Who was our most successful president? Pulitzer Prize winning historian Daniel Walker Howe suggests that it was James Knox Polk, who was President from 1845 to 1849. Today we are used to public officials and candidates for public office offering aspirational speeches, backing a wide spectrum of causes important to their various constituencies.  Polk was lazar focused on a very limited number of goals which he was able to reach. On a personal basis, there was lot not to like about James Polk. He was a slave owner and a staunch defender of what Southerners called “our peculiar institution.”  In an era when public eloquence was public entertainment, Polk was a dull and colorless speaker. He had little interest in the arts or literature or nature or socializing. As President, he made few public appearances. He was narrowly focused on his goals for the United States and personal advancement. At 49 he was the youngest man to become President, but he had already served as Speaker of the House and Governor of Tennessee.

When Polk took office, he promised to serve only one tern. He also promised to accomplish five very specific things: establish the southern border of Texas at the Rio Grande; acquire California and a large district on the coast; settle the Oregon border with Great Britain; lower the tariff; and establish an independent Treasury Department. When he left office, he had fulfilled all of these promises. Polk knew how to play the two party system to his advantage and how to manipulate public opinion to further his goals. He spoke boldly when he had every intention of compromising and expressed a desire to negotiate when he had no intention of compromising. And he rode the wave of manifest destiny, a phrase popularized by a New York newspaper in 1845: “It is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” In other words, it was God’s will that our nation spread from coast to coast, regardless of who was there first or who was in the way.

Although there is much not to like about Polk and what he did and how he did it, there is something to be said for focusing on a limited number of goals and not getting distracted from them by trying to please everybody. Two issues come to mind right now that deserve that kind of focus. They are both issues of international importance and they are issues that are deeply Catholic. One is climate change and the other is immigration reform.

Pope Francis has made care for our common home a priority of his papacy. In 2015 he wrote, “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods . . . . The poor, who are least responsible . . . are disproportionately vulnerable to its harmful effects.” Eight years later this is coming true right under our eyes. Every day, every hour, it seems, the lead story on the news is weather related: record heat, record flooding, record tornado damage, record drought, record fires, and record smoke pollution. We are at the point now when even the minority among us who do not believe that human beings have played a significant role in climate change ought to be asking the question:  Isn’t it time that human beings tried to do more to stop it? The poor are indeed the first to suffer the effects of climate change, but the middle and upper classes are being impacted too. One insurance company after another is refusing to write homeowner policies in states like California and Florida that have suffered the most from nature. Our federal, state, and municipal governments are paying out huge amounts of money to repair the damage caused by Mother Nature. Could we not try to get out in front of it and not just play catch up?

Immigration Reform has been stalled in Congress for over thirty years. Both sides agree that our immigration system is broken, but we cannot begin to agree on how to fix it. In 2005 the American Bishops rolled out a modest plan for immigration reform that did not involve amnesty but did focus on the dignity of the human person and the importance of family. I still have my notes from a meeting in 2005, when there was genuine hope that something might happen. A few years ago, Chicago proclaimed itself a “welcoming city” for immigrants, but we have not been so welcoming when actual immigrants started to arrive. The rush to the border has slowed for the moment. This seems like a good time to attack this issue, before there is another crisis and the rhetoric on both sides gets fired up again.

Yes, there are many other issues that deserve our attention in our troubled nation and our often troubled church. Maybe if we actually solved one problem, we would have the motivation to go after the others.

          Fr. Joe