Why I Thank Presidents Nixon, Bush(41) and Obama This Thanksgiving Day.

Posted on | November 27, 2014 | Comments Off on Why I Thank Presidents Nixon, Bush(41) and Obama This Thanksgiving Day.

Mike Magee

Last evening, the night before Thanksgiving Day, I went to sleep shaking my head. I had just watched the 1974 documentary, “Hearts and Minds”, which documented the behaviors of five American presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon, as they distorted the truth and led our country into a disastrous war.

Of the many images that refused to disappear as I drifted off to sleep, there were two, juxtaposed that were front and foremost. The first was a distraught and weeping 8 year old Vietnamese boy, holding a picture of his handsome father, as he refused to let go of his flag-draped father’s coffin being lowered into the ground. His full fledged grief, his defiance, his honest and human reaction to the shock and inhumanity of it all, reminded me of my own four children at this age. In his grief, he expressed love and honored his father’s memory forever.

The image was then starkly followed by a matter of fact interview, again in 1974, of the seersucker suit draped William Westmoreland who explained that “Well, the Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as the Westerner. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.”

Thinking of him and those years again, which in many ways I’d sooner forget, and realizing that to some extent, we have managed to repeat our mistakes, and embrace the same types of biases, in our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, well, you can understand why I sighed a bit for the human race last evening.

But this morning, I came across Coral Davenport’s report in the New York Times, which seemed sent to deliver a Thanksgiving message that said, “Yes, but…” It make me offer thanks to Presidents Nixon, Bush(41), and Obama. And here’s why.

1. In 1970, the Senate passed the Clean Air Act 73-0, and President Nixon, who had created the EPA, signed the bill into law. This landmark legislation was intentionally writ large to allow the head of the EPA broad latitude in addressing future needs.

2. In 1990, another Republican president, George Bush, signed legislation that further strengthened the law after 89 senators, including Mitch McConnell supported the changes. Of this action, our new incoming Majority Leader, who has recently decried actions of the EPA as attempts to destroy “Big Coal”, has stated, “I had to choose between cleaner air and the status quo. I chose cleaner air.” President Bush’s action allowed the EPA to first begin to measure levels of ozone and mercury in our air.

3. Finally, faced with an inability to sign on to any new legislation, President Obama has made the most of the gifts that his two predecessors have provided him, and focused on mining the full potential of that far reaching, now nearly half-century old act. Most notably, it has become the leading edge of an attack on global warming. It’s chief instruments? Significant tightening of standards on coal-fired power plants to take effect next year and a new fuel-economy standard of 54.5 miles per gallon on automobiles by the year 2025. This last step alone helps explain why hybrid and electric technology is on a tear, and why Canadian tar sand and cross-territorial pipelines are really so “old school”.

So this Thanksgiving, I choose to see the world for what it is, endless shades of grey, imperfect, and yet hopeful. And I thank Presidents Nixon, and Bush, and Obama, for these wise actions, and for the good they continue to provide for each of us, wherever we are, and for our planetary patient.

Happy Thanksgiving!