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.

What would Ike want? His farm provides hints -- Oct. 22, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At home on their farm in Pennsylvania, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower and his wife Mamie, like millions of other Americans in the 1960s, ate their supper on TV trays, watching Walter Cronkite.

Ike painted in oils, practiced his golf swing and read. Mamie devotedly watched soap operas.

With nearly all the original furnishings still in place, their home tells us that the Eisenhowers had modest tastes and traditional values. There are many framed family photos and knickknacks Mamie collected. But there’s no glory wall of pictures of Ike with kings and potentates, no medals, no political paraphernalia.

Ike was a five-star general, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II and a two-term president from 1953 to 1961, but he hated self-glorification and showing off.

  

The Eisenhowers donated their farm adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield to the National Park Service, which opened it to the public in 1980 as the Eisenhower National Historic Site, a fitting memorial to the 34^th president.

It should be obvious that a memorial to Eisenhower in the nation’s capital should also reflect his values, but nothing is simple in Washington. 

Congress approved a memorial in 1999, three decades after Ike’s death, and about $65 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent so far on a design, Eisenhower Memorial Commission staff and K Street offices, and other costs. The total pricetag is $142 million.

The first spade of dirt has still not been turned – fortunately. That means there’s still time to get the memorial right.

On the 125^th anniversary of Ike’s birth – he was born Oct. 14, 1890 – Congress should stand with critics, including the Eisenhower family, who find the memorial designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry too grandiose and expensive.

“I think what the critics want is a memorial that’s reflective of Ike’s humility and modesty – and that is not Frank Gehry’s four-acre behemoth,” Bruce Cole, an art historian and a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission appointed by President Obama, said in an interview.

“I would like to see a fitting and proper memorial,” Cole said.

I agree, especially after visiting the Eisenhower Farm a few days ago.

Gehry’s latest design has a seven-story stainless steel screen or “tapestry” as a backdrop to two sets of bronze sculptures in front of huge stone blocks, topped by quotations. The location is an urban park adjacent to the Education Department and other federal office buildings at the foot of Capitol Hill, off the National Mall.

 

Because of the design controversy, Congress has not approved construction money for the memorial since 2012. The Senate Appropriations Committee, citing “significant unresolved issues,” approved just $1 million for the project for the next fiscal year, the same as last year. The House Appropriations Committee zeroed out all funding and urged a “reset,” a new design that meets the approval of the Eisenhower family.

Ike’s son John S. D. Eisenhower asked in 2012 that the commission scrap the Gehry design and build instead on Eisenhower Square, “a green, open space with a simple statue in the middle, and quotations.” He died in 2013, and Ike’s grandchildren have been lobbying Congress for a more respectful memorial.

Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, 92, who was wounded in World War II, said last month that he will raise $150 million in private funds to build the memorial.

“This is not being built for the grandchildren,” Dole told The New York Times. “The voice that hasn’t been listened to is us guys for whom Ike was our hero, and we’d like to be around for the dedication.”

Only about one million World War II vets are still with us and fewer Americans every year remember Ike. Last year, 58,240 people visited the Eisenhower Farm, down from 182,387 visitors in 1981.

Dole raised $170 million for the World War II Memorial, but Eisenhower Commission member Cole predicts that “it’s going to be extremely difficult to raise money for the Gehry design, which has been so controversial and toxic since it was unveiled.”

The Eisenhower Memorial should be appropriate for Ike, restrained and dignified. It’s time for a reset.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Trump's gift to Hillary is born in the USA -- Aug. 20, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Here we go again. Donald Trump’s proposal to stop birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants is forcing Republicans into a debate they can’t win and should have ended decades ago.

In 1996, the Republican Party Platform called for a constitutional amendment to end automatic citizenship for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or are not long-term residents. The party's presidential and vice presidential nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp both rejected the plank. 

“Born in America, you’re an American,” Kemp declared.

But that wasn’t the last word.

Since 2007, as anti-immigrant sentiment has flowed, a few congressional Republicans have backed bills to stop birthright citizenship. A measure by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has 27 cosponsors, all Republicans. 

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing on birthright citizenship in April that he rarely has a conversation about immigration policy without someone asking about automatic citizenship. 

“The question of whether our forefathers meant for birthright citizenship in all circumstances to be the law of the land is far from settled. In any event we must still determine if it is the right policy for America today,” Goodlatte said.

