In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Paris to brief President Charles de Gaulle of France on the unfolding Cuban Missile Crisis.
During the briefing, Acheson offered photos taken by American U-2 spy planes of various sites in Cuba where the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear armed missiles.
President de Gaulle waved him off. “I accept what you tell me as a fact without any proof of any sort needed. If the President of the United States tells me it is so, I do not need to see the photographs.”
At that time President Kennedy’s word was all that was needed.
We now have a president who goes back on his own word on virtually every issue. Tariffs, deporting farmworkers, breaking vital alliances, negotiating with Iran and on and on.
With the passage of his Big Nasty Bill, he has cynically abandoned his word to his own working class MAGA followers. Cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and veterans benefits, and gutting FEMA’s ability to respond to natural disasters will be a gut punch to red and rural America.
John Nance Garner was the 32nd vice president of the United States, serving as President Franklin Roosevelt’s VP from 1933-1941. Known to contemporaries as “Cactus Jack,” he grew distant from FDR during the second term and challenged him in 1940 for the Democratic nomination. He was opposed to FDR’s plan to add three more justices to the Supreme Court and his plan to run for a third term. He lost and retired to his Texas ranch, though he did enthusiastically support FDR in the 1940 election.
Perhaps Garner’s most lasting legacy was formed when a reporter asked him what he thought of the office of vice president. He replied, “It isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
In the midst of a nuclear crisis that had the potential to end the world as it is known, French President de Gaulle, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer all considered President Kennedy’s word to be unimpeachable.
President Donald Trump’s word means nothing. His word? To borrow a phrase from John Nance Garner, “It isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
