Poll: Who was the best recent First Lady?

The poll for the question "Who was the best recent First Lady?" has closed. Hillary Clinton won with 48%. Barbara Bush came in second with 24% while Nancy Reagan was third with 14%. Laura Bush finished last with 12%.

Thanks to all who voted. And thanks to Jennie for suggesting this question.

A Constitutional Afterthought

Edward Larson asks "Was Dick Cheney's Self-Serving Claim to be Part of Congress Really Laughable?" in an article for HNN.

Larson starts with the recent actions of the Vice President:
Commentators and comedians have ridiculed Vice President Dick Cheney for invoking executive privilege to deny one set of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee while, at the same time, asserting that his office is not part of the executive branch so as to deny another set to the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives. As a historian, though, I admire the Vice President’s chutzpah.

But he goes on to say that:
Rather than being laughably ridiculous, his seemingly conflicting and transparently self-serving claims on these matters have at least enough historical support to qualify as artful dodges rather than baseless evasions.

Laron explains the Vice Presidency was an effort by the founding fathers to create a national candidate rather than having electors just vote for the person from that state. To give the Vice President something to do, they stuck him in Senate. So originally the Vice Presidency was a legistlative post and not much else - backing up Cheney's claim:
As the first Vice President, John Adams tried to make the most of the job but was thwarted at every turn. Despite Adams’s overtures, President George Washington never included the Vice President in his administration and viewed him as an officer of the Senate. Senators, however, quickly tired of hearing the Vice President speak on legislation that he could not vote on, and soon passed a rule prohibiting him from participating in floor debate. Venting his frustrations, the able and opinionated Adams denounced the Vice Presidency as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived” – but he stayed on for a second term in hopes of succeeding Washington.

By 1796, when Washington announced his decision to not seek a third term, two national partisan factions had formed in response to bitter divisions over domestic and foreign policy. Adams received the support of one; Thomas Jefferson of the other. When Adams narrowly won, he sought to bridge the growing partisan divide by offering Jefferson, as Vice President, a cabinet-level role in the new administration. Fearing his views could never prevail, Jefferson declined. Instead, he used his position as Vice President to lead the opposition. “The Constitution will know me only as a member of a legislative body,” Jefferson wrote to his closest partisan confidant, James Madison, shortly after the 1796 election. Up to this point, history supports Cheney’s claim that the Vice Presidency is a legislative post, albeit largely a make-work one, but stands against his claim of executive privilege.

But the election of 1800 changed this to the concept we know today - electing "teams" because of the emergence of political parties and the Vice President a de facto member of the exeutive branch - also backing Cheney's claim.

Now the Vice President still has an independent position, but it is difficult for them to use:
Of course, Vice Presidents still held an independent Constitutional position and could assert their independence at their own peril. Vice President John Calhoun famously did so in 1832 over the issue of states nullifying national laws, and faced the wrath of President Andrew Jackson, who privately threatened to hang him for treason. Over a century later, Vice President John Nance Garner ran against his “boss,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for their party’s 1940 presidential nomination. In acting as they did, clearly neither Calhoun nor Garner represented the administration. In contrast, other Vice Presidents have served as a part of the Executive Branch in virtually everything they did – think of Walter Mondale’s role in the Carter Administration, for example.

Larson's conclusion?
In short, the Vice Presidency is a curious post. History and the Constitution suggest that it is both a legislative office and, at least after the 12th Amendment, part of the executive branch. It all depends what the Vice President is doing. In his Constitutional role of presiding over the Senate – which today may involve little more than voting in the case of a tie and sitting beside the Speaker of the House during joint sessions of Congress – Cheney serves in the legislative branch. When functioning as a member of the cabinet and a presidential advisor, Cheney is not fulfilling any legislative duties envisioned under the Constitution. Executive privilege may apply, but with it should come the responsibilities of an executive branch official.

For more information on the Vice Presidents check out my earlier post.

TR and the 1902 Coal Strike

Strikes are on my mind (looks like the nationwide GM strike (first in over 30 years) ended today after less than a week), so I thought discussing TR's involvement in the 1902 anthracite coal strike was appropriate.

