Imagine two pieces of paper. On one appear foreign policy realism, administrative-state rollbacks, and the possibility that Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas might retire without handing the institution to the radical Left. The other boasts union giveaways, 12-figure spending blowouts, endless military misadventuring, and other people’s abortions billed to you. We live in fragmentary times, but my guess is that Sheet 1 would beat Sheet 2 in an election by no small margin. The problem is that there are names on our hypothetical pages. Brought face-to-face with “Donald Trump” and “Joe Biden,” many go blind.
The United States is experiencing a crisis of presidential leadership. Not since Ronald Reagan’s two terms has a chief executive brought to the office both admirable character and broadly popular policymaking. On both sides of the political aisle, this decadeslong drought has led to reversals that might, if the stakes were lower, be simply amusing. Forced by Trump’s bad behavior to forgive Bill Clinton, many on the Right have gained new respect for that talented lecher. Democrats, meanwhile, are priests of relativism no longer. Once upon a time, Alabama insisted that gentlemanly conduct matters. Now Connecticut does.
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What hasn’t changed is the average voter’s hopeless befuddlement where the U.S. presidency is concerned. Is the officeholder a creature of politics, shaped by grubby coalitions and ideologies we may or may not share? Or is he the avatar of the nation, the expectancy and rose of the fair state, proclaiming upon the housetops the greatness of our land by his very being?
Constitutionally, of course, he is both. Therein lies the sticking point. By vesting in one person, both executive authority and headship of the state, the American founders instituted a tug of war that has never been entirely won or lost. As a result, we hardly know, as a people, exactly what we’re voting for. Is it the man we’ll be proudest to see representing us or the one whose policies are most likely to improve our lives?
It is not (quite) the position of this essay that the founders erred by designing the presidency as they did. It is the article’s contention that we and postmodernity have made a hash of their work, appending to the chief executive all manner of senseless idolatry. The reality of contemporary America is that we have no need for a mascot. The very notion of a symbolic head of state is an anachronism in a society as advanced and pluralistic as our own. Nevertheless, having abandoned God, we dream of a unifying figure of another kind. Such a person must be not only wise but good — a reflection of our “best selves” and a captain whom it is our privilege to serve.
This longing is by no means new. “Now make us a king to judge us,” said the Israelites to Samuel in one of the Old Testament’s clearest illustrations of national folly. Like our ancient cousins, Americans want a ruler “with all the duties and none of the rights of kingship.” (The quote is Paul Johnson’s and exceedingly wise.) We want the spiritual majesty without the secular wrangling. When the formula proves impossible, when presidents reveal themselves to be mere politicians, we show our teeth: not, as justice might sanction, to the officeholder himself but increasingly, ravenously, to one another.
Take, for instance, the candidacy and first term of Barack Obama. Perhaps some small fraction of the crowds that hailed him as messiah wanted only a 4% rise in the average tax rate for high-income people. The rest sought the consolations of earthly worship. When, around 2010, the Left finally understood that the Right would never share its veneration, it uncorked a decade’s worth, and counting, of racialist poison in the form of “progressive” wokeness. Democrats thought they had found a symbol of American identity to rival Washington and Lincoln. What they got instead was a smug and hectoring fool who worsened nearly every foreign and domestic crisis of his time and was duly opposed by his political opponents. Who wouldn’t be upset at such a bargain?
Where the 44th president is concerned, a 2009 remark by actor Sean Penn rather gives away the game: “I’m very proud to live in a country that is willing to elect an elegant man.” Yes, Obama was elegant. Certainly he looked better in a suit than sour, defeated John McCain. But so, for that matter, was King Saul the “handsomest” man of all the children of Israel. That we choose alluring idols makes them no less deaf and dumb.
It seems obvious to me that the atheistic Left is more vulnerable to these temptations than is the residually Christian Right. Yet conservatives are not immune. Though Trump is a difficult man to worship, he has given rise to his own neo-religious cult. Consider, to name just one example, the distressingly unironic paintings of Jon McNaughton, the Atlantic– and Guardian-featured artist whose scenes include Trump riding steeds and crossing Revolutionary War battlefields. As kitsch, these works are small masterpieces. Taken seriously … my God. It is in this context that Trump’s famous boast about “stand[ing] in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot[ing] somebody” makes the greatest sense. As a quasi-deity, the former president moves in mysterious ways. To abandon him because his behavior is irrational would be an act not only of political caprice but of bad faith.
Might we as a nation have had the best of both worlds? Given the madness of King George III, probably not. Still, I am surely not the only right-of-center voter who has occasionally wished to borrow a political settlement from the Old World. Grant me a Trumpian brawler as prime minister and you may have Obama and his descendants as constitutional monarchs forever. Let the latter reign over us in splendor, producing the occasional Netflix series but otherwise remaining blessedly silent. I will take my deranged and canny operator in the Oval Office. We all know who’s getting the better end of the deal.
The alternative, I’m afraid, is yet more of the confusion that has lately beset us. Existentially lost, we look to Washington for salvation. We lean over the abyss and want a strong hand to pull us back. That our champion is powerless is excruciating to acknowledge. Hence the inherent theatricality of our traditions. We surround the president with bodyguards, the playwright-provocateur David Mamet has written, to ward off the realization that “there’s no one there but us.”
Is there a way out of this mess besides a 28th Amendment? (“The office of the president shall be political, not sacred.”) Two possibilities come to mind. The first, to adapt a phrase from the Right’s rowdier precincts, is that voters will recognize what time it is. Having invented social media and the 24-hour news cycle, the U.S. will never again have a leader who transcends the muck of politics and bands the nation together. That Biden campaigned on just such a promise merely proves how laughable it is. To govern, a chief executive must choose. In choosing, he will inevitably disappoint and divide. Perhaps in previous eras a president could maintain his personal standing irrespective of policy. Our own times are too fractious for that. The tools of disdain are (literally) at our fingers.
The second prospect is related but distinct. For their own sakes, American presidents will begin to dismantle the excesses of office. Gone will be as much of the pomp as we can legally dispense with. Gone will be the retinue of hundreds when the head of the executive branch so much as crosses the street. Discarded most quickly will be the absurd monarchical flourishes: the honorific (“Mr. President”), the prime-time lectures, and the endless, baffling applause. It’s not for nothing the State of the Union address has become a locus of conservative complaint in recent years. To cheer a politician whose policies one loathes is deeply and irremediably un-American. Clap for right proposals, by all means. But greet the man himself with a measure of restraint. He and we deserve it.
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And so we return to our two pieces of paper. A nation of ideas rather than blood ties, America is rightly governed by principles, not men. If we would not be Baalists, we will consult our reason rather than our aesthetics when asked to vote. To put it another way, I care more and more about what the president does and less and less about how he looks and behaves while doing it. Some will argue that I am simply steeling myself to vote, once again, for a villain. My retort is that I have finally matured.
Many years ago, as a guileless undergraduate, I remarked to a professor how pleasant it was to think of the gentlemanly George W. Bush in the White House. His reply — “You actually care about that?” — has stayed with me. Yes, sir, I did. But then something of which you’d approve began to happen. I grew up.
Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examinermagazine contributing writer.