, to find out that Ford had some strong opinions about Hillary Clinton as a potential president and presidential candidate.

In Thomas M. DeFrank's 2007 book, Write It When I'm Gone, Ford was unusually candid. The premise of the book is that, over a series of interviews conducted in Ford's post-presidency (mostly in the 1990s but also as recently as a year before his death), DeFrank wrote down Ford's thoughts about politics, policy, and personalities with the understanding that nothing from the interviews would be published until after he died.

Ford did not meet either of the Clintons until after Bill's inauguration in 1992, but he admired Hillary (somewhat begrudgingly) and predicted she could be the Democrats' presidential nominee in 2004 or 2008. (Ford did not have the prescience to see the formidable challenge HRC would face in Barack Obama. At Ford's death in December 2006, Obama was barely on the national radar screen, much less Ford's own.)

Over three pages of Write It When I'm Gone (pp. 149-152), DeFrank recounts several conversations with the former president about his assessment of the then-First Lady:

... he and Hillary were polar opposites ideologically, and he wasn't sure she would be a particularly appealing candidate if she ever ran for the White House.

But those first encounters [at the Fords' Colorado vacation home] convinced him she had the emotional toughness for the job:

"I learned this: she's stronger and tougher than he is," he told me in 1994. "When she takes a point, you're gonna have to be damn sure you're well informed, because she won't compromise as quickly or as easily as he. She's very bright, she's strong, and I think he defers to her. When she gets her dander up, she ain't gonna roll over."

When Clinton ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, Ford thought it was a cynical move to give her a stepping-stone to the presidency, but he also thought it would backfire on her. "Truth is," he told DeFrank, "that's a handicap to her."

Nonetheless, Ford still foresaw a White House run in Hillary's future:

"The Republicans will make a mistake if they think she is gonna be a pushover. She is a tough, knowledgeable,articulate lady. On the other hand, her toughness in the political arena may not be a big asset. She obviously wants to stay in the political spotlight."

By 2002, he was certain Hillary had already decided to make a presidential bid:

"I'll make this prediction, as long as this is off the record. I'll gar-antee [sic] you, either in 2004 or 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be a candidate for president. [And] I wouldn't rule out Hillary in 2004, I really wouldn't."

Obviously, Ford was wrong about 2004 but he was right about 2008 -- 2016 was beyond the scope of his predictions in 2002, of course.

DeFrank reported further:

Asked if Hillary would be formidable, he replied that her nomination by the Democrats was a foregone conclusion: "Hillary is gonna be on the ticket in '04 or '08, one or the other, and you can write that down."

Why was he so sure Hillary was running?

"Because she has unlimited ambition. When you look at her record, she's a bona fide liberal with unlimited ambition.

"You look at her track record. She went to Arkansas and married Clinton because she saw in him a way to get national recognition 'cause she thought from the beginning he would be a candidate for president and she would get to be president. There's nothing in her track record, Tom, which shows any [inclination] to stay in the background."

I have to wonder whether Ford heard that joke making the rounds in the 1990s, which went something like this:

Bill and Hillary were driving in the countryside when they stopped for gas. The gas station attendant smiled and said, "Hello, Hillary, it's been a long time."

Curious, Bill asked her who he was.

"Oh, that's an old boyfriend of mine. We were once engaged to be married."

Bill chuckled and said, "Isn't that interesting! If you had married him, you'd be the wife of a gas-station attendant."

"No, Bill," Hillary said. "If I had married him, he would be President of the United States."

In any case, DeFrank also noted Ford's doubts about Hillary's electability as a presidential candidate.

... he thought she'd have trouble getting elected because of all the personal and political baggage she'd be toting.

"It depends on the public sentiment in the years out [at the time]. Of course, she's very vulnerable -- she was the mastermind of that terrible health care program which she tried to sell. So that would always be a liability for her."

(After 20 years, would Hillarycare be more popular than Obamacare?)

Later in the book (p. 252), DeFrank recounts a 2006 interview in which he and Ford discussed the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign.

