Every Knee Shall Bow, Every Tongue Confess that the President “Is All That”
(posted by Mona)
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
-Handel’s Messiah
Presumptive Democratic Nominee for President of the United States, Barack Obama, has apparently sold out by endorsing Steny Hoyer and the Democratic-controlled Congress’s plan to both give George Bush all the power he could want to eavesdrop on Americans’ international communications in secret, and grant retroactive immunity to lawless telecommunications companies (tho Obama says he will fight in the Senate to strip the immunity provision; that means he’ll make a pretty but futile speech, and then vote for a bill with amnesty that will pass the Senate, too). Well, yes, I am profoundly disappointed, but feel no sense of betrayal. Only a fool invests emotionally in any candidate; still greater fools expect the POTUS to be Our Savior. Indeed, such expectations of presidents have rendered the Executive office the danger it has become.
In the 20th century, presidents — as well as candidates for that office from both parties — morphed into beings with a glory in their bosoms that transfigures you, me and the nation, or are at least have to affect being that to get votes. Such is the thesis of Gene Healy’s superb recent book, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. Therein Healy documents how George W. Bush’s presidency may have taken the Executive-cum-monarch-cum-Christ phenomenon to its (for now) apogee, but there is plenty of blame to go around; excessive expectations and veneration leading to Executive power-mongering goes back at least to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and the Progressive Era. Healy himself explains his thesis in the June 2008 issue of Reason:
The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He-or she-is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.
This messianic campaign rhetoric merely reflects what the office has evolved into after decades of public clamoring. The vision of the president as national guardian and spiritual redeemer is so ubiquitous it goes virtually unnoticed. Americans, left, right, and other, think of the “commander in chief” as a superhero, responsible for swooping to the rescue when danger strikes. And with great responsibility comes great power.
“Progressives” need to examine their own forebears’ contributions to this evil. TR was a war-mongering member of their sect, declaring in 1897, as Healy notes: “In strict confidence, I should welcome almost any war, for this country needs one,” whereupon Teddy pushed for same and went off to lead the Rough Riders in the famous charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. And in 1900, scholar Woodrow Wilson declared that:
When foreign affairs play a prominent part in the policy of a nation, its Executive must of necessity be its guide…The President of the United States is now, as of course, at the front of affairs, as no president, except Lincoln, has been since the first quarter of the 19th century….Upon his choice, his character, his experience hang some of the most weightiest issues of the future.
The Richmond-Times Dispatch in 1934 genuflected to the former president, finding that Wilson had borne the weight well, approvingly quoting a fellow thus: “[President Wilson] was destined to carry one of the greatest loads that any human spirit in the history of mankind has had to bear.” Nevermind the little matter of Wilson’s sending hundreds of thousands of American GIs to die or return maimed in pointless trench warfare on European soil, to “save the world for democracy.”
And of course, one ought not overlook FDR, for as Healy observes in his Reason article:
…it took FDR to eliminate the last remaining vestiges of the modest presidency. Roosevelt used Wilson’s Trading With the Enemy Act to shut down all U.S. banks in 1933, grabbed the power to approve or prescribe wages and prices for all trades and industries, and authorized the FBI to spy on suspected subversives. He changed the Supreme Court from a bulwark against presidential overreach to an enabler [court-packing, anyone? ed. Mona]. By the end of his 12-year reign, FDR had firmly established the president as national protector and nurturer, one whose performance would be judged in terms of what political scientist Theodore Lowi has identified as the modern test of executive legitimacy: “service delivery.”
Viet Nam and Watergate went far toward destroying the tyrannical Executive and leaving Americans more skeptical of politicians. But as Healy notes in his article and must-read book, the clamoring for Glorious Leader never totally disappeared; with Bush and his legal functionaries, he’s b-a-a-a-a-ck, on steroids. And Campaign ‘08 is replete with the messianic rhetoric about candidates and nominees that greatly contributes to the destructive (of our political system) and unhealthy phenomenon of Executive worship.
Much of the language employed these past months by acolytes of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could lead one to reasonably think these supporters were in the presence of the Beatific Vision. Indeed, one should just keep scrolling the examples collected at the blog Is Barack Obama the Messiah?, which should leave one slack-jawed. Or take in this at No Quarter where Hillary Clinton is declared American royalty and the blogger, with ho hint of irony, closes by saying we only await Hillary’s “coronation.”
