Dignity and grace

The President of the United States sits alone in his White House office, still awake in the wee hours of the morning.  Only the Oval Office is lit.  He must be laboring over secret dispatches from our embassies overseas?  Or tweaking the details of his proposed tax reform bill?  Right?

No.  Like a middle school kid up late at night making funny (?) YouTube submissions, the President is making a little cartoon-esque video showing himself as the hero of a battle against a wicked and unfair CNN.  He tackles CNN, forcing him to the ground.  He smiles to himself.  Oh yes!  This will show them!  He posts it to his Twitter account, and to the world. 

Somewhere in Moscow, an aide carries this latest word from America's president to V. Putin for his consideration.  In the chancelleries of European capitals, in India and China, in African nations, in the capitals of allies and enemies alike, political leaders try to read these latest tea leaves.

The President of the United States.  What would Eisenhower have said.  Or Hoover.  Or even Reagan -- himself a creature of the media.  Or even the Bushes, father and son.

A number of voters once said they voted for George W. Bush because "he was someone I'd enjoy having a beer with at the local tavern."  I suppose that some of today's voters will vote again for President Trump because "he's someone it would have been fun to play video games with when I was 13."

No wonder that British comedian Stephen Fry gently suggests, in an opinion piece in today's New York Times, that perhaps America needs a monarch, perhaps under a different name.  Perhaps "First American" or "Sovereign Citizen" or even "Uncle Sam."  Recalling stories of Winston Churchill's first stilted conversations with his new sovereign, the young Elizabeth II, and his bowing to her as custom decreed as he walked backward out of her presence, Fry asks,

Above all, put in your mind the picture of the current president being forced to bow himself backward out of Uncle Sam’s presence. Wouldn’t that just beat the band? And the fireworks, too.

Indeed.