Something has struck me since the election cycle and the remaining fall-out that still lingers in the American psyche over what to do about the legacy of Donald Trump and whether or not President Biden is a hold-over from the politics of President Obama. We get daily news briefings promising to bring truth back to the American people from the White House, yet lies emerge almost daily.
What has struck me is this: The presidency has come to occupy too much space in the American psyche. President of the United States is a big job for sure, an important job. But if you take the idea of self-government at all seriously, the job of citizen is big and important, too. By allowing the presidency to consume so much of our mental bandwidth - head of state, chief executive, national mascot, social media star, celebrity in chief, team captain of a political faction, field marshal in the culture wars and executive producer of the national conversation - we have not left much room for our own initiative. There is more to the job of citizen than simply to cast a vote every four years for the next White House demigod and then anguish or exult over the results.
The Trump presidency did not create this imbalance. We have been drifting in the wrong direction since the rise of radio and television. The technologies of mass communication elevated virtual experience over immediate experience; with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats, the president was in every American parlor. Eventually, thanks to smartphones, the president wormed his way into every palm and then began to dominate social media through his Twitter feed.
The famous story of Calvin Coolidge gives a measure of the change. A woman told the 30th president that she had bet her friend she could make him say more than two words. “You lose,” Silent Cal replied. A circumspect president is unimaginable today.
With the eager cooperation of television and the Internet, President Trump has maximized the presidential footprint to an absurd degree. In his last days as president, he was with us always, from early-morning tweetstorms to the monologues of late-night comics. Imagine: Millions of people last year allowed a matter of public health (how best to slow the spread of a new disease) to be distorted into a question about the president (does Trump think masks are cool?). Looking to the president for cues on personal behavior - whether it is mask-wearing or truth-telling or simple courtesy - abdicates the job of citizenship.
The days following Election Day were a swell time to start taking our own jobs more seriously, beginning with media consumption. Bingeing on politics over social media is about as healthy as a breakfast of whiskey shots and cigarettes. Active citizenship means understanding that your Facebook feed is not full of political outrage because the world is coming apart; it is full of political outrage because Facebook’s algorithm knows that you respond to outrage. Citizenship requires reflection, inquiry, persuasion. Social media platforms prioritize the opposite.
For four years, millions of Americans have been proverbial rats in cages, frantically tapping the levers of Twitter or cable “news” for their next hit of presidential outrage. Happy for the attention, the media delivered dose after dose until the addicted rats kept on tapping regardless of the damage they could measure in their own anxiety and in the palpable anger around them.
Social media addicts who complain about anxiety are the rough equivalent of alcoholics who complain about morning headaches. America needs rehab, a thorough detox of the information we consume. As citizens get free of the addiction to political outrage, the oversize role of the presidency will begin to shrink.
And better citizenship starts at home, or close to home. Americans have become alienated from the federal government, with its imperial presidency, hamstrung Congress and dangerously politicized Supreme Court. But, the essence of citizenship is activism, not alienation. Get active in your community. The president does not fix schools, no matter who is in office; school boards, PTA presidents and volunteer tutors fix schools. The president does not feed the hungry; local food banks and charitable donors feed the hungry. The president does not create jobs; individual businesses and the customers who patronize them create jobs.
Citizenship grows upward from the grass roots. The oversize presidency looms down from the top. It has been heartbreaking to read about families sundered and neighbors coming to blows over differing views of the Oval Office occupant. As citizens, we should not give the president that kind of power. The Constitution does not even give him that kind of power. George Washington refused to be a king, so we created a republic to allow citizens to rule, thus making the president a figurehead, in theory.
Perhaps you heard recently of the Mitchells and the Gateses of Pittsburgh. Next-door neighbors and longtime friends, they found themselves divided by the overhyped president. Stuart and Chris Mitchell planted a Biden sign on their lawn while Jill and Bart Gates rocked a Trump sign. Then they realized something was missing, and each family added a homemade sign with an arrow pointing across the space between their homes. “We (Heart) Them,” the signs declared.
That is citizenship. That is putting the presidency in its proper place: an important, powerful place, a post well worth our attention. But not sovereign over our lives and loves; those are ours alone.
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