Obama vs. Taft

by William H. Benson

January 26, 2017

     Former President Barack Obama has lived and done a lot. He grew up mainly in Honolulu, but when a child, he lived in Indonesia for four years. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, but then transferred to Columbia University in New York City for his final two years.

     After college, he moved to Chicago, and worked as a community organizer in the city’s South Side. A colleague at that time observed, “Chicago is his real birth place.” It was in Chicago that he began to build a life and catch a glimpse of his potential.

     Then, in 1988, he moved to Boston to attend Harvard’s prestigious law school. After he graduated in 1991, he returned to Chicago, and there he taught three classes of constitutional law at the University of Chicago’s law school each year for the next twelve years, from 1992 until 2004. He also won election to the Illinois Senate, and met and married Michelle Robinson.

     In 2004, he won election to the U. S. Senate and began to work in Washington D.C. In 2008, he won the presidential election, and he and Michelle and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, moved into the White House, and there they lived for eight years, until noon on Friday, January 20.

     One wonders, “what he will do next?” Last August he turned fifty-five, fifteen years younger than the newest Oval Office occupant. Although Obama’s political views are left of center, he is bright, educated, skilled, and still young, too young to retire.

     The Economist reports that he is writing another book; that the family plans to remain in Washington D.C. until Sasha, the younger daughter, graduates from high school in 2019; and that Chicago is the site of his library and foundation.

     The Economist also reports that the capital’s rumor mill indicates that the former President “longs to spend more time in Hawaii—eating the icky shave ice which is a local delicacy, and body surfing with the daredevils on Sandy Beach.” There he will see more of his sister, Maya Soetero-Ng, and her husband and two daughters. Of her brother, Maya says, “He didn’t want the job to be his whole self. He is remarkably unchanged.”

     Looking at the trajectory of Obama’s life, the law may figure into his future plans, either as a law school lecturer, or as a law firm associate. “Also, he might feel obliged to intervene in politics more than he intended, given the Democratic Party’s denuded leadership and Mr. Trump’s agenda.”

     Barack Obama cannot run for President again, but he could run for the Senate, the House, or as a state’s governor. Also, I would not discount the potential of an appointment to a court.

     Only one former president has ever served as Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, William Howard Taft, the 27^th President, who won the presidential election of 1908, one hundred years before Obama was first elected. Unlike Obama, who appeared to enjoy the job of President, Taft hated it.

     Of his campaign, Taft said, “one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life.” Long-time White House employee, Ike Hoover, said of Taft, “By temperament, Taft hated competitive politics and all that it involved; he loved the law and could conceive of no higher destiny than Chief Justice.”

     Taft ran a half-hearted campaign for President in 1912, and won only eight electoral votes. Relieved that he lost, Taft accepted a position as lecturer at Yale’s law school, his alma mater.

     Then, in 1920, the Republicans recaptured the White House when Warren G. Harding won the election. In 1921, President Harding appointed the 63-year-old William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, and he oversaw the court for the next nine years, until his passing in 1930.

     In 1926, Taft’s Supreme Court ruled in “Myers v. U. S.” that President Wilson did have the authority to terminate a postmaster, a federal appointee, without Senate approval. An 1876 Federal law stated that “Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

     Chief Justice Taft argued that the Constitution mentions the president’s authority to appoint federal officials but is silent on their removal. Thus, Taft ruled that the 1876 Federal law was unconstitutional, that the President has the right to appoint and also terminate federal officials without Senate oversight. All Presidents since have lived in a world that Taft helped to created.

     Antonin Scalia passed away on February 13, 2016, after twenty-nine years on the bench, and President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. The Senate though refused to schedule a hearing for Garland’s nomination, and it expired once the 114^th Congress terminated on January 13, 2017. It is certain that the new president will nominate another judge.

     Once again, “what will Barack Obama do next?” Return to the law, jump back into politics, build a business, or write essays and books? Although it is common practice to expect our former presidents to retire with grace and dignity, Barack Obama may choose another course.

