Can we stop the exodus of teachers? -- May 5, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

If you’ve ever wondered, as I have, what former presidents chat about when they’re sitting together, waiting for an event to start, President Joe Biden gave us a glimpse.

Before the funeral of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright April 27 at the National Cathedral, Biden told former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton he would be welcoming the Teacher of the Year to the White House that afternoon.

“And they all talked about how much they enjoyed the years they were here with the Teacher of the Year event,” Biden said told the teachers later.

I can almost hear some readers snickering that teachers are a big Democratic constituency, so it’s no wonder Democratic presidents welcome them. That may be true, but it’s offpoint. 

Teachers are among the professionals -- along with first responders, health care workers and military personnel -- who deserve support and respect from all of us, regardless of our politics, especially during the pandemic.

But surveys suggest educators – everyone from teachers to bus drivers to cafeteria ladies -- are fed up, and many are considering quitting.

Fifty-five percent of educators say they’re thinking of leaving the field, according to a National Education Association member survey released in February. That includes 62% of Black and 59% of Hispanic NEA members.

Heavier workloads to cover for absent employees, pay that fails to keep up with inflation and lack of respect from students and parents are among the factors.

The average teacher salary nationwide is $66,397 for the 2021-22 school year, which, when adjusted for inflation, means pay is down 3.9% over the last decade, the NEA reported.

The average budgeted classroom teacher salary in Virginia for fiscal year 2022 is $62,101, less than a 1% increase from the previous fiscal year, the Virginia Department of Education reported in January. Virginia ranked 28^th in teacher salaries in the nation in 2019-2000, according to NEA calculations.

Contributing to burnout is the fact schools and teachers have become pawns in our culture wars.

In Virginia, candidate Glenn Youngkin campaigned on restoring educational excellence but as governor launched a “Help Education” tip line so parents can report – call it what it is: snitch on – school officials who teach “divisive” lessons. That’s not supporting schools and teachers; that’s intimidation.  

Worse, he refused to release records related to the tip line under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming they are “working papers and correspondence.” So much for transparency. The Washington Post and a dozen other news organizations filed suit April 13, seeking the records.

At the Teacher of the Year celebration, Biden decried the politicization of education, saying: “Today, there are too many politicians trying to score political points, trying to ban books, even math books . . . Did you ever think, when you’d be teaching, that you’d be worried about book burnings and banning books, all because it doesn’t fit somebody’s political agenda?”

Teachers have enough to worry about, with staying healthy and helping their students who have fallen seven to nine months behind in their learning during COVID-19.

The activism of conservative-leaning parents, ginned up by closed schools and mask mandates, is probably here to stay for the foreseeable future, but other parents also need to step up to support teachers and make their voices heard. 

Biden touted the American Rescue Plan, which he signed in March 2021, that included $122 billion in emergency relief funds for elementary and secondary schools as well as an additional $8 billion to states and school districts to meet needs of students with disabilities and $800 million for students experiencing homelessness.

All 50 states submitted plans for spending the money and are implementing them. Localities added about 279,000 education jobs in 2021 and 46,000 more in the first two months of 2022. But more needs to be done to help teachers.

“American teachers have dedicated their lives to teaching our children and lifting them up. We’ve got to stop making them the target of the culture wars,” Biden said.

And he added, “It’s not enough to give teachers praise. We ought to give you a raise.”

© 2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Should Breyer retire? When the personal is political -- Oct. 14, 2021 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

For months, progressives have hounded Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire.

An online petition urges him to “put the country first” and retire now. A billboard truck has driven around the Supreme Court building, and two protesters interrupted a Smithsonian Associates’ program with Breyer Oct. 4 and unfurled a banner with the same message.

At 83, Breyer is the oldest and senior liberal justice, having served since 1994. The two other liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, are in their 60s. A younger liberal justice with a lifetime appointment could help shape the country’s direction for decades.

President Joe Biden’s window to nominate and the Senate to confirm a replacement could slam shut after the 2022 elections. If Democrats lose their razor-thin majority in the Senate, as seems likely, Mitch McConnell would become Senate majority leader again and have the power to bedevil Biden on nominations as he did President Barack Obama.

But justices often resist hanging up their robes and may regret doing so. Sandra Day O’Connor retired at 75 to care for her beloved husband with Alzheimer’s disease in 2006, but his condition deteriorated and soon he could not recognize her.

