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Hey, Republicans: Stop Repeating Joe McCarthy’s ‘Democrat Party’ Slur

Hey, Republicans: Stop Repeating Joe McCarthy’s ‘Democrat Party’ Slur

It’s an established American tradition to call people what they wish to be called. That’s why after he converted religions, nearly everyone — except a few die-hard bigots — called the heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali instead of Cassius Clay. Marion Morrison chose to become John Wayne. Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironov would later become Dame Helen Mirren, and Caryn Johnson would achieve fame and fortune as Whoopi Goldberg.

But some Republicans, included among them the current GOP president, regularly choose to ignore this national custom by refusing to address or refer to their political adversaries as belonging to — what it has been almost universally called since 1828 — the Democratic Party. Instead, by deliberately dropping the last two letters and ungrammatically substituting an adjective for a noun, some partisans seek to disparage the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

Recently, Marc Short, the presidential assistant with the challenging responsibility of managing this White House’s relations with the House and the Senate, was interviewed one-on-one on PBS NewsHour by Amna Nawaz. Facing an election year in which the Republican congressional majority is clearly threatened, Short insisted on referring to the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as “Democrat administrations.” President Trump had tweeted late last year about getting “no Democrat votes” in the Senate for his budget plan and the “Wacky Congresswoman” who was “killing the “Democrat Party” — a term which is harsher to the ear than the more melodic “Democratic” and supposedly robs the Democrats of all popular identification with the appealing virtues of social equality and anti-snobbishness.

Ever since Wisconsin’s redbaiting — and, eventually, censured — Joseph R. McCarthy popularized the epithet “Democrat Party,” conservative partisans have mostly employed it publicly as a sort of secret verbal handshake to prove one’s GOP credentials while disparaging the other guys.

There have been happy exceptions. In 2008, the year Republicans nominated Arizona Sen. and maverick John McCain, the Party platform committee voted down a proposal to call the opposition the “Democrat Party” in the platform. Then-Mississippi Gov. and committee Chairman Haley Barbour explained, “We probably should use what the actual name is,” a position endorsed by one Indiana committee member who argued, “We should afford them the respect they are entitled and call them by their legal name.”

Just as most Irish-Americans reject being called “micks,” and Catholics don’t like to be referred to as adherents of the “Church of Rome” any more than Jewish Americans appreciate being told they are “of the Hebrew persuasion,” members of the Democratic Party do not like to be told they belong to the “Democrat Party.”

If the Republicans are sincerely interested in winning in 2020, for what would be only the second time having a majority of the national vote in the last eight presidential elections, they — and their leader, President Donald J. Trump — could begin by calling their fellow Americans across the aisle members of the Democratic Party. Sometimes it’s not just how you say it; it really is what you say.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

 

Danziger: His Ignorance Is Timeless

Danziger: His Ignorance Is Timeless

Jeff Danziger’s award-winning drawings are published by more than 600 newspapers and websites. He has been a cartoonist for the Rutland Herald, the New York Daily News and the Christian Science Monitor; his work has appeared in newspapers from theWall Street Journal to Le Monde and Izvestia. Represented by the Washington Post Writers Group, he is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army as a linguist and intelligence officer in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. Danziger has published ten books of cartoons and a novel about the Vietnam War. He was born in New York City, and now lives in Manhattan and Vermont. A video of the artist at work can be viewed here.

Visiting The Gallery Of Vice Presidents — Yes, They Do Matter

Visiting The Gallery Of Vice Presidents — Yes, They Do Matter

WASHINGTON — Mike Pence, the Republican Indiana governor, showed more style in the vice presidential debate against earnest Democratic Senator Tim Kaine. So there’s work to do.

Attend closely to each candidate. Ask how the Number Two plays on the national stage and how much the stakes matter. More than you might think. When the Veep steers the ship, at times it’s right into the rocks. Whatever your political party, remember Sarah Palin, the unserious pick made by John McCain, the elderly 2008 Republican standard-bearer. That told us, right quick, about his wild judgment.

Teddy Roosevelt is the sunniest member of the club who succeeded a president who died in office. That was a century ago. Since April 1945, Democrat Harry S. Truman, the ailing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president, has been seen as another fortunate successor.

Sure, we get lucky across the stepping stones of time. They say Gerald Ford — the only Veep ever to succeed a president who resigned — was a decent chap in the House and as president for two years.

So listen for the voices on the zeitgeist. The first 11 presidents, from George Washington to James Polk, elected in 1844, came in pairs, though Thomas Jefferson had to do one better, with a bunch.

Early leaders in their ambition and lust for power, Jefferson had two Virginia proteges, James Madison and James Monroe, succeed him. The key word is “Virginia,” for they owned slave plantations within riding distance, of course. Nothing but the best for Jefferson.

This created a Virginia presidential dynasty for, wait for it, 24 straight years.

Jefferson had two vice presidents, one of whom was the elegant Aaron Burr, who would have made a better commander in chief than the hapless Madison. The fourth president fled the capital as the British army burned it in 1814.

Unlike Jefferson or Madison, Burr was a Revolutionary Army officer. But he was a younger New Yorker who tied Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election. Jefferson had an enemies list, too, and intrigued against Burr, keeping up the famous charm.