A Monarchy in America

by William H. Benson

January 12, 2017

     An interesting column appeared in the New York Times on November 6, 2016, the Sunday before the presidential election. Its author, Nikolai Tolstoy, an Englishman of Russian ancestry and a distant cousin of the novelist Leo Tolstoy, argued that the United States needs a king.

     Tolstoy looked across the Atlantic Ocean and saw the messy campaign then raging in America, and of the two candidates, he said, “neither appears to be a Washington or a Lincoln.” He then wondered if “the founding fathers’ republican system of government is leading them toward that promised ‘more perfect union.’”

     He lists his reasons why America needs a monarch. First, consider Canada. “That example alone,” he says, “demonstrates that democracy is compatible with constitutional monarchy.”

     Then, he points to Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur’s decision in August 1945, to allow the defeated Japanese to keep their emperor. “This wise policy,” he says, “enabled Japan’s remarkable and rapid evolution into the prosperous, peaceful democratic society it has been since.”

     Then, Tolstoy quotes Winston Churchill. When asked what led to the rise of Nazi Germany,
Churchill pointed to the decision after World War I to drive the Hapsburgs out of Austria and Hungary, and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. “By making these vacuums, we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of the sewer onto the vacant thrones.”

     Tolstoy quotes the Englishman Samuel Johnson, who said, “Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an upstart.”

     Tolstoy further says, “America may have thrown off the yoke of King George III, but Americans chose to be governed by George Bush II,” but, I might add, not by Clinton II.

     As an American, I read Nikolai Tolstoy’s reasons that a king and his progeny should rule over the fifty united states forever, but I do not believe them, and neither would Thomas Paine, who published his fifty-paged pamphlet Common Sense, on January 10, 1776, 241 years ago this month.

     Paine hated the King of England at that time, King George III, whom Paine calls, “the Royal Brute of Great Britain.” Paine argues that a monarchy is an evil institution. “Monarchy is ranked in scripture,” he says, “as one of the sins of the Jews.”

     Then, he writes, “To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession,” the idea that a king’s son, daughter, or wife shall replace the king or queen after his or her death. This “opens a door,” Paine says, “to the foolish, the wicked, and the improper, and it hath in it the nature of oppression.” A king’s sons and daughters grow up believing “themselves born to reign, and others to obey,” and they “soon grow insolent,” and “are the most ignorant and unfit of any.”

     “Where,” Paine asks, “is the King of America?” He answers, “In America the law is king.” Once independence is declared and a governing charter is written, Paine suggests a crowning. Officials would lay that charter upon “the Divine Law, the Word of God,” the Bible. Then, he says, “let a crown be placed thereon.” This crowning will signify that “in absolute governments the King is law,” but “in free countries the law ought to be king.”

     In the aftermath of the bloody French Revolution, and after the military general Napoleon Bonaparte had seized the reins of France’s government, he decided that he too should wear a crown.

     On Sunday, December 2, 1804, in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, in a well-orchestrated ceremony, Pope Pius VII stood before Napoleon and said, “Receive the crown.” Napoleon then took the crown from the pope, placed it on his own head, and thus he crowned himself. Then, he placed both hands on a Bible and took the oath of office.

     Thomas Paine witnessed the French Revolution up close, during the fifteen years he lived in Paris. He met Napoleon, and it was then that he felt “the full force of Napoleon’s well-known bad temper, crude insults, and impatience with contradiction.” Paine soon despised Napoleon and called him “the completest charlatan that ever existed.”

     The gifted Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, told only part of the story of Napoleon’s attack upon Russia in his book War and Peace, and the immense suffering that he brought upon the Russian people. 

     On January 20, 2017, on the Capital’s east steps, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts will administer the oath of office to Donald Trump, who will place a hand on a Bible, hold up his other hand, and say, “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”

     No one will offer him a crown, nor will he receive a crown. He will became President of the United States, and not King of the United States of America.