Retiring was “the biggest mistake, the dumbest thing I ever did,” O’Connor told Evan Thomas, her biographer.

Breyer deserves the respect -- and space -- to decide when he retires.

He knows his legacy is at stake. In an interview with The New York Times, he favorably recounted something the late Justice Antonin Scalia said: “He said, `I don’t want somebody appointed who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years.’”

No one ever knows what’s ahead, and Scalia died suddenly of natural causes at 79, on a hunting trip in Texas in February 2016.

About one hour after Scalia’s death was confirmed, McConnell, then majority leader, announced the Senate should not confirm a replacement in a presidential election year.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a respected moderate many Republicans had supported. McConnell refused to allow a vote and later said blocking the nomination was his proudest moment. Biden named Garland attorney general.

When liberals nipped at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s heels to retire at age 81, so Obama could nominate her successor, she dodged the issue by asking rhetorically in an interview with Reuters, “So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me?”

Her death at 87 ended her tenure just two months before the 2020 presidential election. Biden’s predecessor and McConnell rushed confirmation of conservative Amy Coney Barrett, 48, through the Republican-controlled Senate.

Today’s conservative court -- six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats – is teeing up cases that could undo years of settled law on abortion rights and other hot topics. Breyer, a Clinton appointee, wants to participate in these cases. He has work to do.

Justices often insist that the court’s judicial decisions are not political. Breyer makes that argument in his new book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.”

And yet the justices are well aware of the political ramifications of their personal decision to stay or go.

Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist was once asked if it is “inappropriate for a justice to take into account the party or politics of the sitting president when deciding whether to step down from the court.”

The question came from Walter Dellinger, Duke University law professor, who wrote about it later in a 2017 article for Slate.

 “No, it’s not inappropriate,” Rehnquist replied. “Deciding when to step down from the court is not a judicial act.”

Asked recently about Rehnquist’s comment, Breyer said, “That’s true.”

Meanwhile, the political clock ticks louder. It’s still possible for Breyer to retire after this term and for Biden and Senate Democrats to install a liberal successor, likely a black woman, before the midterm elections.

But Breyer’s indecision has made the task more difficult, and he has ensured the highest court will be a key political issue in next year’s Senate races.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Think you know impeachment? Take our quiz -- Jan. 10, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

New Democratic House members are prodding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get on with impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. But Pelosi and other seasoned Democratic leaders have put the brakes on such talk, saying they need to wait for special counsel Robert Mueller to present his findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

For his part, Trump says he can’t be impeached because he’s doing a good job. He tweeted Jan. 4: “They only want to impeach me because they know they can’t win in 2020, too much success!”

So what exactly does impeachment entail? Test your knowledge with our quiz. Answers are below.   

1       1 Under the Constitution, who can be impeached?

A.      Only the president

B.      Only the president and vice president

C.      The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States

2       2  Which of these are causes for impeachment and removal from office as set forth in the Constitution?

A.      Repeated lies and criminal behavior

B.      Treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors

C.      Collusion with a foreign entity  

3       3 What happens in the House during impeachment proceedings?

A.      The House brings formal charges of malfeasance

B.      The House has a trial  

C.      The House has the power to remove the president from office

D.      All of the above

4       4 What is the Senate’s role in impeachment?

A.      The Senate rubberstamps the House’s verdict

B.      The Senate conducts a trial with House members as prosecutors

C.      Only the Senate has the power to remove the president from office

D.      B and C 

5          5 Which two presidents have been impeached?

A.      Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton

B.      Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton

C.      Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton  

6      6 Which president was impeached and removed from office?

A.      Andrew Johnson

B.      Bill Clinton

C.      Richard Nixon

D.      None

7       7 Who is next in line to be president after the president and vice president?

A.      Speaker of the House

B.      Secretary of State

C.      President Pro Tempore of the Senate

D.      Congress would elect the president

8       8   What vote is required in the House to impeach a president?

A.      Simple majority

B.      Two-thirds

9      9 What vote is required in the Senate to remove a president?

A.      Simple majority

B.      Two-thirds

1      10 Who presides over an impeachment trial in the Senate?

A.      The senator with the most seniority

B.      The Supreme Court justice selected by other justices

C.      Chief Justice of the United States

1      11 How did impeachment affect President Bill Clinton’s job approval ratings?