His Republican favorite was still Rudy Giuliani. "I think Giuliani is an electrifying guy. He's a great speaker. He's had a good record of winning in New York City, and he can be tough."

Ever the political junkie, the House minority leader who used to travel 250 days a year boosting Republicans said he was relishing a head-to-head confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Rudy. For years he'd been telling me Hillary was consumed by ambition, was intent on running in 2004 or 2008, and that despite her political baggage -- and her husbands -- would make "a darned good candidate."

"That would be a great contest between Hillary and Giuliani." He wasn't sure who would win -- it would depend on what else was happening in the country -- but he thought Giuliani had the edge.

"What else was happening in the country" turned out to be the operative phrase in that speculative paragraph.

It happens that I was present at the 2006 presentation of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes at the National Press Club, where Thomas DeFrank was one of the recipients. That turned out to be the first time that Ford himself was not able to attend the event, because of his poor health. Dick Cheney, then vice president and much earlier White House chief of staff in the Ford administration, was the principal speaker at that ceremony.

Spiro Agnew Resigned as Vice President 40 Years Ago Today

Another piece from the archives, marking the 40th anniversary of Spiro T. Agnew's resignation as vice president on October 10, 1973. Agnew left office under a cloud in the midst of the unfolding Watergate scandal, leading to the first use of the 26th Amendment procedures for selection of a vice president by Congress to fill a vacancy in that office. (Previous vacancies had gone unfilled throughout the rest of the presidential term.)

This article appeared in The Metro Herald in September 1996 as "Spiro Agnew: Up from the Memory Hole?" It was written on the occasion of Agnew's death on September 17, 1996.

- - -

Early in 1973, a Sunday "Doonesbury" comic strip by Garry Trudeau showed eight panels of the south portico of the White House. Phones are ringing; suddenly a recording answers: "Good morning! This is the White House. We are sorry but all our lines are busy right now. Please hold on. A service representative will be with you in a moment." There is a beep and a pause, followed by: "Good morning. Thank you for calling the White House. May I help you?" "... Ah ... yes," says the caller. "I'm trying to reach Mr. Agnew." Comes the reply: "Speaking."

To many people, this is the predominant image of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who died late Tuesday evening [September 17, 1996] at the age of 77. In the swirl of controversy that defined the Nixon White House -- Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy Crisis -- Agnew was a but a blur, a minor player relegated to the lower levels of the administration; indeed, he was little more than a messenger or telephone operator.

Plucked from obscurity on [August] 8, 1968, by Republican presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon to be his running mate, Spiro Agnew had served as Baltimore County Executive and Maryland's Governor. Though some may claim he remained obscure throughout his truncated tenure as Vice President, the fact is that President Nixon assigned him major duties in both the domestic and foreign policy realms. Those who do remember him recall his lurid turns-of-phrase in his role as the administration's political attack dog.

"Nattering nabobs of negativism" was how Agnew characterized the press in one memorable speech in 1969. Spoken by Agnew, that phrase is ascribed to speechwriter Patrick Buchanan. (Is it necessary to ask, "Whatever happened to him?")

Spiro T. Agnew as Maryland governor

A year later, during the midterm election campaign, Agnew spewed forth against the administration's liberal opponents, saying that "ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order."

Agnew did not limit his criticism to Democrats, either. During that year's campaign season, he turned his sights on New York Senator Charles Goodell, who as a "Rockefeller Republican" was fairly liberal in his voting record. Goodell was in a tight three-way race that included Conservative candidate James Buckley. Nixon was upset by Goodell's attitude toward the administration's Vietnam policy, and wanted to undercut his re-election efforts in an attempt to favor Buckley.

So Agnew was sent out on the attack. At a meeting of newspaper editors in New Orleans, Agnew suggested that Goodell's most recent statements about Vietnam were wildly inconsistent with the statements and votes he had made as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. By comparing his earlier and later statements, Agnew said, "you will find Goodell is truly the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party." (Jorgensen, in the 1950s, became the first person to have a successful sex-change operation.) Ms. Jorgensen, by the way, was not pleased at the comparison and objected to being used by Agnew as a "political pawn." (Goodell, by the way, lost his race to Buckley, who lost in turn to Daniel Patrick Moynihan six years later.)