Even my pal, Obama supporter, and the quite reasonable Chris in DC — apparently seeing nothing wrong with it — notes that Hillary Clinton (my emphasis): “…has built an immense reservoir of public support and adoration.” (On the other hand, Chris is commendably critical of his fellow Obama supporters who “…fail to check themselves for blindingly devotional tendencies.”) A good example of a literally ecstatic and adoring Hillary supporter would be Taylor Marsh, who holds forth that electing Hillary would begin to transform the world, “not just change for America, but change for the world. A girl can dream.” And:
It’s difficult to separate emotion from a vote like this. Hillary Clinton embodies every fight I’ve ever waged. Every battle I’ve ever engaged. She is the embodiment of hope for all women, as well as anyone looking for a better life, a fairer break, young, old, poor and poorer. She’s got the passion and she’s got plans to make them happen. She gives me hope for the future, because I believe she actually knows what she’ll face if elected and walks in to meet the federal bureaucracy. I won’t be crossing my fingers. I’ll be confident she can do it and will also know how to pick others who can too.
…being right, and truthful, he reignited a somnolent West, and gave heart to heroes like Natan Scharansky in the Soviet Union. [...] Reagan brought a constellation of virtues to the office of the presidency-guts, compassion, humor, a lack of pretension, a willingness to face the world and tell the truth, a willingness to make decisions and stand by them-and his leadership changed the world, and for the better.
(Wow, “reigniting a somnolent West” — that’s just teh awesome!)
From Wilson to Reagan, to candidates Obama and Hillary Clinton, the language used about them is fit for emperor-gods and royalty, but not the humble office of Executive as envisioned by the Founders — the narrow duties of which were not much expanded before the 20th century, except during the extraordinary circumstances of the Lincoln presidency. (And libertarians in particular argue over whether Lincoln was a mighty statesman, or monster.)
*******
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 69 wrote:
The President of the United States is to have power to return a bill, which shall have passed the two branches of the legislature, for reconsideration; and the bill so returned is to become a law, if, upon that reconsideration, it be approved by two thirds of both houses. The king of Great Britain, on his part, has an absolute negative upon the acts of the two houses of Parliament.
[...]
The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a QUALIFIED negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an ABSOLUTE negative. The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of DECLARING war, and of RAISING and REGULATING fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the SOLE POSSESSOR of the power of making treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.
Then there is the matter of the Executive and “spiritual jurisdiction.” When we enthuse about presidents or candidates for that office as if they are messiahs and soul-nourishers, it isn’t difficult to understand why they see it as their role to lead the nation morally and spiritually. We, the citizenry, have spoken of them for so long in the contemporary version of language employed by our European forebears (to the extent those are our/your forebears) vis-a-vis their divine-right monarchs that it has, well, gone to their heads and swelled the power of the Executive office.
It should shock no one that presidensts have thus appropriated the power to act as monarchs.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Well, Bravo, Mona! (and, Jennifer). George Bush and his Yoo-men… Change it slightly to George Bush And The Yoo-Men and you have the name of a rock group where the fans yelled, clapped, and whistled at each performance. And, that seems to be the current frame of reference for our Democratic nominees this round. Except, perhaps, I’ve never witnessed the adoring fans of various rock groups verbally pummel each other the way Obama and Clinton supporters have. The piece that amazed me personally, was how imagined sleights of one’s preferred candidate could send off rounds of vituperative rhetoric. Nah, people aren’t emotionally invested at all. ‘Course I’m guilty of feeling the same way about the 4th amendment.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I don’t feel betrayed in any personal sense, but I do feel outraged that there is no serious presidential candidate who will stand up to these crimes.
I’ll withhold a definitive condemnation until the votes are cast, but once the votes are cast, well, THOREAU SMASH!!!!!!
June 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Handel was a plagiarist.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
[...] as Gene Healy’s latest book documents that this nation has been doing for over a century, and as I discuss at AoTP (with a research assist from Jennifer), you get a god-emperor who, again per Healy, grabs the power [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I don’t really feel betrayed either, but I think Obama needs to have this bite his ass so he’ll learn early on that there are consequences for unprincipled, opportunistic behavior–just like Hillary did this year as a result of her Iraq vote. It would be nice if his funds dried up for a while, and it was explicitly associated with his FISA stance.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Reminds me of the Overcoming Bias post on ancient political self-deception.