Hillbilly

by William H. Benson

December 29, 2016

     “Mountain dew” is a slang word for moonshine. The extensive marketing for the soft drink of the same name first appeared fifty years ago, in the mid-1960’s. The cartoon advertisement featured a hillbilly who wore a floppy hat, sported an unkempt beard, smiled a toothless grin, had shaggy hair, and wore ragged shirt and pants. No shoes.

     On occasion he would lift a brown jug to his lips and drink deep of his “mountain dew, and just as often, he would aim his shot gun and shoot at anyone who dared to offend him. His catch phrase, “Yahoo! It’s Mountain Dew. It’ll tickle your innards.”

     Television and movies adopted the Appalachian mountain man stereotype. There was Ernest T. Bass and Pa Darling on “The Andy Griffith Show,” Festus Haggen on “Gunsmoke,” and a string of amusing characters on “Hee Haw.” The most famous fictional hillbilly family though was the Clampett’s on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” There was Jed Clampett; his daughter, Elly May; his mother-in-law, Granny or Daisy Moses; and his nephew, Jethro Bodine, who bragged on his sixth-grade education.

     Al Capp drew the newspaper cartoon “Li’l Abner” for forty-three years. In it he featured Abner Yokum who lived in a cabin in Dogpatch, with his parents Mammy and Pappy Yokum.

     A new book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” landed on the New York Times best-seller list earlier this year. Its author, J. D. Vance, tells a compelling story of his family. His grandparents, Jim and Bonnie Vance, fled their community of Jackson, in eastern Kentucky, in the middle of the twentieth century, and followed the “Hillbilly Highway” north to Middletown, Ohio, where Jim worked in the steel mill.

1. D. lists the reasons why he calls Jim and Bonnie Vance hillbillies. They spew the most foul language. They display hair-triggered tempers, ready for a fight. They are quick to defend their family’s honor. They marry far too young. They drink far too much alcohol. They consume a poor diet. They are uneducated. College or a hope for a better future are distant dreams.

     When young, J. D. has little contact with his dad, and his mother is a hopeless drug addict who brings a string of men into their home. She turns on each of them. She screams, she throws things at them, until the tirades and the drug-induced hysteria drive each away. As a result, J. D. and his older half-sister Lindsay spend lots of time with Jim and Bonnie, who take a special interest in them

    Bonnie encourages her grandson to do well in high school. He tries, but his home life is so chaotic, and he misses so much school. Evenings Jim works with J. D. on his math problems. After high school, J. D. joins the Marines, serves one tour in Iraq, and then attends Ohio State University, where he graduates in a year and a half, even though he works at two jobs. The Marines’ discipline allows him to survive on four or five hours of sleep. He applies to Yale Law School and receives an acceptance.

1. D. is now thirty-one, works as an attorney, and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

     The book’s critics point out that J. D. is not a hillbilly. First, he is smart, focused, and driven. He sees distant goals and pursues them. Also, he worked to control his temper and cease lashing out at those he loves, and he managed to steer clear of the drugs and alcohol. Most people though cannot ace Yale law school, and cannot escape their chaotic and depressed home lives.

     Then, J. D. did not grow up in the Appalachian Mountains. Instead, he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, in the Rust Belt, two generations removed from eastern Kentucky’s economy and culture.

     One of the book’s reviewers, Paul Prather, points out that J. D. identifies certain of the Rust Belt’s negatives: “the vanished jobs in union factories and steel mills,” and that “the working class seems caught in a free fall of addiction, unemployment, fury, and hopelessness. ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ shows us how that feels up close.”

     Donald Trump, a New Yorker, who has lived his life many miles removed from either the Rust Belt or the Appalachians, tapped into those feelings of “fury and hopelessness” during his run for the Presidency. Middletown’s residents recognize that the jobs in the steel factories have “vanished,” and that the town’s middle-class workers struggle to find work. As a result, people turn to alcohol and drugs. Trump perceived their deep frustration and spoke to it.

