Louisiana Voice

A public official need not actually do or say something to violate his oath of office. The mere act of silence or inaction in a crisis situation is a clear sign of one of three things: cowardice, negligence at best, or treason at worst.

I will not go so far as accuse John Kennedy of treason, but his reticence in the ongoing tantrum by Donald Trump certainly qualifies as cowardice and negligence. He calls to mind the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I know he ran on Trump’s coattails in 2016; he said so by claiming to be an unconditional supporter of Tweet Thang. But it just seems to me that a real man would not be too proud – or cowardly – to admit that perhaps he made a mistake or to at least issue some sort of public proclamation that it’s time for the Tangerine Toddler to admit that he lost the election by 6 million votes and by the same electoral vote that he won by four years ago. Is that too much to ask of our junior senator?

It was another John Kennedy, the one who was gunned down in Dallas 57 years ago Sunday, who once said, “In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow.”

In 1955, that Kennedy, with the assistance of Ted Sorenson, wrote his famous book Profiles in Courage, which examined eight U.S. Senators who displayed great courage under extreme pressure from their parties and their constituents. They stand in stark contrast to the John Kennedy of today who has exhibited zero resolve to do the right thing and stand up to the tyrant whose days in the White House are dwindling down to a precious few.

Why is this? The only explanation is he is too damned worried about pissing off the rabid Trump supporters of this state and losing his job as opposed to not being sufficiently concerned about standing up for the U.S. Constitution. In short, John Neely Kennedy has his priorities skewed to the point of being FUBAR (see: Saving Private Ryan).

John N. Kennedy, I didn’t know John F. Kennedy, but you’re no John F. Kennedy.

As a refresher for John Neely Kennedy, here are thumbnail sketches of the eight senators profiled by John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

John Quincy Adams broke with his party when he was the sole Federalist to vote in favor of the Louisiana Purchase. Adams continued voting against his party, but the big break came in 1807 when Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to enact an embargo against Great Britain to shut off international trade in retaliation against British aggression towards American merchant ships. The embargo would have had a disastrous effect on the Massachusetts economy but Adams agreed with Jefferson and helped steer the embargo bill into law. The Federalist held fast to a philosophy of appeasement toward the British and Adams resigned from his seat in 1808.

Daniel Webster was a Massachusetts senator (Whig). His ultimate downfall began in 1850 when he agreed to help Kentucky’s Henry Clay pass a compromise bill that would keep the Union together. Webster’s support of Clay’s bill enraged his constituents and ended his career as a Senator.

Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton was deeply opposed to the introduction of slavery into new territories. Benton was concerned that the issue was being exploited by Southern and Northern partisans and his position cost him the popularity he previously had in his state, and he was stripped of all of his committee memberships except Foreign Relations. In 1850, Benton was still opposed to the series of measures known as the Great Compromise and did not hesitate to make his feelings known. Benton was constantly called out of order by Vice President Millard Fillmore, the presiding officer. Benton was voted out of office in 1851, returned to Congress in 1853 as a representative, but lost his seat in 1855. Although his uncompromising stand on prohibiting slavery in new territories ended his political career his stand was one of the factors that kept Missouri from seceding from the Union.

Sam Houston refused to support the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and would have allowed the residents of territories from Iowa to the Rocky Mountains to decide the slavery issue themselves. Houston, a southerner, felt that the act would further divide the Union. Houston’s vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the breaking point. He was the only Southern Democrat to vote no. Houston was dismissed from the Senate by the Texas legislature in 1857. Two years later he was his election as governor of Texas was a major defeat of Southern pro-slavery extremists. In February 1861, the Texas legislature voted to secede from the Union. His refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy led to his ouster as governor in March 1861.

Edmund Ross of Kansas cast the deciding vote that acquitted President Andres Johnson who was impeached because Radical Republicans had passed a Tenure of Office Act to prevent a president from firing cabinet members without Senate consent in an attempt to try to stop Johnson from firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson believed Stanton was a tool of the Radicals who wanted to establish a military dictatorship in the South. Johnson favored a policy of reconstructing the Confederate states back into the Union as quickly as possible without unnecessary military intervention, as Lincoln had intended. When Johnson fired Stanton, the impeachment began. Ross voted against convicting Johnson despite suffering abuse from fellow Republicans and from the press. Neither he nor any other Republican who voted to acquit Andrew Johnson was reelected to the Senate, and Ross and his family suffered ostracism and poverty upon their return to Kansas in 1871. Ross was eventually vindicated when the Supreme Court declared the Tenure of Office Act to be unconstitutional, and praised by the press and the public for having saved the country from dictatorship.

Lucious Lamar, a Mississippi Democrat did the unpardonable when he gave a eulogy on the House floor as a freshman representative in 1874 upon the death of Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner was hated by most Southerners because of his opposition to slavery and his vehemence in denouncing slaveholders. In 1856 Sumner was brutally caned on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Lamar’s eulogy praised Sumner’s desire for unity between North and South and many in the South felt it a betrayal. In 1876, Lamar was elected to the Senate and once again acted in opposition to his constituents and his party when he agreed to the findings of an election commission that gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

George Norris, a Nebraska Republican, showed early on that he was not afraid to stand up to powerful individuals. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for authorization to arm American merchant ships, even though the United States was still officially neutral in the war. Although Wilson’s request was immediately popular with the American public, Norris felt that Wilson’s bill was a ruse by big business to get the United States into the war in Europe. Norris was the only member of the Nebraska delegation to vote against passage of the bill and he was criticized on every side. He offered to resign from the Senate, saying that if the people of Nebraska no longer felt that he was representing them adequately, he should step down. Norris touched off a firestorm of criticism in 1928 when he backed Al Smith, a Catholic Democrat who was anti-Prohibition, for president rather than Herbert Hoover, whom Norris felt was owned by monopolistic power companies. Norris went on to serve in the Senate until his defeat for re-election in 1942.

Robert A. Taft, the son of William Howard Taft, was a conservative’s conservative, with presidential aspirations. Taft made a speech at Kenyon College in October 1946 in which he opposed the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that were just ending. Taft felt the defendants were being tried under ex post facto laws (laws that apply retroactively, especially those which criminalize an action that was legal when it was committed).  Taft viewed the Constitution as the foundation of the American system of justice and felt that discarding its principles in order to punish a defeated enemy out of vengeance was a grave wrong. Taft so strongly believed in the wisdom of the Constitution that speaking out was more important than his personal ambitions or popularity. Many years later, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas agreed with Taft’s view that the Nuremberg Trials were an unconstitutional use of ex post facto laws.

Sadly, none of the courageous traits chronicled by Massachusetts’s John F. Kennedy can be found in Louisiana’s John Neely Kennedy.