In October of 1902, TR faced a possible coal famine and so took unprecedented action to summon the leaders to him. From the DOL's site we learn how unprecedented this was:
This meeting marked the turn of the U.S. Government from strikebreaker to peacemaker in industrial disputes. In the 19th century, presidents, if they acted at all, tended to side with employers. Andrew Jackson became a strikebreaker in 1834 when he sent troops to the construction sites of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.3 War Department employees operated the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad during the Civil War .4 In the violent rail strikes of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes sent troops to prevent obstruction of the mails.5 Grover Cleveland used soldiers to break the Pullman strike of 1894.6

Roosevelt was a president who believed in intervention, unlike his predecessor (William McKinley):
President Roosevelt was an activist who itched to enter the fray. On June 8, 1902, he asked his Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright, to investigate the strike and report back to him. Wright avoided going to the coalfields because he felt that as the President's representative his "presence there would do more harm than good." Instead, he headed for New York City, where he interviewed presidents of coal roads, independent mine operators, financiers, mine foremen, and superintendents. He also heard the miners' side from John Mitchell, whom he summoned to New York. Wright worked assiduously, and within 12 days, he sent by special courier to the President a substantial report accompanied by tables and statistics's.18

As the strike continued, TR wanted to intervene, but his attorney general (Philander Knox) told him he had no authority to do so:
President Roosevelt was in a quandary. "There is literally nothing . . . the national government has any power to do," he complained to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. "I am at wit's end how to proceed."26 Lodge too was worried. He did not understand the folly of the operators which would cause great suffering and probably defeat the Republican party.27As winter neared and coal prices soared, Roosevelt feared "the untold misery . . . with the certainty of riots which might develop into social war." Although the President agreed with his advisers that he had no legal right, he determined to bring both sides together and see whether he could bring about an agreement. 28

TR's meeting didn't go as planned as the operators refused to deal with the union leaders. Nothing was working and TR was ready to call in the army to assure coal production. The Secretary of War, Elihu Root, got help from J.P. Morgan and managed to set up a deal that both sides could live with:
Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Elihu Root, was worried about the course of events. He had been a distinguished corporate lawyer and was a friend of banker J. P. Morgan. Root told Roosevelt that he would like to mediate in a way which would not commit the President. On October 9, he enlisted Morgan's influence in a proposal whereby the miners would go back to work while a commission considered the issues. Although this was an oft-made proposal, Root added a face-saving wrinkle. Each company and its own employees would present their differences to the commission. This would spare the operators from dealing directly with the miners' union and show the public that the coal industry would arbitrate with its workers.43

Morgan asked Root to come to New York. On October 11, 1902, the two men met for 5 hours on Morgan's yacht, the Corsair, allegedly because newspaper reporters could not bother them there. They drafted an arbitration proposal. The mine operators, fearful of rising public hostility and under pressure from Morgan, accepted the Root-Morgan recommendation provided that they could set ground rules. On October 13, Root and Morgan brought their arbitration proposal to Roosevelt, who then made it public.44

With this the commission was set up to fairly deal with the situation:
More important than the incredible maneuvering in the selection of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission was the overriding fact that finally miners and operators alike agreed that all disputed issues should be submitted to arbitration. Both sides also agreed to abide by the findings of the commission. "The child is born," wrote Carroll Wright, "and I trust will prove a vigorous ... member of society."48

The commissioners started by inspecting the coal fields and then settled in to listen to testimony:
The commissioners, after their inspection tour, met for nearly 3 months. Five-hundred fifty-eight witnesses appeared, including 240 for the striking miners, 153 for nonunion mineworkers, and 154 for the operators. The Commission itself requested the appearance of 11 witnesses. The testimony ran to 10,047 legal-sized pages in addition to other exhibits. John Mitchell played a prominent role in presenting the case for the miners. George Baer made the closing arguments for the coal operators, while Clarence Darrow closed for the workers.

What did the commision find?
Although the commissioners heard some evidence of terrible conditions, they concluded that the "moving spectacle of horrors" represented only a small number of cases. By and large, social conditions in mine communities were found to be good, and miners were judged as only partly justified in their claim that annual earnings were not sufficient "to maintain an American standard of living."

The Commission's findings seemed to split the differences between mineworkers and mine owners. The miners asked for 20-percent wage increases, and most were given a 10-percent increase. The miners had asked for an 8-hour day and were awarded a 9-hour day instead of the standard 10 hours then prevailing.52 The operators refused to recognize the United Mine Workers union. But Mitchell believed that he had won de facto recognition and wrote that the "most important feature of the award" was the creation of a six-man arbitration board to settle disputes that could not be worked out with mine officials. The employees selected three members and the employers three members.

President Clinton as King Kong?

It seems every year, crazy leaders of antagonistic countries come to the United Nations and make outrageous speeches. President George W. Bush got hit last year by Venezualean President Hugo Chávez who called him a devil. This year, Iranian President and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against "selfish and incompetent" powers that have "obedience to Satan." I guess Bush and the USA is somewhat diabolical in his view.

This has all happened before. In 1950, according to the International Times Tribune, Wu Xiuquan, a Chinese representative, denounced the Truman administration effort to promote Taiwan, saying, "This is a preposterous farce, unworthy of refutation, in which Truman makes a mockery of Truman himself."