A.      His ratings plummeted to the lowest level of his presidency

B.      His ratings jumped to the highest level of his presidency

1      12 How did Republican impeachment proceedings against Clinton affect the approval ratings of Republicans?

A.      The approval rating of the Republican Party jumped 10 percent

B.      The Republican approval rating plummeted 10 percent

Answers:

1)      C – Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution

2)      B – The Constitution doesn’t define “high crimes and misdemeanors,” leaving it to  Congress.

3)      A -- The House’s role is to bring the charges.

4)      D – The Senate holds a trial and has sole power to remove from office.

5)      A – Nixon resigned after the House drew up articles of impeachment but before he would have been impeached.  

6)      D – No presidents have been removed from office.

7)      A – Yes, Nancy Pelosi would be next in line if President Trump and Vice President Pence were unable to serve.

8)      A

9)      B

10)   C

11)   B – After the House approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton for lying under oath and obstructing justice in December 1998, his approval rating jumped 10 points to 73 percent, even though most people thought he had lied and was less honest and trustworthy, a Gallup poll found.

12)  B – Gallup found less than one-third of the country had a favorable view of the GOP.

SOURCES: Senate.gov, House.gov, National Archives, Library of Congress, Gallup.com

© 2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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FDA's good deed: protecting kids from e-cigs -- Sept. 13, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Remember Joe Camel? In the 1980s and 1990s, anti-smoking advocates blamed the cartoon figure for encouraging kids to smoke.

R.J. Reynolds insisted it was not marketing to children but in 1997 pulled ads for Camel cigarettes that portrayed the “Smooth character.” The White House praised the company’s decision.  

“We must put tobacco ads like Joe Camel out of our children’s reach forever,” President Bill Clinton said.

Twenty-one years later, President Donald Trump’s administration blames flavored e-cigarettes for encouraging kids to vape.

“We cannot allow a whole new generation to become addicted to nicotine,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, declared Wednesday.

Those were welcome words from an administration that’s been busier rolling back regulations than proposing new ones to protect health.

In some ways, foes of tobacco have won. After decades of anti-smoking messages that cigarettes are dirty and smelly, only about 16 percent of American adults smoke.

But e-cigarettes present a new health danger in part because they look nothing like conventional cigarettes. Some sleek nicotine-delivery systems resemble a flash drive and can be charged in a computer’s USB port.

“Experience freedom from ash and odor. No mess. No fuss,” Juul Labs, the dominate e-cigarette maker with 72 percent of the market, says on its website.

E-cigarettes do not have the harmful chemicals of regular cigarettes, but some provide as much addictive nicotine as a pack of cigarettes.

“The developing adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable to addiction,” FDA said in a statement. 

That makes e-cigs “an almost ubiquitous – and dangerous – trend among teens,” Gottlieb said. “The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth, and the resulting path to addiction, must end. It’s simply not tolerable.”

More than two million middle and high school students used e-cigarettes last year, he said, as he announced a series of measures aimed at stopping the “epidemic” of teen vaping.

The FDA sent more than 1,100 warning letters to stores for the illegal sale of e-cigarettes to young people under 18 and issued 131 fines to stores that continued selling to minors.

The agency also gave Juul and four other manufacturers 60 days to prove they can keep the devices out of kids’ hands. If they don’t, the FDA threatened to pull flavored products off the market.

Trump’s FDA last year extended an Obama-era deadline for review of most e-cigarette products from August of last year to 2022. Public health and anti-smoking groups are fighting the extension in court. If e-cigarette companies fail to improve their products voluntarily, Gottlieb said, he may reconsider the longer deadline.

E-cigarette makers insist they are not marketing to children. But that’s what tobacco companies argued – both in company statements and at congressional hearings – before Joe Camel was put out to pasture.

The Vapor Technology Association, the industry’s trade group, says the products are designed for adults who want to quit smoking, and companies want to keep e-cigarettes away from minors. Vaping is safer than conventional cigarettes, the industry contends, and FDA’s actions could make public health worse by sending millions of ex-smokers back to conventional cigarettes.

The potential for helping adults quit smoking makes this war on nicotine more complicated than simply killing a cartoon character.

The administration is “committed to advancing policies that promote the potential of e-cigarettes to help adult smokers move away from combustible cigarettes,” Gottlieb said, but “that work can’t come at the expense of kids.”

Critics of FDA’s campaign called the agency’s measures a gift to the tobacco industry, which has found e-cigarettes a tough competitor. Tobacco stocks surged on the FDA news.