Nonetheless, Agnew's role in the Nixon administration was more than just fodder for the media. Behind the scenes he performed important tasks. Henry Kissinger notes in his memoirs, for instance, that Agnew was one of the administration's point-men in the negotiations to end the Vietnam War, and during the drawn-out bargaining of late 1972 was always on stand-by, ready to fly to Paris to sign a peace treaty on the President's behalf.

Agnew's downfall, of course, was petty political corruption. I remember clearly the night of October 10, 1973, when Agnew resigned the vice presidency. My high school classmates and I learned a new Latin phrase: "nolo contendere" (no contest), the plea entered by Agnew that was short of an admission of guilt but still earned him punishment for accepting bribes (and failing to pay taxes on his bribery income) while he served, not only as Governor of Maryland, but as Vice President.

Strangely enough, Agnew treated his graft practices with an eerie sort of lightheartedness. One of the contractors who had delivered thousands of dollars in bribes to Agnew was being pressured to give money to the Nixon re-election campaign in 1972. After hearing his complaint, Agnew said to the man: "Tell them you gave at the office."

Agnew resigned; Nixon appointed Gerald R. Ford to succeed him. When Nixon himself resigned just 10 months later, Ford became "the accidental president." Had Agnew forestalled his own troubles for less than a year, he too could have been president -- and perhaps the second U.S. chief executive to resign in disgrace. What an ironic twist to history that would have been.

Calvin Coolidge and civility

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on June 20, 2013.)

One day in 1905, while running for the school committee in Northampton, Massachusetts, future U.S. President Calvin Coolidge ran into his opponent on the street. Biographer Amity Shlaes relates the story like this:

The school committee campaign, she said,

would be a tight race: his Democratic opponent, John J. Kennedy, was someone he liked. "Calvin, I think I've got you beaten," teased Kennedy when they met. "Either way, they'll get a good man," Coolidge shot back. There was no point, he was learning, in making enemies.....

Within weeks, he did lose to Kennedy, albeit by less than a hundred votes. That was all right. A neighbor told him he had voted for Kennedy for the school post because Kennedy, at least, had children. Coolidge [then a newlywed] came back with good humor: "Might give me time."

That turned out to be the only election Calvin Coolidge lost as he made his way through the state legislature, lieutenant governor, governor, vice president, and president.

The anecdote about Coolidge and Kennedy struck me as so out of sorts with our own political times that I asked Shlaes about it when I interviewed her at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March. What did that story say about civility in politics?

"That's the most important thing," she replied, "and I hope you write about that."

Coolidge, she explained, "was so civil."

Right now, with this book, a lot of people are trying to get me to attack other people. I don't want to attack people. We all should respect each other. One would hope all of us would hope to be like Coolidge and be fair to one another. He won without attacking and that's interesting. Coolidge won more than a dozen times but he was running for election every single year. In Massachusetts at that time, you had to run for governor [and virtually every elective office] every year.

... they had to run for office so often, that would be another way of testing their probity, wouldn't it? They got inspected by the customer -- the voter -- more often than we do [every] four years or something, right?

[Coolidge] just said, be civil, it'll pay off. It's in his autobiography, as well... He had a wicked tongue but it didn't behoove him to use it. He had a lot of kindness in his heart for all his opponents.

One could write off Coolidge's kindnesses for his opponents as mere political posing. Yet the encounter with John Kennedy was a private one; Coolidge had no points to score. He was genuinely amiable and civil with his rival, and he genuinely believed Kennedy could do just as a good a job on the school board as Coolidge could himself.

There are many adjectives used to describe Calvin Coolidge -- parsimonious, reticent, reflective -- but "obsequious" is not among them.

Twenty-first century Americans have a lot to learn from Coolidge and his era, which was just as rambunctious politically as our own, with real lines drawn on policies of public importance.

