Demeaning (Any) President (Really): America’s New Low

By Guest Author Richard Laermer

Last year, responding to a question about President Bush, now-beleaguered Representative Charles Rangel told his television interviewer: “I really think that he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all; it shows that, in this great country, anybody can become president.”

While that was funny, it’s really not. That a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives, one in control of the Committee on Ways and Means—and his marbles—would say this about the current U.S. president says a great deal about where we are.

This is far more revealing about the times. Disparaging remarks that once might have been whispered behind closed doors over a cigar and brandy are now broadcast proudly into microphones. It seems like the office of president has been degraded to historic lows.

In the book “2011″ I lobbed the question: Will 2011 be a moment of renewed respect for the office or continued ridicule?

My first instinct is to point to the office’s most recent occupants as the culprits. “The White House is a shrine to people,” said Bob Dole at the height of the Monica scandal. “It’s a shrine. I think when things like this happen, people are shocked.”

If half of the country seethed at Bill Clinton’s casual relationship with an intern and the other half seethes at what must be perceived as Bush’s casual relationship with reality, it seems likely that most of the damage to the institution has been self-inflicted.

People have lost faith in the apparatus of leadership. Yet this answer is probably insufficient and shortsighted, both of which I have little trouble revealing.

On one level, there appears to be a permanently reduced level of trust. There have always been good presidents and bad ones, but all Commanders in Chief were citizens first, at least in the way they acted. Watergate shook decades’ worth of accumulated faith in the idea that a president would not “do anything” to the people, and now a seat of authority and respect has become a man waiting for the next scandal—and then the one after that.

Now when something hits, it seems there’s no going back to liking the man—or, one day, woman. Deepening partisan rancor has accelerated the process; everything is a fight these days.

After the Soviet Union’s demise, we appeared to have more time to concentrate on a leader’s personal failings. So now the office no longer seems like a big enough oak for leaders to scamper and hide behind.

In 1971, the counterculture was cynical. In 2011, the culture is.

Still, in the future, we need to concentrate more on the big things in order to rise above the mediocre center. Here’s an example of how not to see the world.

In January 2007, a commenter on Chicagoist.com complained that the editors had devoted an entire post to the passing of Momofuku, the creator of instant Ramen noodles. Yet, said the blogger, there was only a single link mentioned on the concurrent passing of President Gerald R. Ford. Another post acknowledged that Ford probably deserved more than afterthought status, but then added, “On the other hand, who hasn’t eaten Ramen noodles?”

Ford’s presidency was forgettable, but it’s still tough to imagine Calvin Coolidge being compared unfavorably to dehydrated noodles.

Politics aside, George Jr. often seems uncomfortably close, in a certain media fishbowl way, to Lohan or Spears or Simpson (O.J.). He is just another very public person whose very conspicuous flaws are very easily identified, very funny to caricature, and very much ridiculed. . .and on a loop, no less!

We can hope to rid ourselves of the tabloid presidency.

Consider an analogy from 1950, when the media created and destroyed Marilyn Monroe, yet somehow Dwight Eisenhower remained perched far above the fray. But. . .

That would have been a comfy place to stop, but comfort is not my bag. See, it’s not really ever “politics aside.” It’s impossible to separate politics from a discussion of the degradation of the presidency.

In the current zero-sum climate, defenders of any president will point out any disrespect, even if none exists. Responding to a long National Review article chastising Keith Olbermann for calling Bush “Mr. Bush,” Media Matters blog noted that the late William F. Buckley Jr., the Review‘s founder, had referred to “Mr. Bush” in the magazine’s pages 150 times since the president’s inaugural.

So in the game of deriding the president of the U.S., or what Bill Maher says is his “I kid the president” moment, let’s say respect is in the eye of the beholder

…For more of me, see blog Laermer.com