Setting another precedent for the later Bush family, Adams brought his namesake son, John Quincy Adams, to the highest office in 1824, shortly before the father died. But slaveholder and general Andrew Jackson “Old Hickory” beat him in a bitter rematch.

Andrew Jackson’s vice president, Martin Van Buren, succeeded him peacefully, just as Yankee John Adams, the first vice president, succeeded the general on horseback, George Washington. Different as they were, the first Federalists tried to set an example for future generations.

I might add that Jackson groomed a protege to the presidency, James Polk, after he left office. Jackson and Jefferson were presidential history’s only “doubleheaders.”

Then there was beloved Abraham Lincoln, who worked the land himself. But a field trip reminded me he made a near-fatal choice in his 1864 running mate.

Oh, the winds of history blew me away to a stark, chilling sight: a military courtroom. The “Lincoln conspirators” were tried here, with a makeshift gallows built outside at Fort McNair. Four assassination conspirators were convicted and hanged in the summer of 1865. The 16th president was the first one to die in office.

As Civil War guns were stilled, Andrew Johnson, the vice president, could not have been less like Lincoln. The roughhewn, tactless Tennessean was not one to heal wounds of war. Hated by North and South alike, he was impeached.

You know the scene: Ford’s Theatre on a spring night as actor John Wilkes Booth stormed President Lincoln’s box and shot him behind the ear.

It seems the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. “Macbeth” was Lincoln’s favorite.

The four — one was a woman, innkeeper Mary Surratt — were treated harshly, on Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s orders: kept wrapped in hot blankets and hoods in Washington’s heavy heat. The nation’s blood had spilled again; Lincoln was the final casualty of the Civil War.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com

Trump a Long-Lost, Not-So-Great Nephew to Jackson

Trump a Long-Lost, Not-So-Great Nephew to Jackson

WASHINGTON — Andrew Jackson, anyone? How about a new Trail of Tears? Let’s go back to the 1830s, unruly times that tried our souls. Mob rage and violence rose to a peak, anger spilling over Southern slavery.

The cantankerous seventh president is already being served and passed. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is holding a revival. In a way, Old Hickory himself is holding court, giving the American people — who largely loved him — a chance to vote for “Jacksonian democracy” again.

Across our enormous expanse, it’s writ larger than in the 1830s, when President Jackson, “the General” from Tennessee, governed the country in tempestuous style. His first day on the job brought a riot on the White House grounds and broken glass, missing plates and other goods inside, thanks to spirited supporters. They were the people and he was the first president born a commoner, a boy in the American Revolution, orphaned after.

Don’t do it, America. The Donald is like a long-lost, not-so-great nephew of the General — yes, the military man was always “the General,” even when he occupied the White House. To the restless young nation, Jackson was a bracing breeze after the cerebral, cloistered Harvard-educated John Quincy Adams. Trump, with his rambunctious outreach on the stump, has a similar rough appeal after eight years of Barack Obama’s cool restraint.

Indian removal was the major expulsion policy that Jackson embraced as an old warrior against the American Indian — or “savages.” Thousands from the Cherokee Nation were forced on a march to Oklahoma, dusty and dry land far from their home.

Trump, in pursuit of sending undocumented immigrant workers out of the country, has learning to do on this score.

Whole schools of historical thought have praised Jackson for invigorating and shaping our informal democratic ways and habits — after four Virginia planters and two Boston Brahmins. White working-class men were his enthusiastic base, with women and blacks excluded from the electorate. Trump, too, energizes a universe of white working-class men who feel they have been left out of the nation’s Northeastern circles and conversations, from Wall Street to Washington. Simple ideas carried them far.

Used to deference down south as the Battle of New Orleans hero, Jackson resented the elites rejection. He was just not their kind, he who fought more than one duel out on the frontier and carried a bullet in his body as a reminder. John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun and silver-tongued Henry Clay, his political rivals, could not match his roar. The same thing is happening, with Trump turning against Republican Party leaders who don’t bow to his unconventional populism. The establishment knew not what to do with Jackson then — nor Trump today.

This gave rise to Jackson’s consequential clash with Eastern elitism. He amazed all alike by trying to close the Bank of the United States. This was the central engine or commerce, circulation, loans and growth. Alexander Hamilton opened it as treasury secretary. Closing the federal bank was a terrible idea, yet the strong-minded Jackson clung to it stubbornly, shuttering the grand Bank in Philadelphia. The crippling Panic of 1837 resulted the year Jackson left office. It was a painful legacy, but Jackson was riding back to the Hermitage, never one to look back.

I’ve visited the Hermitage, Jackson’s plantation, a 19th-century Trump Tower. They show the General’s favorite chair, table, clock, garden where he and his wife Rachel rest. “Did the General have slaves?” I broke in. Yes, a hundred enslaved people. No sign or trace left.

Jackson was fond of his privilege and station, just as Trump brags endlessly about his empire. As president, Jackson was a determined defender of slavery against the budding abolitionist movement. Tragically, he appointed the racist Roger Taney chief justice of the United States — author of the truly awful Dred Scott decision — a harbinger of the Civil War.

Crude, rude and lewd thrice-married Trump is not near Jackson’s character in the life and death of Rachel. She died at home just before he took the reins of the presidency. His most private sorrow struck in the most public of times. He wrote and spoke of her tenderly, before and after her passing. He never remarried.

We notice these things.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit Creators.com.

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