During the 1920s, there was a robust debate about the proper size and scope of government and another on the role of the United States in international affairs in the wake of the Great War. Policy differences were stark.

Yet Republicans and Democrats (and even Progressives) were able to discuss the issues of the day without devolving into the sort of tribalism we find ourselves in today. They may have had profound disagreements but nevertheless were able to conduct public business without demonizing each other.

As I said in the Richmond Times-Dispatch a few years ago, we could use a dose of Coolidge today.

116 Members of Congress Insist POTUS Get Approval Before Bombing Syria

U.S. Representative Scott Rigell (R-VA2)

Led by Representative Scott Rigell (R-Virginia), 116 Members of Congress (98 Republicans and 18 Democrats) have sent a letter to President Barack Obama insisting that he seek and receive congressional authorization before going to war in Syria.

The list of signatories includes several other Virginia congressmen (Randy Forbes, Morgan Griffith, Robert Hurt, Robert Wittman, and Frank Wolf, in addition to Rigell). Also prominent among the signers are libertarian-leaning Republicans Justin Amash of Michigan, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Raul Labrador of Idaho, as well as Democrats Zoe Lofgren (California), Peter DeFazio (Oregon), Rush Holt (New Jersey), and Jim McDermott (Washington).

The text of the letter, addressed directly to the President, says:

We strongly urge you to consult and receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Your responsibility to do so is prescribed in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate – and the active engagement of Congress – prior to committing U.S. military assets. Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.

Mr. President, in the case of military operations in Libya you stated that authorization from Congress was not required because our military was not engaged in “hostilities.” In addition, an April 1, 2011, memorandum to you from your Office of Legal Counsel concluded:

“…President Obama could rely on his constitutional power to safeguard the national interest by directing the anticipated military operations in Libya—which were limited in their nature, scope, and duration—without prior congressional authorization.”

We view the precedent this opinion sets, where “national interest” is enough to engage in hostilities without congressional authorization, as unconstitutional. If the use of 221 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 704 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and 42 Predator Hellfire missiles expended in Libya does not constitute “hostilities,” what does?

If you deem that military action in Syria is necessary, Congress can reconvene at your request. We stand ready to come back into session, consider the facts before us, and share the burden of decisions made regarding U.S. involvement in the quickly escalating Syrian conflict.

Over the decades, Congress slowly ceded to the Executive Branch its constitutional authority for deciding when and if the United States. With the emergence of a more constitutionally-minded faction (including, but not limited to, libertarians like Rand Paul and Justin Amash), Members of Congress are beginning to reassert their rightful authority against usurpations by the White House.

Rigell's letter is not legislation that limits presidential action putting U.S. interests and service members at risk, but it's nonetheless a positive step forward.

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'America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge' Revisited

Three years ago today, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an opinion piece I wrote and headlined it "America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge."

Somehow that entire day's newspaper failed to be preserved on the Times-Dispatch web site. (Try it: you'll get a 404.)

A few paragraphs of the article made their way into a blog post later that day, but the whole thing has been unavailable (except in print, or perhaps on microfilm) since July 4, 2010.

I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit "America Could Use a Good Dose of Calvin Coolidge" today, given the Coolidge revival that I reference in a piece I published on Examiner.com early this morning.

In that piece, based upon an interview with the Heritage Foundation's director of American studies, Matthew Spalding, I note that a number of scholars have lately begun focusing their research and writing on the man from Plymouth Notch, Vermont:

Several books on Coolidge have been published recently, including Amity Shlaes' best-selling biography, Coolidge; Charles C. Johnson's Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America's Most Underrated President; the National Notary Association's similarly titled Why Coolidge Matters: How Civility in Politics Can Bring a Nation Together; and Calvin Coolidge: A Documentary Biography, by David Pietrusza.

If anything, the mood of the country in 2013 makes the headline even more relevant now than it was in 2010.

So here is my Times-Dispatch op-ed piece on Calvin Coolidge, now accessible through a Google search.

