Dr. Koop Speaks Out

[Originally posted October 30, 2009]

President Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, M.D., noteworthy for his public health pronouncements based on scientific facts during the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, is now 93 years old. With his penchant for truth-telling, Dr. Koop recently described a troubling aspect of the mindset of Mr. Reagan's largely conservative cabinet in an interview that was printed in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine:

"The attitude of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet was that the kind of people who got AIDS -- promiscuous women, homosexual men, drug addicts, people on heroin -- deserved what they got. Americans hadn't treated prisoners of war as badly." (DAM, Nov/Dec 2009, p. 96).

Dr. Koop is an equal-opportunity critic; in the same interview, he questioned the necessity of President Obama's wholesale reform of America's health care system. Such skepticism -- the laudable practice of looking before one leaps -- is a proper function of conservatism as a countervailing force to ambitious political agendas.

What Dr. Koop's observation about his fellow Reagan Administration political appointees confirms, however, is that the Republicans' attitude toward the defining public health disaster of the 1980s and 1990s was a matter not of principled, conservative caution but of active contempt for certain disfavored segments of citizens. It's a worthy contribution to the historical record from the former official who is still, in some minds, America's Physician.

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Epilogue: According to a Dartmouth College statement, "Former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop ’37, MD, a pioneer in the field of pediatric surgery, a leader in the fight to create a smoke-free nation, and founder of the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, died peacefully at his home in Hanover, N.H. on February 25, 2013. He was 96 years old."

My Constitutional Amendment

This retrograde flap about Barack Obama's citizenship and eligibility for the Presidency begs the real question: why shouldn't we welcome as a national leader an immigrant who has, or whose parents have, renounced other allegiances decades ago? Isn't America supposed to be about ideas rather than soil?

Here's what our Constitution says on the subject of Presidential eligibility, in Article II, Section 1:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Here's my simple tweak, er, proposed Constitutional Amendment:

"No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who shall not have been for the consecutive thirty five Years prior a Citizen of the United States, and fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Have at it, Ah-nold.

Of course, a 34 year, 6 month old pro-life advocate could someday claim citizenship since conception. This, at a minimum, would make for intriguing interrogations of the parents. Where's Ken Starr when we need him?

A Tarnished Palace

In this age of superlatives, a work of art that is merely good instead of great can seem like a near failure. Like a bronze medalist in a track meet or honorable mention at a bake-off, City Hall (1996) both elates and disappoints. It redeems itself in its treatment of grand, human themes, from loss of innocence to lost potential, in a political fable which, I speculate, might also represent the filmmaker's intent to illuminate the still-baffling story of a contemporary American politician.

Al Pacino, as Mayor John Pappas of New York, carries the film. His oratory soars to astounding heights when addressing a deeply skeptical African-American congregation, mourning a child of the community caught in the crossfire of a notorious shooting. Pappas decries the violence that has taken root in his city and implores the parishioners, in rising, climactic tones, to join him in civic participation "until this city...your city...our city...his city...is a palace again!"

This superlative scene is supported by several understated, well-acted and directed moments. Immediately after the memorial service, Pappas reflects silently in the mayor's car, as John Cusack's young Deputy Mayor Calhoun waits for the proper moment to break in with the day's agenda. Finally, Pappas quietly says, "Terrible thing to lose a child." That's the moment; they share a sigh and proceed anew. In another quotable scene, Mayor Pappas reflects on the comprehensive responsibility of the office: "If a sparrow dies in Central Park, I feel it."



Would that the rest of City Hall lived up to Pacino's performance. John Cusack, likable in the portrayal of an unlikely, Louisiana-raised political transplant to New York, can't quite locate a southern accent with confidence. His character's credibility is burdened by an inept subplot -- or is it the main plot? -- in which the Deputy Mayor of New York City practically assumes the role of an action figure, chasing gangsters by boat one night and traveling by train upstate on another occasion -- all the way to Buffalo, round trip! -- to track down a lead. (At a minimum, one would think his absence from his office duties might be noticed.) Danny Aiello's affable Brooklyn politician, under the thumb of Tony Franciosa's menacing mobster, is more sharply defined, and Bridget Fonda animates the plot by getting in Cusack's face and under his skin. Still, as with Michael Douglas in Wall Street or Martin Sheen in The West Wing, we can't wait for Pacino to return to the screen.

Ultimately, City Hall is a morality tale as well as a portrait of New York City as a tarnished but beloved metropolis. Without Pacino's Mayor Pappas as anchor and focus, however, it would just be an extended, long-winded episode of Law and Order -- without the crisp editing and snappy titles.

With Pacino in the lead, it assumes the status of parable -- and perhaps even a political explication. For years I have wondered about former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's decision not to run for President, following his rise to national prominence occasioned by his brilliant 1984 convention speech. A gifted orator of his era, perhaps the last progressive Democrat to inspire the liberal-to-moderate populace in the way that Barack Obama has in this current era, Cuomo was derided by critics as the "Hamlet of Albany" for waffling on the decision to run, ultimately withdrawing from contention. Is City Hall wholly fictional in its origins, or could it be a cloaked tale of a promising national political career, derailed through events and associations never revealed?

As Calhoun laments in a closing scene with Pappas, after the fictional mayor's political downfall becomes inevitable: "The things you could have done."