Month: May 2018

“He’s so unpresidential!” say many Americans and other thinking people around the globe. “He disqualifies himself every day by his crass, undignified, vulgar behavior.” You’ve heard it and probably said it. The question this claim raises, however, is what it means to be “presidential”; and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that word takes on a different definition with every group who weighs in. Every new president is compared to his predecessors, and his (some day her) performance is judged by the composite measuring stick of the, at this time, 44 men who have held the office of POTUS during the history of our country.

In my history and civics classes during my first twelve years in school, I learned a rather romantic image of the U. S. presidency; and I’m willing to venture many others were taught that same rosy-colored view. We were treated to stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, crafted to demonstrate those men’s exemplary honesty and integrity. Lincoln was known as Honest Abe, and every new teacher reminded us of Washington’s encounter with a cherry tree and his stand-up behavior in readily admitted his youthful misdeed to his father.

Presidents were portrayed as gods among mortals. They were of a scarce breed that rose above human norms and achieved a rarefied super-mortal status. Many a man who has aspired to join this elite group has been automatically disqualified when American citizens have been shown his feet of clay. And because of the power of the presidential myth over our minds, we are shocked and betrayed with each revelation.

Precisely what do we Americans expect of our presidents? And how can we say if one of them is behaving in a presidential manner or not? I recently heard a supporter of our current “president” answer the reporter’s question “How do you think things are going?” with this: “I think it’s going great. We finally got someone with some balls.” Well, who can deny the importance of “having balls”? Yet I have a feeling we’re also going to find different definitions among U. S. voters of what it means to possess that fine quality.

Our founders rejected the establishment of a monarchy, preferring instead a high leader elected by the people. Abraham Lincoln, about 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, called this concept “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and expressed the wish that such government “shall not perish from the earth.”

Leonid Bershidsky, in an article titled “The US Expects Too Much from Its Presidents,” published in the Sun Sentinel, quotes Walter Bagehot, 19^th-century Brit who in his book The English Constitution made this distinction:

“The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the constitution. The prime minister is at the head of the efficient part. The Crown is, according to the saying, the ‘fountain of honour;’ but the Treasury is the spring of business.”

Since the American Constitution lacks provision for such a division of roles, our president has been expected to take on the ceremonial duties of a king or queen as well as the everyday in-the-ditch duties of a prime minister. Bershidsky says,

“The U.S. doesn’t have a system in which the various sets of duties can be distributed between a presidency or monarchy, a prime minister’s job and multiple faction leaderships in parliament. In the U.S., according to the Congressional Serial Set, ‘The president simultaneously serves to perform functions that parallel the activities of a king or queen in a monarchy and the prime minister or premier in a parliamentary democracy.’”

He adds, “The U.S. demands even more ceremony of its presidents than other countries in part because of the expectation that the head of state is also the moral-authority-in-chief where Christian leadership is prized and the president is expected to channel those attitudes.” And therein lies our conundrum! When I think of the presidency, I’ve always been reminded of a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: “You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.” Leaders born into royal families are bred and trained for the responsibilities they will bear. We take an everyday American and expect that person, after a brief orientation, to behave like a monarch; and when he doesn’t, the press and the history books “kill” him.

In an increasingly divided America, not all citizens prize Christian leadership; and what constitutes moral authority is even more difficult to agree on. I think the key lies in our expectation of the president to be a “moral-authority-in-chief.” The presidential myth that was such a part of our early education led us to believe exactly that: the president is the person we look to as a model of integrity and, if not Christian, at least extremely high moral values. So is “having balls” one of those high moral values? Let’s think about it.

In truth, our school-days romanticized view of the presidency has always been a myth. How many aspirants to the presidency can you think of who’ve been dismissed from consideration because of moral offenses, major or minor? Gary Hart and John Edwards quickly come to mind, and many others have lost their bids for lower offices because of moral scandals. In fact, Wikipedia lists a whopping 83 names of people whose political fortunes have been ruined or tainted by moral scandal in the history of our republic; and I’d venture to say there are plenty more.

Trump critics repeatedly cite his three marriages and numerous adulterous affairs as evidence that he’s morally bereft and unfit for the job; but what about Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, and even the sainted Thomas Jefferson? Many said they didn’t much care how many women Clinton screwed, but they were offended that he lied about one of them. John Kennedy had the benefit of being president at the dawn of the mass communication feeding frenzy, so most of us didn’t know about his multiple affairs; and since we’ve found out, the knowledge has done little to tarnish his image. And here’s what Trump supporters think of his moral scandals, according to a meme I saw on social media just this morning: “What President Trump did in his PRIVATE life as a PRIVATE citizen and NOT a PAID politician is NOBODY’S business.” All righty then.