Most Americans know that two of our country’s Founders – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – died within hours of each other on the Fourth of July in 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence.

Fewer might be aware that, five years later, the fifth President, James Monroe, also passed away on the same date.

Fewer still know that Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President, was born on the Fourth of July in 1872.

The much underrated Coolidge is a unique American success story. First elected to public office as a member of the city council of Northhampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge climbed the ladder of government service to clerk of courts, state representative, mayor, state senator, lieutenant governor, governor, vice president, and President of the United States. No other president, before or since, has had such an extensive and varied career in elective office.

In his 2008 book, The Cult of the Presidency, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy wrote that Coolidge is remembered “mostly for his reticence and for fiscal policies that combined Yankee parsimony with generous tax cuts.”

That “Yankee parsimony” is on display in a short film that is thought to be the first time a U.S. president appeared in a “talkie” – a movie with sound. In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to “cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.”

“Liberty” is a theme that appears again and again in Coolidge’s speeches and essays. In 1924, Coolidge published a volume of his writings, called The Price of Freedom. For a man known as “Silent Cal,” Coolidge was unexpectedly loquacious and sage.

In his short (437-word) inaugural address as vice president, Coolidge, referring to the responsibilities of the United States Senate, said that body’s “greatest function of all, too little mentioned and too little understood … is the preservation of liberty. Not merely the rights of the majority, they little need protection, but the rights of the minority, from whatever source they may be assailed.”

Coolidge took his oath of office seriously. He believed that, under the Constitution, the authority and reach of the federal government were severely limited and that the rights of the people were expansive. And he ran a tight ship: The entire White House staff under Coolidge consisted of fewer than 40 people; the Obama White House has more than 60 working in the press office alone.

Addressing the American Bar Association in 1922, Coolidge remarked:

“So long as the National Government confined itself to providing those fundamentals of liberty, order, and justice for which it was primarily established, its course was reasonably clear and plain. No large amount of revenue was required. No great swarms of public employees were necessary. There was little clash of special interests or different sections, and what there was of this nature consisted not of petty details but of broad principles... What the government undertook to do it could perform with a fair degree of accuracy and precision.”

Then came the big “but”, as Coolidge lamented the growing size and scope of government in the previous two decades:

“But this has all been changed by embarking on a policy of a general exercise of police powers, by the public control of much private enterprise and private conduct, and of furnishing a public supply for much private need.”

After 88 years, these words could have been written yesterday.

Perhaps being “born on the Fourth of July” imbued Coolidge with a predilection to take the Founders at their word when they said they were creating a republican government of limited and specified powers. Perhaps his views simply reflected his sober, thrifty New England upbringing. Perhaps he was just unusually intelligent.

Whatever the case, we could use a solid dose of “Silent Cal” in the 21st century.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere is the author of Sowing the Seeds of Free Enterprise and The Politics of Sentiment. He blogs about politics and culture at www.RickSincere.com.

For further reference, check out my report on Amity Shlaes' lecture at the Heritage Foundation in February; my audio interview with her at CPAC; and my Virginia Politics on Demand post on Coolidge and civility.

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March 23, 1983 - Ronald Reagan Launches the Strategic Defense Initiative

It is hard to believe it has been three decades since President Ronald Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative, which quickly earned the dismissive sobriquet "Star Wars" (after the George Lucas films of the same name).

Reagan's introduction was modest and unexpected, coming at the end of a televised address to the nation on the general theme of national security and the defense budget then being considered by Congress.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (or SDI) was not without precedent, however. Winston Churchill had called for defensive weapons systems as early as the 1930s, in the run-up to World War II. One result of the strategic defense debate and subsequent research in that era was radar, which probably saved Britain from total destruction by the Luftwaffe.

There had also been talk about strategic defense from the beginning of the Atomic Age, with pro- and anti- sides alternating pre-eminence from time to time.