Health and anti-smoking groups praised the FDA’s plan, but said more needs to be done sooner rather than later. Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids wants an immediate ban on all flavored e-cigarettes.

A generation ago, a tobacco company recognized Joe Camel was a public relations nightmare and needed to take a hike.  

E-cigarette companies need to recognize their own p.r. disaster. To prove their products are only for adults, they should ditch sweet flavors like mango, fruit medley and cool cucumber. That would be kid friendly.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Let's celebrate a president who never stopped working -- Aug. 30, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Jimmy Carter, who turns 94 on Oct. 1, swung a hammer this week at a Habitat for Humanity project in Indiana.

Sweating in the hot sun while doing manual labor may not be most people’s ideal activity for their 90s, but the former president and his wife Rosalynn, 91, have helped build homes for poor families for the last 35 years.

Carter says they “get more out of it than we put into it.”

As we mark Labor Day by taking a day off, let us also celebrate former President Jimmy Carter, working man.

When voters in the 1980 election sent Carter packing after one lackluster term in the White House, his peanut business in Plains, Ga., was in shambles. He had to create his next act.

An ex-president longer than anyone else, he long ago proved his character and redeemed his reputation by living modestly in the same ranch house in Plains he built in 1961, by refusing to trade on the presidency, and by performing good works.

“The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want `to capitalize financially on being in the White House,’” Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan wrote in a profile of “The un-celebrity president” in the Aug. 17 Washington Post. 

Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle reportedly landed a $65 million joint book deal last year. Bill and Hillary Clinton command hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single speech, and daughter Chelsea isn’t far behind.

"I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter told the Post. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”

Carter set to work writing books – and has turned out about three dozen. He founded 

The Carter Center in Atlanta, a nonprofit that prevents and resolves conflicts, fights disease and promotes freedom and democracy around the world. He still teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.

Studies show volunteering helps the volunteer live longer, but Carter’s long life is also testament to medical innovation. Three years ago, his future looked iffy.

In August 2015, he said his melanoma had spread to his liver and there were four cancerous spots in his brain. He had surgery to remove the small tumor from his liver, and doctors then used a relatively new immunotherapy and radiation treatment. Four months later, he was cancer free.

Maybe you saw news on social media in this month that Carter’s cancer was back. A tweet shared 26,000 times and then another tweet with 156,000 shares asked for prayers for Carter.

Fortunately it wasn’t so.

The Carter Center tweeted on Aug. 22: “Stories in the last day on social media stating that Jimmy Carter has cancer again are based on old news reports in 2015. There are no updates to our last statement about his health, and a recent scan showed no cancer.”

Carter has mostly refrained from criticizing the current president; he says he prays for him.

But, he allows, President Donald Trump is “very careless with the truth.”

This especially matters to Carter because during his 1976 campaign he closed nearly every speech with a pledge never to lie to the American people. The country was bruised and battered by the lies that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.  

Reporters groaned when they heard the pledge, but the unknown Georgian impressed voters with his sincerity. Carter says he stuck to his pledge.

“I think I went through my campaign and my presidency without ever lying to the people or making a deliberately false statement,” he told John Dickerson Tuesday on “CBS This Morning. “And I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to reinsert into politics these days.”

In contrast, the Post Fact Checker tallied 4,229 false or misleading statements by Trump in 558 days.

Carter has inspired many to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, including talk show host David Letterman, who was in Indiana with him this week.  

Seeing Carter and working on the projects “is such a lovely break from the cynicism of life,” Letterman told Dickerson.

We could all use a break from cynicism. Thank you, Jimmy Carter.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Can't we get along and pass paid family leave? -- July 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump, the father of five who boasts he has never changed a diaper, wants to give new moms and dads paid parental leave.

His 2018 budget proposes six months’ paid leave for parents after the birth or adoption of a child “so all families can afford to take time to recover from childbirth and bond with a new child without worrying about paying their bills.”

During last year’s campaign, though, Trump proposed paid maternity leave for biological mothers only. 

“Maternity leave has a 1990s feel to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said last September. “It’s not 2016. Because in 2016 not only do women take off to take care of kids when they’re born, but men do too.”

Those who take time off mostly do so without pay.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, workers in companies with 50 or more employees are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a baby, sick family member or themselves. Many parents can’t afford to take leave.  