This same article noted, "Castro, in 1960 managed to insult two future American presidents at the same time. He described John F. Kennedy as 'a millionaire, illiterate and ignorant' and warned delegates against construing the comment as favoring Richard M. Nixon. 'As far as we're concerned,' he said, 'the two of them lack, should I say, political brains.' "

Probably the most entertaining UN babble came from Cuban foreign minister Roberto Robaina in 1996. He said of President Clinton, "We are facing a King Kong escaped from its cage, destroying and smashing without orientation or control."

Clinton as King Kong? Does that make Hillary Clinton Fay Wray?

Just wait until next year. I am sure that some nut who also happens to be a world leader will entertain the world with a rambling speech denouncing the President. And the year after that. And the following year. It does not matter who the president is and what party he or she will come from. The UN just seems to attract nutty anti-American speeches.

Nixon and the Imaginary “Jewish Cabal”

Kenneth J. Hughes, Jr.’s article discusses new transcripts collection that has just been published from the Nixon tapes by the Miller Center. This is a list on the Miller Center’s website that pulls out the various conspiracy theories of Richard Nixon.

Hughes starts with the situation:
In July 1971, dogged by rising unemployment and inflation, Nixon imagined the existence of a “Jewish cabal” involving Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur F. Burns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The President had expected favorable press coverage on July 2, 1971, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a big drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2 to 5.6 percent. When Nixon learned that the front-page of Washington’s Evening Star said, “The Labor Department warned that the dip might have been caused by a statistical quirk,” he ordered an investigation to find out who was responsible, saying, “He’s got to be fired.”

According to Hughes, it was a statistical quirk and Nixon knew it. It had to do with students looking for jobs and was part of the Labor Department’s annual adjustment. Hughes reports that Nixon was told about this:
…when Office of Management and Budget Director George P. Shultz informed the President of the drop in unemployment two days earlier, he’d described it, in these exact words, as “a statistical quirk.”

Not only was this known, but it had happened the year before – this was nothing new, but it “made no difference to Nixon, who focused his wrath on the assistant commissioner of labor statistics, Harold Goldstein.” Nixon already wanted to dispose of Goldstein, so this was just fodder.

White House Political Operative Charles W. “Chuck” Colson suggested a reorganization of the BLS and to put in a “politican” for Goldstein:
Nixon agreed and summoned Shultz and Labor Secretary James D. Hodgson into his office. “I want them to do it even-handed. And they’re not doing it that way,” Nixon said. “Every [press] release has been loaded against us. And deliberately.” The President asked for a plan.

Alone with Colson, Nixon asks if BLS was all Jews and begins to plot. He turns this into a hunt for Jewish "disloyalty":
Later, alone with Colson, Nixon said, “Well, listen, are they all Jews over there?”
“Every one of them,” Colson said. “Well, a couple of exceptions.”
“See my point?”
“You know goddamn well they’re out to kill us.”
Before lunch, Nixon gave his chief of staff an order. “Now, point: [White House Personnel Director Frederic V.] Malek is not Jewish.”
“No,” H.R. “Bob” Haldeman said.
“All right, I want a look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government, and we have got to get in those areas. We’ve got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish . . . do you understand?
“I sure do.”
“The government is full of Jews,” Nixon said. “Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have a [White House Consultant Leonard] Garment and a [National Security Adviser Henry A.] Kissinger and, frankly, a [White House Speechwriter William L.] Safire, and, by God, they’re exceptions. But, Bob, generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.”

Now while Nixon was talking about not trusting Jews, Hughes says that was the Jews who couldn’t trust Nixon – he was turning on them. He had decided that a “Jewish cabal” and it included the Fed chairman. Now, point in fact, Nixon had appointed Burns and Burns was actually conspring with someone – Nixon! But Nixon was not happy with Burns:
But the Fed chairman had incurred his patron’s displeasure. Nixon had wanted a conservative economist at the Fed, but grew angry when he got one. As unemployment rose to politically harmful levels, Nixon wanted the Fed to follow an “easy money” policy that would reduce interest rates, lowering the cost to business of borrowing money, expanding operations and hiring more employees. Burns, however, warned that this would fuel inflation. On the morning of Nixon’s “Jewish cabal” comment, the Times had run this front-page headline: “Burns Says Inflation Curb Is Making Scant Progress.”

What happened?
Burns got smeared, but Goldstein got forced out. “Harold Goldstein will be moved to a routine, non-sensitive post in another part of BLS,” Malek reported to Haldeman on Sept. 8, 1971. “He has been told of this and will move quietly when the reorganization is announced.

Hughes ends with this thought:
Typically, when Richard Nixon told himself people were conspiring against him, it meant he was about to conspire against them.

What I find interesting about this article is the wonderful information we are able to continually get from primary sources!