If most Americans had to name the “Big Three” American Presidents, I daresay three names on everyone’s lips would be Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. I’m not familiar with any information that might taint George Washington’s image, but we now have credible evidence that Thomas Jefferson slept with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and fathered some of her children. Does that make you think less of our third president or in your mind diminish his contributions to our republic? When you read the brilliant rhetoric in our Declaration of Independence, are you thinking of Jefferson’s moral compromise or of his role in achieving our independence from Great Britain? The highly revered and most often elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt is known to have had a mistress or three. And if that’s not enough, according to Dinitia Smith, in a 2004 New York Times article, “The subject of the 16^th president’s sexuality has been debated among scholars for years.” Yes, you read that correctly. Many scholars believe Abe Lincoln was gay (which would have been scandalous in the 1800s), and they’re naming names.

Not only do we revere presidents who have fallen short of our high moral standards, but those who do meet those standards are not universally appreciated. Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are the icons of the personal purity and scandal-free private lives that we claim to expect from presidents. Yet Carter was elected for only one term and was largely dismissed until his post-presidential years, during which he has gained recognition and respect as one of the greatest ex-presidents. Barack Obama–whom even his rival John McCain defended as a decent family man–while much loved by many, has been the most openly reviled president in our history. It would seem those moral purity points don’t really count much with some people. Possibly the same ones who place a high value on “having balls.”

So much for our high moral standards! What else do we say it takes to make a person “presidential”? Well, he/she should uphold the law and never have so much as a parking ticket on his/her record. In 1992, when asked whether he’d ever broken a law, Bill Clinton had to claim he “never inhaled” the marijuana he “tried a time or two” to gloss over his college drug use. Observers see even this incident as a lowering of the bar, since such an admission might previously have disqualified a potential presidential candidate on the spot. But does that mean no previous president had ever used drugs? Depends on whom you ask. Some say Saint George (Washington) himself relied on laudanum (same thing Edgar Allan Poe used) for pain relief. Others claim Honest Abe was known to use a “blue mass” or “blue pill” to treat melancholy. John Kennedy resorted to a number of drugs, legal and illegal, to control the constant back pain that was part of his life.

Since then, the Nixon Administration makes smoking a joint or popping a pill look like a Sunday School party. According to a 2005 New York Times article, a whopping 69 government officials were charged with crimes, and 48 of them pled guilty.

Our Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for a president convicted of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). According to Robert Longley,

“The impeachment process in U.S. government was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Noting that the traditional mechanism for removing ‘obnoxious’ chief executives — like kings — from power had been assassination, Franklin glibly suggested the impeachment process as a more rational and preferable method.”

The wise Richard Saunders (Franklin’s pseudonym for dispensing advice in Poor Richard’s Almanac) couldn’t have said it better! Impeachment is indeed a “more rational and preferable method” for removing an “obnoxious chief executive.” Where is Ben Franklin when we need him? But to return to our tally, only two presidents–Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton–out of the 44 men who have held the office, have been impeached but not removed from office. One, John Tyler, had a resolution to impeach drawn up against him, but the resolution failed in Congress. And our guy Richard “Tricky Dick” “I am not a crook” Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

Okay, so perhaps we have been more forgiving of presidents’ adherence to the law than our rhetoric would suggest. But we really, really like a guy who can speak eloquently and represent us well on the world stage: someone who can charm a snake with his brilliant rhetoric and poignant words. Yeah, maybe not. Lots of people loved George W. Bush, known for saying “nucular” and “misunderestimate,” among his many malapropisms and sundry crimes against the English language. And those same people detested Barack Obama whose silver tongue could charm audiences and hold them in his magical spell.

Guess we’re a rather inconsistent lot. We have our standards, sort of, but they’re easily bent. And most notably, there’s not much agreement among the various tribal units comprising our society. Accusations of unpresidential behavior fall flat when supporters of the accused can cite a list of exceptions that expose the accuser’s hypocrisy. Well then, dammit, what do we want in a president? And how will we ever know if someone meets our standards? And how can we have a rational conversation without being exposed as hypocrites when we say someone is not conducting himself in a presidential manner? One thing which we may have to thank the current Republican Party for is forcing us to be honest about what really matters.

Our current “president” daily confounds his critics with his tweeting habit. Tweets have largely replaced official White House statements and ceremonial Rose Garden announcements. Instead, we watch for each morning’s “tweet storm.” Who among our ancestors, even if they knew what a tweet is, would believe that a “tweet storm” is something a president does? Each day, we say, “This one crosses the line! He’s done it now! Bye-bye, Donald!” But he’s still there the next morning when the next outlandish tweet appears. It’s hard for many of us to comprehend how he survived this one about Kim Jong Un: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Crass, yes. Vulgar, yes. Sexual innuendo, yes. Supporters rushing to condemn, no. Supporters applauding his “balls,” probably. So there he is, and there it seems he will stay for the foreseeable future.

Surely we can all agree that no one who is regularly called an “idiot” or a “moron”–even by members of his own staff–can possibly be qualified to serve in this esteemed office. But Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator, cautions Democrats against protesting too much against Trump’s obvious lack of intellectual acumen. He argues that Trump is “plenty bright,” though admittedly not in the way many of us like our presidents to be bright. He explains, “There are different kinds of intelligence that are useful for different purposes. The kind of intelligence I believe Trump has is enormously useful if you want to, say, be a politician — even better if you want to be a demagogue.” Oh, good! Now I feel better.

