I watched President Zelensky’s address to Congress, and I’m not ashamed to say that I was in tears a certain amount of the time. After all, he could get killed if not on the way home then when he gets there.
I’ve been alive a long time. I’ve never experienced the courage of a leader like Vlodomyr Zelensky. My presidents have included Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and TRUMP (he’d want the typeface that way.) Not one of them has demonstrated the continuing courage of President Zelensky, nowhere close. Not sure why I’m writing this as it’s obvious except that I haven’t seen anyone explore this point.
(I admit that I am making is a sort of straw man argument: I’m reducing the travails of the former presidents to a simplistic view of their efforts. I will attempt but fail to be more even-handed below.)
When the Russians invaded and people were offering Zelenskyy a way out, he said, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.” Shorter and much more concise than Churchill, but the same church, just a different pew.
Here are the brave things I remember from our presidents:
Eisenhower: He said, don’t let the military-industrial complex run the country and use up our resources. Uh huh, thanks. But he was harder on Communism than he needed to be, as it turned out. Better we cast off the Dulles brothers and find some creative way to coexist. During the virulent anti-Communist 50’s, that would have taken courage.
Kennedy: His only act of courage was resisting the generals who wanted to start WWIII over Cuba. That really was an act of courage; the generals, especially Curtis LeMay, scoffed at him. Scoffed at their president! We also have the tales of his rescuing a shipmate when their PT boat was crushed. Otherwise, he advised Martin Luther King Jr. that they shouldn’t move too fast on civil rights. Confronting the South would have taken some guts.
Johnson: He didn’t have the courage to pull us out of Vietnam because he was afraid that the Republicans would say he was soft on Communism. How about this, Lyndon: pull us out of Vietnam, save us who knows how many lives, national treasure, and moral health, and then not run for another term anyway? You end up in the same place but with a more positive outcome. Now THAT would have shown some guts. He did move on civil rights, and to his credit, admitted that the Democrats would lose the South for a generation. He was short a couple of generations.
Nixon: A sniveling racist, anti-semitic coward, he still had the courage to attempt opening up China and the Soviet Union. It’s also weird that he signed left-leaning laws, like Title 9 and the Clean Air Act. For my money, Title 9 was one of the best acts ever. My high school had only one sports team for girls: tennis. Kate played softball and soccer and could have run track, except she’s slow like her daddy. I think participating in those team sports was one of the best parts of her childhood. But Nixon was fatally paranoid about everyone else, and that doomed him. A coward, at the end.
Ford: Pardoning Nixon probably took some courage. I am loathe to criticize Gerald Ford over anything because of the circumstances. Also, didn’t he suffer enough from Chevy Chase’s imitations?
Carter: Sending those helicopters to rescue the prisoners of Iran was courageous, and it cost him reelection. Otherwise, according to a biography I read, he liked his own view a lot and set his wrath against people who disagreed. I think it’s more courageous to admit you’re wrong.
Reagan: Mistakes were made, all right. It will mystify me till I’m in my grave why people worship that moron so much. He’s one in a long line of Republicans who refuse to stand up to rich people. And he refused to admit that HIV existed. I don’t think there was anything courageous about him, and he wouldn’t even have known if he had performed some act of courage, as he was always only waggling his head back and forth and grinning like the actor that he was. Telling Gorbachev to tear down the wall was mere PR. Simply watching him mouth the words was unconvincing.
Bush Sr: He said “Read my lips, no new taxes”, then raised them. That took guts. But he also ran the racist Willie Horton ad, which took no courage at all but exposed him as a shameless opportunist and privileged racist. He’s given a break these days only because he wasn’t as awful as his son.
Clinton: Kept a straight face while denying that he fucked an intern. That takes guts! Just the wrong kind. He turned the Democrats to the right on welfare and crime to pander to the right. The only courageous thing he did was ban assault weapons. Anybody can bomb the Balkans.
Bush Jr: Fuck him up the butt. He faked courage over 9/11 but spent the aftermath in a bomb shelter in Omaha. Zelensky would rightfully sneer. I can’t think of a single thing he did that took courage.
Obama: I loved him but he refused to tell uncompromising Republicans, “Fuck you, we’re doing this because I’m the goddamn president and you’re not.” A gifted thinker, but no man of courage. He did send the Seals in to eliminate Osama bin Laden, and that took guts. If that had failed, he'd have been compared to Carter.
Trump: No courage, no conscience, no brains, no integrity. Just a grifter. I hope someday Zelensky gets to meet him again so the latter can spit on the former. I’d like to do that too.
OK, this is a silly exercise unless we posit an American president in Zelensky’s position. Yet that’s a useless exercise as well, as our military is better, still, than anyone’s, including the Russians’ now.
We had someone come look at some trees and take one down because he said it was dead, and, indeed, when he took the huge thing down, it was black and empty all through the middle. This is not unlike the Russian state. Thanks to the Ukrainians, no one is going to have to worry about the Russian military (except for their nuclear capability, which is not nothing) for a few decades.
I’m going to spend some time tomorrow calling Republicans and making sure that they understand that Ukraine is fighting the war that we would otherwise have to fight. I think we should give them fighter and bomber jets as well as everything else. Fuck Putin. If he drops a nuclear bomb, his will be a pariah state for at least 100 years, and he knows it.
The last president to show real courage was Truman. He came into office knowing absolutely nothing because FDR didn’t include him in anything. He pretty much found out about the atomic bomb not long before he ordered it dropped. But he stepped up, made decisions, many of them good. Highly recommended: Jeffrey Frank’s recent biography, The Trials of Harry Truman, which makes the case for the man as steadfast, calm, knowing his limitations but strong in his convictions. You’re welcome.) Apparently the decision to drop the atomic bomb was something of a no-brainer for Truman, and he always stood by it. That took guts.
I started this blog post a few weeks ago, obviously, and I’m finishing it as Kevin McCarthy is trying to become Speaker of the House. What a dumpster fire run into by a dump truck and a pack of hungry raccoons. It’s hilarious. If McCarthy had any courage, he’d march out and say, “This is no good for the country. I’m going to invite the Democrats to propose a Speaker, and I’m going to cajole, bribe, wheedle, bully, and abuse people till they join in a coalition with the Democrats, by which we will sideline the crazy right-wingers and create a true bipartisan coalition to get the country well-governed again.”
I fully realize that my vision for a coalition government is a dream. Can’t blame a boy for hoping.
Instead McCarthy’s busy appeasing the right wing. One could make the case that he’s worse than Chamberlain with Hitler over Czechoslovakia because Chamberlain had some principles. Meanwhile the Republicans take their tough-guy stance and howl that liberals are appeasing adversaries. Not unlike Trump with Putin. Oh, the hypocrisy!
Has anyone noticed the pictures taken of Republicans during this shitrain? All old white men. Except George Santos, who, it may turn out, is a transgender Chinese-Nigerian. As my old AIG colleague Michael Gioffre would say when one would wish him a good day, Anything’s possible!
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BTW, I guess I really fucked up my college football playoff bets hahaha! You should be jeering at me in the comments, and thank you all for not taking me up on my offer to bet $50,000. I’m grateful for many things in my life (Nancy, Kate, whiskey, Larry, books, baseball, pasta, on and on,) and now I have a new one to add: I don’t actually bet on sports.
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