In the 1960s, defensive strategic systems were debated and set aside as destabilizing to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). As I wrote in the 1986 book, Promise or Peril: The Strategic Defense Initiative (coedited with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Marin Strmecki, and Peter Wehner) U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara

also rejected a U.S. strategic defense system because it would be easily countered by Moscow. The Soviet Union would be forced to respond with an offensive buildup, which would mean that "the risk of a Soviet nuclear attack would not be further decreased" and, if deterrence failed, "the damage to the United States from a Soviet nuclear attack would not be reduced in any meaningful sense."

To those following strategic issues in the early 1980s, the substance of Reagan's "Star Wars speech" was not so surprising, even if the timing of it was. Reagan himself was urged by Edward Teller, known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb," to promote and initiate defensive systems as part of the overall U.S. national security strategy. Retired General Daniel O. Graham had been pushing a concept he called "High Frontier," which used off-the-shelf, kinetic technology to knock incoming missiles out of the sky.

In summarizing and introducing an excerpt from Reagan's SDI speech in Promise or Peril, I wrote:

With President Reagan's address to the nation on March 23, 1983, the Strategic Defense Initiative became the focus of the U.S. debate over strategic policy. Although much of the speech was devoted to resisting uts in his defense budget, in his conclusion the President offered an alternative to traditional U.S. nuclear strategy. "Wouldn't it be better to save lives than to avenge them?" he asked. Although "deterrence of aggression through the promise of retaliation" had worked well, Reagan rejected the idea of indefinitely basing U.S. policy on the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.

In calling for this shift, he advocated, not simply a limited defense of U.S. strategic forces, but a total population defense so that "free people could live secure in the knowledge that ... we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies." The President challenged the scientific community, "those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

The rhetoric of Reagan's speech echoes that of Winston Churchill ... during the British air defense debate of the 1930s.

Thirty years on, for both his domestic and foreign policies, Ronald Reagan is remembered by local Republican parties through annual celebratory dinners. The next one coming up in Virginia is in Charlottesville on April 7, just two weeks after the anniversary of what is known not just derisively but also affectionately as the "Star Wars speech."

Finding the Praiseworthy in Warren Harding

In last Saturday's print edition of the Washington Post, an op-ed column by conservative commentator Michael Gerson offered a critique of President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

One paragraph, in particular, caught my eye:

Washington Post, print edition, September 12, 2012

Obama made almost no mention of the continuing jobs crisis. He offered nothing new or creative on a fiscal and debt crisis that undermines economic confidence. Much of Obama’s agenda — lowering tuition costs, recruiting math and science teachers, “long-lasting batteries” — sounded like a seventh-year State of the Union address, a collection of policy leavings and leftovers. One of Obama’s more ardent defenders called this a “return to normalcy after a long period of emergency.” And so Obama has gone in four years from being compared to Abraham Lincoln to carrying forward the legacy of Warren Harding.

It was the dig at President Harding that ruffled my feathers a bit, because I have over the last few months become familiar with the work of historians and economists who have been trying to rehabilitate Harding's reputation.

I specifically remembered an article from The Freeman by Burton W. Folsom with the title, "The Strange Presidency of Warren G. Harding," which begins:

Who is the worst president in U.S. history? The answer is Warren G. Harding if you believe most presidential polls. For example, in the prestigious Arthur Schlesinger poll, conducted in 1948, 1962, and 1996, the participating historians ranked Harding each time as the worst U.S. president ever.

Should we trust the judgment of these historians? No, we should not. Actually, Harding was often a successful president, and his actions helped trigger a decade of prosperity for America.

I also recalled seeing an opinion column by Amity Schlaes (which I can't seem to dig up today), similar to one she co-wrote with Ryan Cole for National Review called "Reassessing Warren G. Harding."

With a few statistics in mind, I left the newspaper lying on the floor and rushed to my keyboard to write a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, which the editors accepted and published on line earlier this evening, intended for tomorrow's print editions.