     It is true. Middletown’s residents do suffer from rampant drug abuse. The city lies inside Butler County, and the county’s coroner recently said that that “he expects 2016 will top last year’s 189 drug overdose deaths, and that 141 of those are related to heroin or fentanyl.”

     J. D. Vance was lucky. He escaped Middletown’s drug problem, and his mother’s chaotic life, and he forged a better life for himself. He dresses well, speaks well, writes well, and holds down an excellent job. He is far from the hillbilly stereotype, and thus sees little reason to grab a gun and shoot at anyone who offends him, or to sip home-brewed “mountain dew” moonshine from a jug.

Paul Getty and Ebenezer Scrooge

by William H. Benson

December 15, 2016

On July 10, 1973, kidnappers in Rome, Italy seized J. Paul Getty III, the sixteen-year-old grandson of the oil baron and the reported wealthiest man in the world. The kidnappers sent a ransom note that demanded $17,000,000, but the grand Senior Getty refused to pay. He said, “I have fourteen grandchildren. If I pay one penny now, I’ll have fourteen kidnapped grandchildren.”

Some whispered that the kidnapping was a staged hoax, designed to fleece the Senior. Hence, the kidnappers cut off the boy’s right ear and a lock of his hair, and mailed the two body parts to a newspaper, as proof that they had custody of the grandson.

The kidnappers negotiated down to a rock bottom $3,000,000, but then Senior agreed to pay only $2,200,000, the maximum amount his advisors claimed was tax deductible. Senior then required Junior, the child’s father, to sign a promissory note for a loan of $800,000, the difference, and then charged his own son four percent interest.

This was well within the Senior’s character. A miser to a fault and known for his tight-fisted ways, the Senior Getty had installed coin-operated telephones for his visitors’ use when in his home, in order to prevent them from running up excessive phone bills.

The kidnappers released J. Paul Getty III on December 15, 1973, ten days before Christmas, a wonderful gift for the lad’s mother, who told her son to call Senior and thank him for paying the ransom. He dialed the phone number, but Senior refused to take his grandson’s call.

1976. Paul Getty, the Senior, was married five times and divorced five times. After his final divorce in 1958, he gave up and remained single until his passing in 1976. Of his five wives, he said, “I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.”

He and his fifth wife, Louise, had a single son, Timmy, who, when he was six, lost his eyesight because of a brain tumor. Louise said that Senior scolded her for spending an excessive amount on Timmy’s medical care. When Timmy died at the age of twelve, in 1958, Louise sued for divorce, and Senior did not attend his son’s funeral.

In a shadow that the Ghost of Christmas Past revealed to Ebenezer Scrooge, he saw himself as a young single man seated beside his fiance, Belle, who had tears in her eyes. He asks her why she cries, and she tells him, “Another idol has displaced me.”

To her he tried to justify his miserly ways, but she said, “You fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one.” It is no wonder that she broke off their engagement.

In a shadow that the Ghost of Christmas Present revealed, Ebenezer saw two children hiding within the Ghost’s robe, a boy named Ignorance, and a girl named Want. Dickens described the two urchins as, “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish.” Dickens personified children whose parents have neglected and subjected them to emotional and physical abuse.

In a shadow that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come revealed, Ebenezer saw Bob Cratchit’s family mourning the passing of Tiny Tim, his little crutch laid aside. He hears Bob say to his other children, “’I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim.’ ‘Never, father,’ cried they all.”

Charles Dickens first published A Christmas Carol on December 17, 1843. In it, time is fluid. It backs up, jumps forward, and then races ahead into the future. At the story’s end, time returns to the present, and Scrooge is ecstatic. He now has a chance to rectify his errors, and he does.

The story is a call for a “secular conversion,” and Ebenezer Scrooge did experience an alteration. He purchased the prize turkey hanging in the butcher’s shop and had it delivered to Bob Cratchit’s home. He celebrated Christmas at his nephew Fred’s home. Of the day, Dickens wrote, “Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness.”