But there’s little appetite for the issue in the Senate, even among Republicans. A bill introduced by Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana has zero cosponsors.

Now comes Trump and his extreme immigration plan released Sunday. He cited Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid as wanting to end birthright citizenship, which Reid did -- in 1993. By 1999 Reid called his own proposal an embarrassment, high on his “list of mistakes.”

“I didn’t understand the issue,” Reid explained, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in December 1999. “I’m embarrassed that I made such a proposal.”

Naturally, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was quick to criticize Trump’s plan.

“It is disturbing that Republican presidential candidates continue to embrace extreme anti-immigrant positions as core pieces of their immigration platform,” Lorella Praeli, Hillary for America Latino Outreach director, said in a statement.

If Democrats now are united behind birthright citizenship, Republicans are in disarray. Presidential hopefuls Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal support ending automatic citizenship. Others, including Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum have supported changing the law in the past.

Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush prefer sticking with the law.   

“Mr. Trump can say that he’s for this because people are frustrated that it’s abused. But we ought to fix the problem rather than take away rights,” Bush said on CBS. There must be ways short of a constitutional amendment to deal with the phenomenon of pregnant women entering the country to give birth so that their babies become citizens, Bush said.

Bush knows his brother George got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 presidential election, according to exit polls, a modern record for a Republican. In 2012, Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, after his comment that undocumented immigrants should “self deport.”

The Constitution as originally written did not define citizenship, but since after the Civil War, anyone born in the United States has been a citizen. The 14^th Amendment in 1868, a Reconstruction measure pressed by Republicans, overturned the Supreme Court’s odious Dred Scott decision that no black persons who had been “imported into the country, and sold as slaves” or their descendants could ever become citizens.

The 14^th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen even though the parents could never become citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Changing the law would require passage of a constitutional amendment, a feat of bipartisanship nearly unimaginable in this era. Most legal scholars consider the 14^th amendment settled.

So do pragmatic Republicans, those who actually want to win in 2016 – and not merely make debating points.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about immigration,” Trump bragged at the first Republican candidates' debate. He’s right. Most GOP candidates would prefer not to alienate a large swath of Hispanic and other immigrant voters with a plan that’s going nowhere.

But Trump might be making someone happy. Her name is Hillary.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

How can GOP win young voters? June 6, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

After back-to-back presidential defeats, the Republican Party is obsessed with reinventing itself. Or, more accurately, it’s obsessed with talking about reinventing itself.

This is like someone who, having gained 25 pounds, debates the virtues of various diets while lying on the couch, eating junk food. It’s a first step, but a tiny one.

   

Poor Bob Dole had the temerity to say that this isn’t his Republican party. Nearly 90, the former senator and Republican presidential nominee said last month that he doubted whether he, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan could even be nominated for president by the current party.

“I think they ought to put a sign on the (Republican National) Committee doors that says ‘Closed for Repairs,’” and spend the next six months coming up with a positive agenda, Dole said on Fox News Sunday.

Conservatives pounced, calling Dole old, irrelevant and worse. Eventually, though, status-quo Republicans may be forced to hear the wake-up calls. Yes, plural.

  

 In March, a Republican task force commissioned by Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus warned in its “Growth and Opportunity Project” report that the party has marginalized itself and risks future presidential losses unless it makes changes.  Among the problems is age. 

“Young people are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents…When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us,” the report said.

Reagan may be a beloved GOP icon, but no one under the age of 51 was old enough to vote for him when he first ran for president, the report noted, adding, “Our party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones.” 

It’s even worse than that.

When voters under 30 were asked what words they associate with “Republican Party,” they responded: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.

And the Democratic Party? Soft, said some, but most picked tolerant, diverse and open-minded.

These are findings from a new report by the College Republican National Committee. The committee analyzed voter polls and conducted its own focus groups and survey of voters under 30 for “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation.” The report calls on Republicans to turn the GOP brand around, update their tech presence and rethink their policies.

Young people have been voting Democratic for president since 1992, so long that it may seem the natural order. President Barack Obama won 5 million more votes of people under 30 than Mitt Romney did last year, and that was enough to ensure Obama’s victory, despite Romney’s winning 2 million more votes of people over 30.

 

It wasn’t always this way. In 1972, the first presidential election when 18-year-olds could vote, 52 percent of voters under 30 cast ballots for Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan won 59 percent of young voters in 1984, and George W. Bush lost young voters by just 2 points in 2000 – while losing seniors 65 and more than 4 points.