Only 13 percent of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave through their employers in March 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most likely to benefit: highly paid, full-time, managerial employees who work for large companies.  

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton promised 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and those taking care of seriously ill family members.

At a time when politicians of all stripes talk about how family friendly they are, first daughter Ivanka Trump has made paid family leave her issue.

Here’s the problem: Almost everybody favors helping moms and dads spend more time with their children in the abstract -- and if someone else is footing the bill.  

Trump wants to run paid family leave through state Unemployment Insurance programs, which means payments are unlikely to cover anything close to full salary. His budget asks for about $25 billion for 10 years and says states will have flexibility on how to provide and finance payments.

The plan has drawn deafening silence on Capitol Hill, where it is competing with Democratic and Republican paid family leave plans.

The leading Democratic plan calls for a nationwide insurance program funded by employers and employees through the Social Security Administration.  Republicans favor tax credits, which could be part of tax reform.

After meeting with congressional Republicans last month, Ivanka Trump seemed to acknowledge a bumpy road ahead.

“Just left a productive meeting on the Hill to discuss issues affecting American working families, including childcare & paid family leave!” she tweeted.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said: “And we’ll see what the next step is, but it’s certainly something we’re going to continue to work on.”

Critics on the left say Trump’s plan is stingy and should cover those caring for sick family members. The business community says requiring employers to pay for paid leave will cost jobs and hurt the economy.

Critics on the right, wary of Ivanka Trump’s bona fides as a Republican, worry about another big government program. A Wall Street Journal editorial May 26 knocked her plan as “The Ivanka Entitlement.”

“As usual the policy sounds unobjectionable but the details are messy. If the benefit is available regardless of income, the government will subsidize affluent families who don’t need assistance. But inevitably the benefit will phase out as income rises like dozens of other federal subsidies. That could create another disincentive for work and advancement that traps families in poverty,” the Journal’s editors wrote.

She responded Wednesday in a letter to the editor: “Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program – with a reasonable time limit and a benefit cap – isn’t an entitlement. It’s an investment in America’s working families.”

In a sign of our toxic political discourse, that last, innocuous sentence rankled some Republicans because Democrats often cast their spending priorities as investments.

But spending to give workers a helping hand as they start and care for their families is a worthy investment. Democrats and Republicans should put aside their bickering and work together to make paid family leave a reality.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Regrets, they have many -- April 13, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER  

This is the apology spring.

Not since President Bill Clinton went on his mea culpa tour in 1998 to atone for Monica Lewinsky have so many politicians, public figures and corporations done indefensible things for which they’re oh-so-sorry.

“I’m having to become quite an expert in this business of asking for forgiveness,” Clinton commented at the time.

In the last month or so, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, United CEO Oscar Munoz, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, and Pepsi, among others, have had to make public apologies.

Circumstances varied greatly, but the wave of apologies shows the power of social media to record and broadcast misdeeds and arouse anger. More telling, the need for apologies shows that even in our seemingly anything-goes culture, words and actions still count.

Standards of decency and behavior still exist, and public figures and companies cross some lines at their peril.

Exhibit A is Spicer’s preposterous comment at a press briefing Tuesday that “even Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons” as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did. Spicer also referred to Nazi death camps as “Holocaust centers.”

Amid calls for him to be fired, Spicer offered a full-throated apology the next morning, calling his remarks “inexcusable and reprehensible.”

“It is really painful to myself to know I did something like that. I made a mistake; there’s no other way to say it,” he told MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren.

His quick and abject apology for an abysmal choice of words may allow Spicer to move on and save his job.

Personal misbehavior often leads to prolonged apologies by politicians trying to survive, a la Bill Clinton. But nothing focuses the mind like potential jail time.

Bentley’s latest apology and resignation as governor Monday came after he entered a plea deal in which he avoided jail in return for pleading guilty to two misdemeanors involving campaign funds. The deal came as impeachment proceedings were to begin and at the conclusion of a sex scandal involving a top aide.

After videos of a passenger being manhandled on an overbooked United plane went viral, CEO Munoz first backed up the airline and blamed the passenger. Then, he apologized in email and on TV, saying he felt “shame” and promising refunds to those who witnessed the “horrific” incident.

It’s possible Munoz felt shame before lawsuits loomed, before calls for a boycott spread, and before United got hammered in China because the mistreated passenger was Asian. But the tone of the response certainly changed when the PR crisis worsened.  

