PRESIDENTS DAY

February 17, 2018

PRESIDENTS DAY, AS IT HAS COME TO BE KNOW colloquially In the United States is, in fact, the official Federal Holiday that celebrates the birthday of first president of the United States, George Washington. It also became an occasion to honor other presidents, including the incumbent one, but not always the same ones. George Washington was born under the old British Empire and his birthday was in the Julian Calendar, since England was not a Catholic country and had not embraced the Gregorian Calendar, adopted way back in 1582 by the Catholic Church. By the 1730s, the Julian Calendar was running eleven days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Also, the Civil Year - the date when the year officially starts for business purposes - began March 25 for the Brits, instead of January 1, so they were also running a year behind!

In 1752 the British changed finally to the Gregorian Calendar and every birth date had to be modified so that individuals born before 1752 had their birthdays changed to the Gregorian Calendar. All this to say that George Washington was born on February 11, 1731 in the Julian Calendar or Old Style as it was then known, but his birthdate was changed to February 22.

Different States celebrate different presidents, although Lincoln is almost always included. Also, the actual celebration was changed when Congress established Mondays close to the actual celebration dates as official Holidays. Then, in the 1980s corporate businesses, which were closed on Federal Holidays, pushed to be allowed to open and sell merchandise, and the name Presidents Day became the national identifier. But officially and federally, it is Washington’s Birthday celebration. As well it should be, because not only was Washington the first president of the United States, he is, together with Lincoln, a most revered president.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS WERE A SPECTACULR GROUP OF individuals that gathered to design a country. Popular history tried for many years to make them sort of run of the mill people who had Divine Inspiration. But, in fact, they were highly educated individuals, well read in history, philosophy and literature, many of them landowners with large tracts of properties, or rich merchants or lawyers and thinkers. And they created a country that reflected the values of their time with the hope that the country they were designing would be able to survive the world as they saw it at the time. They also included ways of changing the Constitution to adapt to a changing world. But the document had many flaws, including the fact that “all men were created equal” except for slaves, who were not considered human beings with rights and privileges. And the Founding Fathers certainly had no idea the social upheavals that would become the trademark of the world for the next 242 years.

ONE BASIC PREMISE WAS THAT THE SOCIETY THEY WERE CREATING would be a civil society where respect and dignity would prevail in all actions. Another expectation was that democracy would work for people such as themselves, as they could never imagine that individuals not educated to their higher standards would eventually become the majority of the population. And so, the myth persisted throughout the years, although the boiling fester of slavery was already rearing its angry head of freedom and liberty for all. Unless we are historians, we do not know much about many presidents. Certainly, Washington was an exemplary figure. Revisionist history has made him more so. Jefferson, who was 33 years old when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, went on to become the third president of the United States. He also had in his lifetime 600 slaves and fathered children with a young woman who was also his slave. Adams was the second president and his profound dedication to the cause of the United States and his exceptional intelligence make him one more admired president. The list of distinguished presidents is large and well known. Madison, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, are all names we recognize because they were individuals who had extraordinarily high standards for themselves in terms of political history, philosophy, vision of a greater good, compassion for the less privileged and the discipline and will to pursue a place in the world for the United States that responded to the highest ideals of the Founding Fathers.

ALAS, ALL THIS IS LACKING IN OUR PRESENT CONDITIONS and we have been witnessing the disintegration of the political system that the United States presented to the world as an example to be followed for a perfect democracy. I first had an inkling of what was happening back in the 90s when I heard Bob Dole, the senate Majority Leader in the Clinton Administration, make incredibly vituperative speeches against the president and the administration, against the less privileged people and the marginalized populations. It was my first inkling that the Civil Discourse that had been at the basis for the concept of democracy of the Founding Fathers had completely disappeared. It was then that the United States started losing its position of moral supremacy in the world. Eisenhower and the Nixon years were terrible for Latin America. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, the Balkans, Somalia and all the other wars, where the US could not prevail anymore, were the beginning of the furious and slow deterioration of the prestige of the United States around the world.

RATHER THAN SPEND OUR TIME SHOPPING ON PRESIDENT DAY it would be more valuable to reflect on what is the meaning and value of the presidency. For any country, the top leader embodies the symbols of what that nation stands for. The examples of the past are numerous: Cesar, Charlemagne, Moctezuma, Juárez, Lincoln. But the more recent leaders embody as well the aspirations and the accomplishments, the hopes and the dreams, the triumphs and victories that place some nations in leadership positions around the world. The II World War gave us some of these leaders: Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle. More recently in the United States, Kennedy and Obama. But there have been inspirational leaders in other countries as well: Gandhi, Allende, Mandela, Havel. The world looks up to them as beacons of hope and as examples of what we can achieve, as individuals or as nations. Future aspiring leaders certainly reach out to these icons as examples for their future aspirations. All these leaders have had a solid grounding in history, a communion with philosophical ideals of what is right, empathy with the trodden, a vision of larger accomplishments.

