America Has No President

The presidency still exists. The Office of the Presidency exists. But the officeholder is not doing the job.

Edwin Eisendrath is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Alderman who hosts It’s The Democracy Stupid on Lincoln Square and a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. Subscribe to his Substack.

Teddy Roosevelt. Harry Truman. Dwight Eisenhower. They were not always popular. They certainly never wielded “unitary executive” authority. But they all tried to lead our big, complicated nation and faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress.

Lyndon Johnson. Chester Arthur. Ulysses Grant. They were flawed men, made better by the awesome weight and responsibility of office. Sometimes selfish, sometimes conniving, sometimes corrupt, they nonetheless inched us forward.

Abraham Lincoln, while still fighting rebels who sought to destroy the nation rather than accept the self-evident truths of our founding, taught us what a president is. At Gettysburg, he urged us to be dedicated to the unfinished work of assuring that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. That’s the president’s job, and for 250 years, presidents have done it.

The presidency still exists. The Office of the Presidency exists. But the officeholder is not doing the job — he is, instead, using the powers invested in the office for some other purpose. America has no president.

In place of upholding that government of the people, as Lincoln described it, the occupier of that revered office leads an aggressive effort to roll back voting rights, civil rights, and even our freedom to choose what to read. He has ordered signs to be placed outside the Smithsonian to denounce the very idea that American history is somehow about our dedication to the task of finishing the work.

John Kennedy talked about the perils of fast-moving technological change. He knew that such change created new problems, even as it solved old ones. Yet, when he argued that we should press ahead, it was for the progress of all people, not for the enrichment of a few. That is what a president does.

We do not have that now. Instead of feeling the weight and responsibilities of leading our magnificent country, the man who redecorates the Oval Office with gold leaf sees only the tools of coercive power and the opportunities those create for personal enrichment. And enrich himself he has, in violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution. A mob boss does that. A president, by constitutional definition, does not.

Lincoln did not simply tell us what the job of a president is, he also told us how to do it. He was the first president to be reelected in 32 years and in his first term he successfully led us through a brutal civil war, yet his second inaugural address is not about him or his accomplishments. He talks instead about all of us. He urges us to strive on to finish the work with firmness, and yet with malice toward none.

It is counsel he received from George Washington who cautioned us about the dangers a big democracy like ours must guard against. Washington warned, “One of the expedients of party to acquire influence is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other[s].” In his farewell address, he said, “You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations.”

Yet from mocking individuals, to disparaging our cities, to lying about vote totals, no-one has done more to misrepresent one part of our nation to another than the man who now holds the office but does not do the job of a president.

The ever-expanding targets of his malice are, next to himself, his favorite subject. This week, his lawyers admitted in court that he withheld more than $7 billion from states only because those states did not vote for him. It is a declaration from the Oval Office that, at least for those of us in those states, the man at the Resolute Desk is not our leader but our adversary.

A president must be for us all. If he is not, then he is not a president. Washington warned us about this. Lincoln accepted war to prove that point.

For 250 years, Americans have died for our freedom. At Gettysburg, Lincoln made clear that assuring that freedom was why our honored dead gave the last full measure of devotion.

That is not why American soldiers are dying today. The man occupying the office has sent our young men and women to war in Venezuela for oil, and in Iran to open a Strait that sending those troops closed. He says that soldiers died on his watch to prevent Iran from having a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, he is negotiating a path for the Saudis to build one. No soldier should die for this folly.

A real president knows that every time a soldier makes that terrible sacrifice it is to keep us free. I long for America to have a real president again.

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