Apologies have to be done right or they can backfire. In the 2006 Virginia Senate campaign, Sen. George Allen attempted to make amends for using an ethnic slur to an Indian-American student who was videotaping Allen’s rallies for opponent Jim Webb. 

“I do apologize if he’s offended by that,” Allen said of the student. The apology was seen as tepid at best, if not insincere. The incident wasn’t the only flub in Allen’s campaign, and he narrowly lost the election.

Fox’s O’Reilly ran into a buzz saw last month when he made a crack that Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’ hair looked like a “James Brown wig.” It was hardly the worst thing O’Reilly is accused of saying and doing, but going after a congresswoman’s looks is out of bounds. The comment reverberated on the Internet.

“That was stupid. I apologize,” O’Reilly said.

O’Reilly, whose sponsors deserted him in droves after several women accused him of sexual harassment, has gone on vacation.

And then there’s Pepsi’s ad starring celebrity Kendall Jenner defusing a stand-off at a generic protest by offering a police officer a can of Pepsi. The ad was widely seen as insensitive and trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement.

Pepsi first stood by the ad but pulled it hours later.

“Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize,” said the company, which apologized to Jenner as well.  

Saturday Night Live mocked the ad as tone deaf. A non-controversial ad would never have received the attention, which goes to show confession is good for the soul, and an apology can be good for business.  

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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No joke: Trump will be oldest first-term president -- Jan. 5, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Vice President Joe Biden quickened the pulse of some Democrats last month when he said he may run for president. In four years, he’ll be 78. Was he serious?

Die-hard Bernie Sanders fans want to believe he still has a shot at the White House. In 2020, Sanders will be 79.

In comparison, Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic presidential possibility, is a youngster. She’ll be a mere 71 in four years.

Donald J. Trump enters the Oval Office at threescore years and 10, the age Mark Twain at his own 70^th birthday party called the “Scriptural statute of limitations.”

Months older than Ronald Reagan at his first inauguration, Trump will be the oldest first-term president in history.

Most Americans don’t remember that even younger presidents have had serious health problems. Woodrow Wilson was 63 when he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919 and was gravely ill for the last year and a half of his term.

Dwight Eisenhower was 65 when he had a massive heart attack in Denver in 1955 and spent seven weeks in the hospital there. The White House kept the public in the dark about the severity of both cases. Eisenhower recovered and won a second term.

Age was hardly mentioned during the last campaign, which offered voters a choice between grandparents. Grandpa Trump is a year older than Grandma Hillary Clinton, but he gibed that she lacked the stamina to be president.

Clinton and Trump released letters from their doctors attesting to their health, with Clinton providing more details. Neither went as far as GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008. To reassure voters about his physical fitness, McCain, then 71, released more than a thousand pages of medical records.

While Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is 57, most of Trump’s Cabinet picks are white males over 60, reflecting the growing trend of working later in life. Nearly 20 percent of Americans over 65 hold full or part-time jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year.

The Oval Office, though, has traditionally been a place for the middle-aged. The average age of presidents at their first inauguration is 55. John F. Kennedy was inaugurated at 43, Bill Clinton at 46 and Barack Obama, 47. Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president at 42, after the assassination of William McKinley.

When World War II hero Bob Dole ran for president in 1996, he had to put up with late-night jokes about his age – 72.

“Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist,” David Letterman said in a monologue. “I understand this because a lot of people would look at a glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, `What a great place to put my teeth.’” Dole lost to the decades-younger Clinton.

Perhaps the all-time master at obliterating the age issue was Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Reagan, 73, was running for a second term against Democrat Walter Mondale, a lad of 56. Asked during a presidential debate if he was up for another four years, the Gipper was ready.

“I’m not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan quipped, putting away the age issue, at least through the election.

Reagan, who survived being shot and colon cancer as president, even dared to tell self-deprecating age jokes.

“One of my favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never judge a president by his age, only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I’ve stopped worrying,” Reagan told the National Alliance for Senior Citizens in 1984.

“When I go in for a physical now, they no longer ask me how old I am. They just carbon-date me,” he said at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 1987.

It was easy for Reagan to joke about getting older when he was often seen riding horses and clearing brush at his California ranch. He wasn’t diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until several years after he left office.

So far, Trump – who boasts about his vigor and has a glamorous, 46-year-old wife -- has managed to avoid age jokes. We’ll see whether his age becomes a punch line in four years when he’s 74.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.