When did we start thinking that the President should be the boss of us?
Probably with Franklin Roosevelt, who—in his own mind—thought he had a plan for everything. Americans began to look to him for answers for their problems, problems that truly were mighty during the Great Depression.
Roosevelt hatched plenty of programs to deal with unemployment, hunger and so forth. In the suburbs north of Chicago, men in the Civil Conservation Corps where to put work with shovels, picks and other hand tools to turn marshes and wetlands into the friendly and popular Skokie Lagoons.
The problem today is that presidents as well as the candidates think they should be in charge of our lives. With Joe Biden, it’s obvious. Control is part of the progressive/liberal/Democratic playbook.
But here comes Donald Trump, who is certain he should be the boss of us because his intellect is so superior to everyone else’s. And so many people seem to like him for that.
He speaks in superlatives about himself and anyone who genuflects before him. “My financials are huge!” Incredible! “Tremendous!” Anyone not one on board with his soaring ego is a “loser!” “Mentally ill.” Nothing is just okay.
Despite his solemn pronouncements that he is the last bastion of liberty and freedom, control has become his motivation, just as with the Democrats. And sadly so with the many of the thousands who attend his rallies (“in numbers like no other”), they look to him for control. Because he is the only one who can “make America great again.” And so:
“I will be phenomenal on women [or fill in the blank].”
“I'm the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody's ever been more successful than me. I'm the most successful person ever to run.”
"Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest - and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."
"I'm intelligent. Some people would say I'm very, very, very intelligent."
“[Kim Jong-Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
Why should people blessed with self-confidence listen to any of this claptrap? Why would successful people need someone smarter or cleverer to be in charge.
No, I’m not saying with Hillary Clinton that Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Or than anyone who supports him wants to turn this republic over to an autocrat.
Nor do I agree with sociologist Philip S. Gorski who ridiculously warns,
the election of Donald Trump constitutes perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a real and growing danger that representative government will be slowly but effectively supplanted by a populist form of authoritarian rule in the years to come.
If anything, the need for a boss president is a trend that has sprouted in both political parties. In a word, the president is our “caretaker.” It’s when the popular notion posits, for example, that a president is so much in charge of the economy that he alone can prevent a recession. Or that he alone can be blamed for a recession.
The Founding Fathers saw the president as a manager of the government, not the manager of our fortunes.
I fear that we have gone so far in the opposite direction that the original idea of the American president can never be recovered.