The other day, I had a wonderful phone conversation with an old friend who is the proud papa of a 9-month-old little human. We talked at length about what’s going on in America — the fear culture, the blanket of isolationism we all draw around ourselves when we are mesmerized by cell phones and MP3 players at the expense of rich, messy human connections, the paranoia parents have learned to adopt as a substitute for reasonable concern. Erik and I don’t talk about the weather.
We started talking about hope and the future. About what we expect from the next president. We chatted about whether it was naive or delusional to pin the refurbishment of American values and policies on one man. Can a man like Barack Obama, for instance, deliver a systemic colonic irrigation to 300,000,000 people constipated with fear, apathy, division, and regressive social values?
This raises the question of what a U.S. president is. An excellent article on Reason.com takes a thoughtful historical look at what Americans expect from their presidents. Anyone who stays abreast of history or the generational ebb and flow of American government should see no surprises in Gene Healy’s exploration of our hopeless, celebrity-driven fascination with the cult of presidency.
The slow, inexorable accumulation of powers the presidency has enjoyed since, oh, Teddy Roosevelt, reaches its logical conclusion in presidents like the current Bush. Or does it?
Are we now so spoiled by the promise of a gigantic titty to suck — a titty that panders to us from the Oval Office — that we no longer consider that the president really — and historically — isn’t all that? He’s just a guy who gets elected to make stuff happen according to the rules of the Constitution. Face facts, fellow Americans, the president, no matter how cool he is, can’t cure poverty, can’t magically subordinate the free markets, can’t alter time or wage war on the weather.
But I’m afraid Americans have moved beyond the purity and simplicity of a chief executive and into the land of “Girlfriend, did you see Obama in jeans? He so hot, I feel comfortable with a president who wears jeans.”
I told Erik that no number of millions could convince me to assume the responsibilities of the next president. He’s fucked if he does, fucked if he doesn’t. That’s our fault. We expect monarchy-style greatness from a person who’s just elected to carry out roughly a page and a half of responsibilities, a person who’s authority isn’t even addressed until Article II of the Constitution, after Congress’ significantly more important role is defined.