Properly done, such a thorough discrediting would strip away from this presidency all the moral authority, all the respect, all the deference, that Americans customarily extend to that office.
And if those aspects of the aura of the presidency were thoroughly stripped away --all the moral authority, all the respect, all the deference, that Americans customarily extend to that office-- the president's power would be greatly diminished. The power of the office has a legal aspect, but without its moral aspect the president's ability to dominate the political arena --an ability that now, disgracefully, continues-- would be removed.
This is the way to weaken the president. And thus this entirely feasible stripping from the president that authority he so little deserves would also make other things feasible.
Honoring the Presidency Requires Dishonoring this President
For many Americans, hearing the dark truth about this president and treating him with the contempt and distrust he deserves go against the patriotic grain.
Americans have a long tradition of treating the president with respect. This is an obstacle that those pursuing the task of stripping this president of his authority must bear in mind.The solution to that problem is simple: it requires showing how respect for the presidency and disrespect for this president –far from being in conflict—are two aspects of the same patriotic impulse.
We Americans generally treat the president with a degree of respect and deference partly because our political culture teaches us to, and partly because in the course of our country’s history, most presidents have acted in at least a degree of good faith. Most of our presidents have tried to discharge their responsibility –at least much of the time, and despite an admixture of cronyism and other forms of corruption—to serve the nation.
We as a people have not been well-prepared by our history to deal with a president like this one: thoroughly dishonest, either with himself or with us, or more likely both; an instrument of forces that care nothing about the people of this country, or about the values that have constituted America’s ideal; destructive of everything he touches.
So what is needed is to clarify what it is that is worthy of respect: namely, a presidency that embodies America’s ideals and aspirations, that respects America’s most hallowed traditions (like the Constitution and the rule of law), and that takes good care to serve the people and the future good of the nation.
To respect such a presidency is to hold the present occupant of the Oval Office in contempt, to behold him with rage, to be disgusted with the enormous gap between America’s ideals and how this president has conducted his office.
We like George Washington, for his straight-forward and honest and just ways, that made him so admired and trusted by his countrymen.
We like Abraham Lincoln for --among other things-- the bigness of his heart and his compassionate embrace of all those suffering, with malice toward none, and with his presentation of a relationship with the Sacred that is about finding real justice, and creating a world that fulfills the great ideals of equality and liberty.
We like Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his buoyancy of spirit and capacity to envision good order and work effectively to create it.
And in all these things, George W. Bush is completely the opposite.
The honoring of the office requires that we give NO HONOR to this atrocity of a president. This man who has disgraced and damaged his office, leaving us at the very least with the image of a president who cared not a fig for the Constitution and the rule of law, or for honesty, or for compassion, nor for fairness, nor even the slightest regard for the truth. That is emphatically what we DO NOT WANT OUR PRESIDENT TO BE ABOUT.
And if those aspects of the aura of the presidency were thoroughly stripped away --all the moral authority, all the respect, all the deference, that Americans customarily extend to that office-- the president's power would be greatly diminished. The power of the office has a legal aspect, but without its moral aspect the president's ability to dominate the political arena --an ability that now, disgracefully, continues-- would be removed.
This is the way to weaken the president. And thus this entirely feasible stripping from the president that authority he so little deserves would also make other things feasible.
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