"I tried never to forget who I was and where I'd come from and where I was going back to."
Harry S. Truman

The Presidency today has edged ever more away from its founding principles of service to the country, to a new and debilitating direction of whatever it takes to get elected. We want our presidents to stand tall, tell us anything in a distorted need to believe. All pyrotechnics and car-chases, we have become addicted to a Hollywood presentation of flashed imagery, making icons of our chief executives in one moment and pulling the wings off them like helpless insects in the next. The result has been an expectation of fudging the truth by the public and government by sleight of hand on the part of our presidents. Image has won over content.

Jefferson had a high and hesitant speaking voice, disliking to talk to assemblies and much more comfortable in small groups or the written word. Lincoln was a homely and introverted man, sitting out the campaign in Springfield as was the custom of that time. Neither would probably be electable today and one wonders where we are headed in this feel-good nation.

We do not even blink at presidential speeches that are crafted by a staff of writers and whose content is based upon reaching out to every possible constituency, no matter how disingenuous. To the background of the Marine Band playing "Ruffles and Flourishes," we are willing to aggrandize the moment and marvel at the preparation, swallowing the whole thing and promised lower taxes, better schools, an end to poverty, world respect, a government hat actually functions and a rosy retirement, all in the same breath. Then it's business as usual, with spiraling debt and a civil society coming apart, the next candidate hooking us with the same unreasonable and impossible combinations. Presidents come and presidents go, the only indication of their passing is another presidential library and a legacy of failed administration, an added burden upon the next man's shoulders.

Perhaps that's too pessimistic. Perhaps not.

The Presidency would do well to move away from its frantic desire to be all things to all people and concentrate more honestly on being some things to most people. A second term might more naturally follow for such a man, depending upon his integrity and fairness in office for re-election.

As the Presidency has taken on increasingly imperial trappings, our willingness to see our presidents as flawed but honest men has failed us as well. Frustrated by constant shortcomings in the everyday promise of government and unable to see any statesmanlike attention to ongoing issues, we have turned as a nation to a class of nitpicks. There is nothing left for us but to pick the nits of presidential wives and their power over their husbands, who did or did not sit in the front or rear of Air Force One, what subordinate did or did not leak a presidential memo.

Fortunately, the presidency has been so skillfully crafted by the framers of the Constitution, that we are able to muddle through. Even so, as the Presidency has increasingly lost content, it has given itself over to an unending search for image, a thirst for the appearance of leadership.

The Presidency is a job. Relentlessly we are reminded that it's a tough job, an impossible job and oftentimes a killer of a job. But the fact is that it's still an executive position and one in which the elected is supposed to provide an element of leadership and explain that leadership to the nation.

Rather than an ascendance of political ladders, it should reflect a sabbatical, a leave of absence from private life to four or eight years of public life. If one happens to be a politician, this requirement need not change. The presidency is above party and the politician who finds himself in that office would do well to distance himself from party and lead in the interests of the nation.

Harry Truman had it right, when he said you can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit. Truman also left the Oval Office to go home and mow his own lawn. Poor old Harry, they scoffed at him for his common man image and yet, Democrats and Republicans alike rush to make comparisons between their candidacy and his administration. There's something to be learned from that as well.

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