Whereas J. Paul Getty’s story is non-fiction, Ebenezer Scrooge’s is fiction. Both included a lad named Tim with physical ailments. Whereas Getty tried and failed at marriage five times, Scrooge failed to try even once. Getty never experienced a secular conversion, but Scrooge did.

A severed ear, a lock of hair, a ransomed grandson set free at Christmas, a child named Timmy Getty who died, a crutch, a prize turkey, and a child named Tiny Tim Cratchit who lived. These are the elements of two Christmas stories. Both are sad, and yet both include some happiness.

Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis

by William H. Benson

December 1, 2016

     Billy Graham was born November 7, 1918, just four days before Armistice Day that ended World War I’s carnage. Three weeks ago Billy marked his 98^th birthday, alive but not so well.

     Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29, 1898, and died on November 22, 1963, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It is also coincidental that both C. S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy had the same nickname, Jack.

     Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis were the two most popular Christian authors of the twentieth century. Walk into any religious bookstore—if any remain open today—and you will find Billy Graham’s books on one shelf and C. S. Lewis’s on another, but there were differences between the two men.

     Lewis was an Englishman, a very-well read Oxford scholar, who had studied the Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, as well as English language and literature. He taught at Oxford’s Magdalen College for nearly thirty years, and he described himself as “a jovial man.”

     Lewis and his fellow scholar, J. R. R. Tolkein, loved to gather in Oxford’s pub, “The Eagle and the Child,” where they smoked their pipes, drank their pint, laughed, swapped stories, and read aloud their literary creations. Tolkien read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Lewis read his own fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, that includes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

     It was during those gatherings that Lewis laid aside his youthful rejection of religion, and accepted Christianity. His conversion was a quiet event, but it transformed his literary style. Thereafter, in addition to his fantasy novels, he wrote nonfiction books that defended and promoted Christianity: Mere Christianity, Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, and Surprised by Joy. He became Christianity’s chief apologist, who wanted to present a reasonable case for Christianity.    

     On the other hand, Billy Graham was a Southerner, from Charlotte, North Carolina, a traveling evangelist, intense, focused, driven, friend to the Presidents. It is said that he preached Christianity to more people than any other person in human history.

     In his sermons, he insisted upon the absolute need for all men and women to experience conversion. In him there was no doubt and no hesitation on that, and his books dovetail into his Southern Baptist theology: Peace with God, Angels, How to Be Born Again, and World Aflame.

     Although Lewis was far more educated than Billy, but both men’s influence reached far.

     Whereas Lewis made people feel comfortable, with his avuncular and jovial manners, his deep learning, and his thought-provoking literary style, Billy Graham made people feel uncomfortable, because he told people what they must do.

     Billy was a friend to both Democrat and Republican Presidents, but only on rare occasions did he express a political position, either liberal or conservative. The most glaring of those few occasions was when he fell under President Richard Nixon’s bigoted attitude toward the media. Otherwise, Billy steered wide of political controversy.

     Lewis was more forthright, but not much. He saw danger when people mixed religion and politics. In a September 25, 2016 New York Times opinion column, the writer, Peter Wehner, said that Lewis observed that “Christians were tempted to abuse political power in ways that were bad for both Christianity and the state. He believed theocracy the worst form of government, and he detested the idea of a ‘Christian party.’”

     Wehner said further that Lewis perceived that “politics can distort and invert Christianity, turning a faith that at its core is about grace, reconciliation, and redemption into one that is characterized by bitterness, recriminations, and lack of charity.” Hence, Lewis was said to hold “contempt for politics and politicians, and that he steered clear of political controversy.”

     Both Billy and C. S. remained mute on current political issues, mainly because both men’s focus was upon religion. Wehner said that “Lewis saw public matters, and indeed all of life, through a theological lens.” The same is true of Billy Graham.

C. S. Lewis passed away a week short of his 65^th birthday. His decades-long addiction to his pipe shortened his life, when he succumbed to renal failure. So far, Billy Graham has lived thirty-three years more than did C. S. Lewis. Their books are still in print.