If the president of the United States of America were limited to his proper role — chief executive of the federal bureaucracies and commander in chief in times of war — then we might not worry too much about his health. Indeed, if ever we are able to reinvigorate this republic and return its public and private spheres to their proper roles and proportions, that will be one of the ways we know we’ve succeeded: “Don’t worry if President Smith dies in office; we’ll just get another one.”
But we do not have that kind of presidency. Instead, we have made the president into a kind of Akhenaten, part monarch, part object of veneration in the national cult. Barack Obama has repeatedly declared himself to be the instrument — and the vessel — of capital-H History. Mrs. Clinton speaks in approximately the same way about herself. Donald Trump? “I alone.” If the presidential inauguration is to be a transubstantiation, then we ought to inquire as to what sort of body we are being nationally incorporated into. Personally, I find the prospect revolting, but that is where we are.
This quotation was of interest since we often note in The Coracle how, in this post-religious age, the human need for a subject for devotion has seen the replacement of a divine personage with that of a common politician. Talk about reductive thinking.