“IN THE WORKS OF MAN, EVERYTHING IS AS POOR AS ITS AUTHOR; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum” wrote Joseph de Maistre, a 18th century French lawyer, diplomat, writer and philosopher. Unfortunately, the current state of affairs has made de Maistre also a prophet. We read all the time about how the current president is doing this and doing that; how he does not understand health care; or economics; or respect for women and races; of how the standing of the United States around the world has reached its nadir of all time and how hard it is going to be to position the country again where it “belongs.” All these statements, though true, are coming from pundits and reporters that populate a media conglomerate that facilitated his electoral success by celebrating his ignorance and his bluster. There never was, even in the last stages of the election, any real analysis of what the candidate was going to bring to the presidency, because no one in the global media believed he could be elected. But this is a key issue. He got elected. And we need to learn to live and much more importantly, to deal with this.

THE POPULARITY POLLS OF THE PRESIDENT MAY BE THE LOWEST in the history of polls pf presidents, but the undeniable fact is that, in this US democracy, the president received almost 63 million votes. Although it is true that Hilary Clinton received almost 66 million votes (the largest popular vote margin of any losing presidential candidate in U.S. history), the electoral system in the United States gave Trump 304 votes, clinching the election over Clinton who received 227, well below the 270 needed. The only other time this has happened this century was in 2000, when Gore came up short in the Electoral College but won the popular vote by 540,000 more votes than George W. Bush. Let’s not forget that Gore was Bill Clinton’s vice president and that the Hilary Clinton’s campaign was no stranger to how the results of the electoral college do not necessarily match those of the popular vote. The Hillary campaign failed abysmally in their strategy. And so did Hillary Clinton. In the past, Kennedy had applied this very important fact in his quest for the presidency because, as a newcomer, he did not have all the support outside the partisan sphere.

A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF AMERICANS ARE CHOOSING TO NOT actively help decide their country’s future leaders. It is very saddening that less than 60% of all eligible voters chose to cast their ballots. This seems to be about average for US elections. If you take Belgium in 2014, 87% made it to the polls; and in Turkey 84%

Trump received the majority of the white vote (58 percent), putting him over Clinton (37 percent.) This is not a new phenomenon; it was just one point higher than Romney’s share of the white vote. Clinton, meanwhile, held the black and Hispanic vote by large margins, with 88 percent of African-Americans voting for Clinton who also held a 36-point lead over Trump with Hispanic voters. Women were Clinton’s largest voting block, claiming a lead of 54 percentage points over Trump. But that is just 4% above the average. Nearly two-thirds of the white male population without a college degree took Trump’s side and – more importantly - 49 percent of males with a college degree cast their ballots for presidential candidate. This is Trump’s electoral base, whether we like it or not.

ALL THESE BORING STATISTICS ARE HERE JUST TO MAKE an important point. In a democracy, the majority decides who their leader is going to be. Many people are now against the president, but the fact remains that he won the presidency (perhaps aided by the Russian interference) but he won the presidency. The only resources left to those who disagree with hi policies are to vote him out of office and to vote into office the individuals who will take the views opposite to his’. To quote again de Maistre.” Every nation gets the government it deserves”, not from a fatalistic or divine point of view but from the pragmatic idea that if you vote for an individual that is what you are going to get.

THIS IS PRESIDENTS DAY AND WE SHOULD CELEBRATE the extraordinary long term achievements of this country and make sure that we elect the individuals, preferably women, who can lead us into a brighter, more considerate, more respectful, more understanding future. Another great Frenchman, widely revered in the United States, is the Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat who came to the United States, fought in the Revolutionary War and then went back to France and wrote at length about his time in this country, even returning a few years later. He wrote:

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” This still hold true more than 200 ears later. We have been able to repair the faults of the country. We have seen it happen again and again: ith the abolition of slavery; the defense of freedom in the First World War; the attack on tyranny in the II World War, as well as in the Roosevelt social programs, the Civil Rights Act, the Women’s Equality Act, the Roe v Wade decisions of the Supreme Court; and in the spectacular rescue of the economy by Obama in 2012 to 2016. We, who are citizens by birth or, in my case, by choice, owe it to the country, to our families and to ourselves to rescue back our goals, our ideals, our aspirations and our hopes. Again, to quote Lafayette:” America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

We cannot let that happen.

Vale