“There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railway man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.” — Theodore Roosevelt
You have all heard of President Teddy Roosevelt, I hope. Now you know how he felt about being a father and the importance of that job compared to all others.
I have been thinking about Roosevelt, not as a father, but as the successor to the father of our country, George Washington, and, of course, most of the men who succeeded and preceded those two as leaders of the United States of America. And, since Teddy’s term ended 110 years ago, we have to include the 20th-century presidents as well as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
For certain, they each had their own flaws, but I believe history will confirm that when it was time to act as a father would — to protect, defend, advise, teach and lead by example and love his extended family — they were rarely found wanting. Except in the case of the current occupant of the White House.
As we celebrate Father’s Day we should be mindful of the incredible responsibility required of fatherhood as well as the awesome opportunity that is provided every father to help shape the generation that comes after him. And we need to also consider how, as the elected successor to George Washington, President Trump is fulfilling his fatherly responsibilities because that will be instructive to the nation as we think about who will have assumed that mantle come next Father’s Day.
Sometimes men should not be fathers. Some are physically, mentally, socially and morally incapable of being responsible for the coming generation of Americans. I am not talking about Donald Trump’s immediate family — they will be judged not by their father but how they have grown in his image — but by his extended family, the people of the United States of America.
Has he acted in a way that makes us all better societal members, eager to support and respect our fellow citizens? Has he taught us by example how to act in an ethical and moral way, being concerned for the well-being of our friends, neighbors and countrymen? Has he led us toward a more peaceful and harmonious existence with the other people on this planet toward the end that our children’s lives will be better lived both qualitatively and quantitatively?
Have his lessons in how to treat the least among us been consistent with the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, and have his examples of governmental assistance to those who need our help, deserve our help and are people who we as a nation want to help, been consistent with our past presidents as they acted in the best interests of their country?
I am sure there are people who will disagree — this is America, after all — about the answers to those questions, but there should be no meaningful dissent about his status as a successor father of our country. In that he has failed. Miserably.
Just the past couple of weeks can lead reasonable fathers — and mothers too, but it’s not their day we celebrate — to no other conclusion.
For example, take the murder of George Floyd and the relative White House silence about the outrage. When leadership, fatherly advice and love for those who were hurting at the sight of the wanton killing was required, the current father of our country was nowhere to be seen or heard.
When peaceful demonstrators packed the streets of our country and, especially, Washington, D.C., was the father-in-chief at the head of the march, showing us how to lead, how to march and how to protest peacefully and with purpose? Not hardly. Trump was ordering demonstrators to be tear-gassed, run roughshod over by police on horseback and shot at with rubber bullets, all so he could stage a photo-op at a church that was as foreign to him as five-letter words in the English language.
It took a military father, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to break ranks with the commander-in-chief so he could maintain some semblance of credibility as the leader of our nation’s finest men and women in uniform. For acting as a father should in the face of such presidential dereliction of duty, who knows the penalty he will have to pay?
And, while the onset of the novel coronavirus seems like a lifetime ago, Trump’s abject failure to lead our country through the COVID-19 pandemic will forever be tied to an increased and unnecessary death toll. Rather than act as a father would by explaining the perils of not wearing a mask, not socially distancing and not taking the virus seriously he chose, instead, to hold rallies in the peak time of infection, exposing his followers to sickness and potential death, all in the name of his re-election.
A father of this country would have acted the way Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has conducted himself. Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his fireside chats during times of Great Depression and a world war, Cuomo provided a sense of calm during a time of great distress, a measure of transparency when very few people could see their way into next week, and an aura of understanding when we knew so little and needed to learn so much.
In short, he has acted like a father to all of America, in stark contrast to the fellow who hasn’t even tried.
And, then, there is one of my favorite fathers. Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof.” He was constantly confounded by his daughters and the need to understand, to change with the times and love them for who they were, not who he thought they should have been.
In the end it came down to one word, tradition. Would he maintain a fiction in his head of a time gone by at a time of great upheaval in the land, just so he could satisfy his own lack of understanding? Or would he embrace change, accept that which he could not change, and lead with love, with courage and with knowledge?
In the end, tradition gave way and life moved on. And it got a little better.
The United States is facing some serious issues that cannot be solved by clinging to some ill-defined and outdated tradition. They cannot be overcome by staged photo-ops at the expense of our constitutional freedom to express ourselves, and they will never be fixed by an unreasonable fixation on racial inequities that should have disappeared with the turning of the last two centuries.
What we need is a father who cares about his family. That is the person we should celebrate today on Father’s Day.
To all fathers of goodwill and good intentions, happy Father’s Day.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.