Ordinary Days: Do We Have a National and International Emergency?

Each day was so ordinary. Burton and I were seminary graduate students, just a few weeks married, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962. We had books to read, papers to write, but the real question was whether Soviet Union nuclear weapons would fall on St. Louis or on any other part of the U.S.

I had the laundry sorted out to be washed on a Monday morning in the summer of 1967 when it became clear we would need to  leave Detroit by side streets because of shooting on the freeways as the Detroit Rebellion—called riots—were spreading. Fires spread further in 1968. Would the country survive?

I was writing while watching TV in New Haven, Ct. in 1973, as John Dean testified before Congress about Richard Nixon as the nation began to understand the President’s involvement in the Watergate break-in and the cover-up. How much more would we find out?

Our family was at a camp in New Hampshire summer 1974. Burton had a radio with him. People huddled around as we listened to the announcement that Richard Nixon had resigned. No U.S. president before had done this. We could not imagine what would happen to the nation.

September 11^th 2001 was the first full week of the semester at Wartburg Seminary. Craig Nessan and I were teaching Church Administration and Mission class while planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City. We found out more as students and faculty walked toward chapel.

This Friday September 7, 2018, people are busy with ordinary things.  I am preparing for a presentation at my church next Wednesday evening: “Civility: Conversations as Christians in a Pluralistic World.” Earlier this week, after considering whether to prepare a hand-out, I told the Education Director that I thought not because I didn’t know what might unfold in the country during the coming days.  Well, things have unfolded: Committee hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for associate justice of the Supreme Court; publication of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear; a New York Times op ed on the test of the presidency.

The news media is focused on “who” wrote the op ed piece, the many denials of authorship, and the “volcanic” reaction of the president.

However, history would have us ask, “What comes next?”  Is this just more about an unpredictable president? Simply one more account, particularly Bob Woodward’s book, of a chaotic White House? Or is this an emergency within the nation and a truly international danger laid out clearly about a man with a preference for autocrats and dictators, a U.S. president who has singular authority to make nuclear decisions.

The president’s self-congratulations to the contrary, talk of impeachment and use of the 25^th amendment grow. But these are not merely political questions. The question is a serious one about to whom this nation turns in an emergency? We now know about 1962, 1967 and 1968, 1973 and 1974, 2001. What about now?

Is it up to the “quiet resistance” of unelected but dutiful officials within the White House to contain this president? Are they—are we—depending upon Congress to act? Will this end up in the hands of the Supreme Court? And will this Court have a new associate justice who has argued that presidents should not be “distracted” by civil lawsuits and criminal investigations while in office?

The New York op ed piece ends quietly with us: “the real difference will be made by everyday citizens. . . . Americans.” So, what might we ordinary citizens on this ordinary day be prepared for? Be prepared to be? To do?