L3 and Clioman -
You just reminded me of a line Liz Taylor had in “Butterfield 8.” Her character’s name is Gloria. She quotes the Latin phrase, “Sic transit gloria” but, not knowing what it means, says she figures it has something to do with the car she drives.
*************
Back during the 08 presidential campaign (boy does that seem centuries ago) a friend remarked how she thought Obama’s peripatetic “international” childhood was big plus because, in her line of thinking (parroted directly from the O’s marketing of himself), a less American, more We-R-The-World president would make America more accepted and loved by the world.
Several problems with this line of thinking.
1. The kind of people whom you are trying to win over by being “less American” will never see you as anything BUT American. And they will still hate you for it.
2. If you try to accomplish “being less American” via being a dhimmi, the folks in #1 will hate you twice as much. American dhimmi would be like, what, a tax-collecting leper in Jesus’ times?
3. If a private citizen wants to make him/herself “less American” when traveling abroad, that’s his or her business. But it is most emphatically NOT how the POTUS should approach the job. The international aspect of the job of POTUS is to represent America to the world, not to represent a “less American America” to the world, or to represent the world to America. Obama has no root American identity. Fools like my friend *knew* this and thought it was a great thing. Turns out, not so much. In fact it tends to bomb like anvils in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Square peg, round hole.
This is why the Constitution stipulates that the POTUS be a natural-born [American] citizen: the Framers understood that the job requires the person to be instinctively, viscerally American. If your heart doesn’t skip a beat when you see the American flag unfurl on a flagstaff, then don’t run for POTUS. If you don’t get the point that in the presence of American troops you are both CinC and are surrounded by your betters, don’t run for POTUS. If you don’t know the Constitution, or if the one you do think you know doesn’t fill you with awe and humility, don’t run for POTUS. If you don’t trust the (admittedly sometimes squirrelly, but freely made) judgment of Americans, then don’t run for their president. If you don’t understand why those guys returning from WWII, Korea and VN kissed the ground when they reached American shores, then g*******t don’t run for POTUS. And if you think any of the above are corny sentiments to be sneered at, or simplistic notions that need to be parsed and picked apart by super-intellects, then do the rest of us a favor and don’t run for POTUS.
Square peg, round hole.
It’s very simple, really. In order to “fit” to the office and the people, the POTUS needs to love this country. Bone-deep. Like a man loves his mother.
People with baggage and, er, “complicated relationships” need not apply. We do not need any (more) personal psychodramas [repressed anger, resentment, sense of betrayal or abandonment, etc.] being played out by someone who is going to have his finger on the button.