Begala continues, “He has a cynical, innate intelligence for what his base wants to hear. It’s like a divining rod for division, prejudice and stereotyping. His relentless rhetorical repetition (‘No collusion, no collusion, no collusion’) is brilliantly designed to tell folks who are predisposed to like him what they want to hear. . . . It’s like he knows what every barstool blowhard is about to say before he or she even says it.”

In his conclusion, Begala advises, “So, don’t call him ‘moron’ or ‘idiot’; call him what he is: a conniving, corrupt con man, a dangerous, divisive demagogue — and, most sobering of all, the man who carried 30 states in the last election, and may well do it again if Democrats don’t focus their fire more effectively.” Works for me, but I didn’t vote for him, and I loathe the sight of him. How do we “focus our fire” effectively enough to have a conversation with those 63 million of our fellow Americans who see this “conniving, corrupt con man” as the God-ordained leader who will make our country great again? And some of those refer to him as the “god emperor”? (I know, barf.) Judge Jeanine Pirro claims Trump is fulfilling Biblical prophecy. I guess in some folks’ eyes, it doesn’t get more presidential than that.

Our fellow citizens who think that way don’t want George H. W. Bush’s “kinder, gentler America”; they want Donald Trump’s hard-fisted, damn-the-liberal-elites America. And in their eyes, the guy who’s promising and working to give them that America IS presidential. They don’t care how many wives he’s had; how many porn stars, Playboy models, and God knows who else he’s slept with; how many crotches he’s grabbed; how many friends he has in Russia; how many days he plays golf; how many times he calls people childish names; how many people he mocks, ridicules, and disrespects; how long he ignores the pain of Puerto Rican Americans; how many innocent Palestinians are killed for protesting against his decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem (yet another building on which he has plastered his name). None of it matters. They don’t care, and they’ll tell you they don’t.

Michelle Goldberg, New York Times opinion columnist, defines the word “red pill” as a metaphor taken from the movie The Matrix: “the alt-right’s preferred metaphor for losing one’s faith in received assumptions and turning toward ideas that once seemed dangerous.” “Red-pilling” is something that’s probably happened to all of us a few times in our lives, and it’s not always bad. Coming to realize that Palestinians are not the default bad guys in Middle Eastern conflicts is, in fact, a large step in a positive direction. On the other hand, accepting as presidential a person whom our ancestors would be vomiting in their graves to see ensconced in the hallowed walls of the Oval Office is not good.

Goldberg says,

“To the alt-right, of course, being red-pilled means abandoning liberalism as a lie. It means treating one’s own prejudices as intuitions rather than distortions to be overcome. The act of doing this — casting off socially acceptable values in favor of those that were once unthinkable — creates the edgy energy that has, of late, attracted Kanye West.” She advises, “Because the red pill experience is so intense, progressives should think about how to counter dynamics that can make banal right wing beliefs seem like seductive secret knowledge. Attempts at simply repressing bad ideas don’t seem to be working.”

Amen to repressing bad ideas not working!

But what could possibly cause 63 million people, among them an influential group who see themselves as the standard bearers for God, to allow themselves to be so red-pilled that they have completely abandoned their previously stated etched-in-stone beliefs? In a May 14, 2018, Washington Post article, James Hohmann cites “a deep craving for respect among supporters of the president and an enduring resentment toward coastal elites.” This is hardly new or profound to those who have been paying attention the last two years, but it is yet another voice screaming, “You’re doing it all wrong!” If you want change or want to see a tribal truce, you have to admit you’re using the wrong tactics, and you have to find some new ones that work. It’s true what they say: Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity. We’re living proof.

It seems there’s only one qualification we can all agree on as a must-have for our president: we all want a president who agrees with us. That’s why we have two major political parties, along with a host of minor parties and multiple factions within each of them. We want a president who will make our country into our image of what we think it should be. As I said in my last article, however, the core problem is we can’t agree on what we want to be, and the divide is growing wider and deeper. Obviously, having a president who agrees with all of us is not going to happen. Ever. Let’s go back to “that deep craving for respect.” Everyone has it. Abraham Maslow, in his five-tier model of human needs (which we all share by virtue of simply being human), lists two psychological needs: “belongingness and love needs” and “esteem needs.” Maslow, a respected twentieth-century psychologist, affirms the notion that all humans have a deep craving to belong to a group and to be respected and valued within that group.

Donald Trump, with all of his vomit-worthy, unpresidential habits, is for a large group of people meeting those very human needs: a place to belong and a community in which to be respected. As Michelle Goldberg says, trying to repress bad ideas with people who actually think they’re pretty damn good ideas isn’t going to work. And as Paul Begala says, pointing out Trump’s intellectual deficiencies gets us nowhere. It’s like quoting scripture to an atheist. Repeating the same accusations over and over only causes everyone to dig their heels deeper and deeper. What we’re doing is NOT working. Face it. Then start figuring out what will work. Hint: It’s going to have to start with some mutual love and respect. Treating each other as fellow citizens rather than members of warring tribes is a great place to start. Can we still do that?