For maybe three or four years during the late Sen. Tim Johnsons time in office, I had the honor once a year to join several other men and women who had served as officers in our armed forces and with them interview applicants for our nations service academies.
These young men and women during their high school years had at that point in their young lives demonstrated what writer Tom Wolfe might have called The Right Stuff. Wolfes book by that name (and later a movie by the same name) told the story of the original astronauts in the Project Mercury program.
The students we interviewed had in most instances demonstrated leadership in their schools and communities: in academics, athletics, church, public service. Just about everyone we interviewed gave evidence of having qualities that would be needed to serve honorably as an officer in Americas armed forces.
We interviewers had many questions, with most having one or two aimed especially at character and ethical behavior. I would always ask (unless one of the other interviewers beat me to it): What is the single most important quality that an officer in Americas armed forces must possess? There is, of course, no simple answer. And while I cant recall the exact answers of the young men and women being questioned, I do believe they were thought out well and were on target.
As I do recall, many of the interviewers cited integrity, especially academy graduates who had lived with a strict honor code: (I) will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do. A good choice: integrity. However, I chose courage. I came upon both words and two others all used together in Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedys Pulitzer Prize winning book.
In September 1932, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt lauded Nebraskas Republican Sen. George Norris (March 1913-January 1943) with those four questions: History asks, Did the man have integrity? Did the man have un-selfishness? Did the man have courage? Did the man have consistency? The answer: There are few statesmen in America today who so definitely and clearly measure up to an affirmative answer to those four questions as does George W. Norris.
Imagine today 92 years later a Democratic or Republican senator or congressman praising a fellow solon sitting on the other side of the aisle. Not likely in the unforgiving partisan political, two-camp country we live in here in the United States of America. However, I believe there have been individual instances of courageous GOP legislators in Trumpland who put their political lives on the line and paid a dear price. President Trump will seek retribution against any GOP legislator who even hints of defying him. Lets look back to Jan. 6, 2021, and move on from there.
Chants of Hang Mike Pence did not deter the vice president from doing his constitutional duty and certifying the Electoral College votes that put his boss out of office. The days that followed offered the opportunity for GOP lawmakers to ensure that the man who would be king did not control the party. As I noted in a Corner some time back, they had a golden opportunity for a come-to-Jesus meeting with the president and offer to him an opportunity to rebuild the party with him as a vital member but not the Il Duce he would later become. They did not take that opportunity. Instead, Trump over the years of the Biden presidency turned the GOP into his party. Mess with him and get primaried or go into retirement. Get things done when he wants them done: Witness the signing into law of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act on July 4 meeting Donalds deadline. Trumps will be done. (As an aside, am I the only one who sees this as a ridiculous title for such a monumental piece of legislation? One, yes; big, a relative term; beautiful, in the eye of the beholder and again relative.)
I watched the proceedings leading up to the bills passage and saw a lot of hand-wringing by the media: It might not pass some Republicans are holding out, not convinced its a good bill it likely wont get passed by July 4 on and on. Total horsefeathers. Trump met one-on-one with the holdouts and a promise or a threat (maybe both, in some instances) and come vote time they collapsed like a cheap suitcase. Any hint of courage was, in nautical terms, DIW dead in the water.
I suspect that the stuff of the Biden and Trump presidencies will be exhumed and written about by a plethora of historians long after Im gone.
But as Im living through those years and all the good, the bad and the ugly that has so far come to pass from them, one word of the above keeps coming back to me: Courage and how much the lack of it in both parties has brought us to where we are in America today: a weakened democratic republic coming more and more under the sway of the man who would be king.
Have a nice day.
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