The Post headlined the letter "Mr. Obama could do worse than follow Warren Harding’s lead" and it reads in part:

Harding was elected during the “panic” (depression) of 1920, when unemployment grew from 4 percent to 11.7 percent, the gross domestic product fell by 24 percent, and the production of goods and services dropped by 21 percent...

Under Harding’s leadership, federal spending was cut in half by 1922 and, unlike Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama, he did not seek nor implement a stimulus policy. With these policies in place, the post-World War I depression ended by the summer of 1921. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent in 1922 and then to an astonishing 2.4 percent in 1923...

Consider this as a small contribution to the effort to renew interest in the presidents of the 1920s, including my previous column on Calvin Coolidge.

Update:  The Post published a letter in response to mine under the headline, "Giving Warren Harding undue credit." It was written by Richard S. Smith of Triangle, Virginia, who is otherwise unidentified, although a little digging came up with FEC documents showing that someone with that name in that town gave $2,500 to the Democratic National Committee in 2010.  The response was published on September 18, 2012.

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Marking Independence Day with John Quincy Adams and Ronald Reagan

At the Reagan Library

Twenty-six years ago, during the twin celebrations of Independence Day and the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty on the occasion of its centenary, President Ronald Reagan made a series of speeches about American history and American values.

On Saturday, July 5, 1986, in his pre-recorded weekly radio address, President Reagan mentioned two issues -- immigration and taxes -- that remain salient today (and one name that he probably could not have predicted would still be in the news nearly three decades later):

The immigrant story has been repeated millions of times, stories such as that of one man who passed through Ellis Island years ago. A 15-year-old Italian immigrant who spoke not a word of English. Little did he imagine that his son, Antonin Scalia, would be appointed to the highest court in the land, there to uphold and protect our Constitution, the guardian of all our freedoms. Just one of many stories that shows us that every time we swear in a new citizen, America is rededicating herself to the cause of human liberty.

In these last couple of weeks we have rededicated ourselves to liberty in other important ways, too. Recently, the Congress has passed two landmark pieces of legislation that I'm sure put a smile on the face of our Statue of Liberty. The first was our historic effort to reform our nation's tax code, to make it simpler and fairer, to bring tax rates down, and to give families a long-overdue break. Throughout human history, taxes have been one of the foremost ways that governments intrude on the rights of citizens. In fact, as we all learned in school, our democratic American Revolution began with a tax revolt. Our forefathers knew that if you bind up a man's economic life with taxes, tariffs, and regulations, you deprive him of some of his most basic civil rights. They have a wonderful phrase describing economic liberty in the Declaration of Independence. They call it "the pursuit of happiness." Well, with tax reform, we're going to make that pursuit a lot easier for all Americans.

The night before, speaking from the deck of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy in New York Harbor on Independence Day, Reagan remembered two of his predecessors:

All through our history, our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom, the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within. It's easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once learned this lesson late in life. They'd worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. And the night before Jefferson's inauguration, Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter.

For years their estrangement lasted. But then when both had retired, Jefferson at 68 to Monticello and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. Letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject: gardening, horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups; but other subjects as well: the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course the last thoughts, the final hopes of two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply. "It carries me back," Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, "to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless . . . we rowed through the storm with heart and hand . . . ." It was their last gift to us, this lesson in brotherhood, in tolerance for each other, this insight into America's strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after that first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence.

My fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith with them and all the great Americans of our past. Believe me, if there's one impression I carry with me after the privilege of holding for 5-1/2 years the office held by Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln, it is this: that the things that unite us -- America's past of which we're so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country -- these things far outweigh what little divides us. And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. Tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.

That last sentence echoed the words of another president, John Quincy Adams, who as Secretary of State had addressed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821. (It's hard to believe today, but Congress in those days did not go home for a district work period to mark Independence Day with their constituents.)

The second President Adams took this opportunity to define America's role in the world in words that should be taken to heart today. The United States, he said,

has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

Then he added these admonitions and warnings:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

As we Americans celebrate our independence this week, we would do well to remember the words of Presidents Adams and Reagan.

(Cross-posted to Bearing Drift.)

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