Democrats should not enjoy the Republicans’ dilemma too much.  It’s not that young people love Democrats, the college Republicans report. It’s that young people hate Republicans more.

At the start of their survey, the College Republicans’ researchers asked young voters to complete two non-political sentences: “I hope people see me as…” And “I hope people never see me as…” They were given a long list of attributes.This was before any mention of politics, and the idea was to get a sense of what the young people valued. 

Interestingly, the most common answer to “I hope people see me as…” was intelligent, followed by caring and hardworking. Way down the list were creative, unique, adventurous and cool.

And “I hope people never see me as…” stupid. Lazy and incompetent were close behind.  Farther down were closed-minded, negative and unhelpful.  

“For the GOP, being thought of as closed-minded is hardly a good thing. But if the GOP is thought of as the “stupid party,” it may as well be the kiss of death,” the report said.

Cue the comments last year by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who was right on target when he said Republicans have to stop being “the stupid party.”

But how? What can Republicans do to win back the youth vote in presidential elections? I’d love to hear your ideas.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Family values, fundraising, fairness -- and Obama's stance on same-sex marriage -- May 10, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

To those who were shocked, shocked to hear that campaign politics might have figured into President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, I have bad news. It was ever thus.

Obama fired off a fundraising email the day after he said he personally supports same-sex marriage. Unseemly, yes, but hardly surprising. Political strategizing has been at the heart of the war over marriage equality since the Defense of Marriage Act was a glimmer in Bob Dole’s eye 16 years ago.

As President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, co-sponsored the Senate bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Dole wanted to stir the “family values” pot, but Clinton grabbed the spoon.

As Dole shepherded the bill banning same-sex marriage through Congress, with the help of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the White House announced that yes, indeed, Clinton would sign it. And in September he did so, ignoring the outrage of gay supporters. The re-election campaign soon ran ads on Christian radio stations, lauding the president for fighting for “our values.”

Clinton sanded the edges off what Dole had hoped would be a wedge issue in that campaign. But the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, lives as the law of the land. Obama disavowed DOMA and has refused to defend it in court – but the law still blocks thousands of lawfully wedded same-sex couples from receiving benefits available to heterosexual couples. We’ve yet to hear how Obama proposes to change that.

In 1996, no state had legalized same-sex marriage. Today, six states and the District of Columbia permit it, but under DOMA no state must recognize same-sex marriages that are performed in another state.

Section 3 of the law specifies that for federal purposes ``the word `marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.”

The law effectively cuts out same-sex married couples from more than 1,100 federal benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.

Married same-sex couples cannot file joint tax returns, take unpaid family leave, receive surviving spouse benefits under Social Security or receive family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees.

Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News Wednesday that, “For me, personally, it is important…to go ahead and affirm that I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married.” But he dodged questions about what he will actually do, saying the issue should be left to the states.

A day earlier, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage, reinforcing current law with a constitutional amendment.

It’s difficult to imagine how Obama can stick to the stance that his views are merely personal when he says fairness and justice are at stake. He stood for fairness when he backed repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevented gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The main rationale for not defending DOMA in the courts was Obama’s determination that the law was unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote House Speaker John A. Boehner in February 2011. Nevertheless, law is law, and the president ordered his attorney general to continue enforcing it.

House Republicans hired a lawyer to defend the law in the courts.

The Supreme Court likely will decide the issues at some point. For now, Obama has a campaign to run and pay for. One in six of his top bundlers, who have brought in $500,000 or more, have publicly identified themselves as gay, The Washington Post reported.

Obama is trying to walk a line between voters with strong feelings. He stressed in the ABC interview that he deeply respects pastors and others who believe in traditional marriage, and he indicated that same-sex marriage isn’t a current priority.

“I’m not gonna be spending most of my time talking about this, because, frankly, my job as president right now, my biggest priority, is to make sure that we’re growing the economy, that we’re putting people back to work, that we’re managing the draw-down in Afghanistan effectively,” he said.

But he’s not shy about using the issue to bring in campaign cash. For now, Obama’s strategy is to describe himself as a practicing Christian who believes in the Golden Rule.

“Treat others the way you’d want to be treated,” he said before boarding Air Force One for a trip to the West Coast for fundraisers, where his support of same-sex marriage could boost his haul.

©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.