It may well be the case, as Shakespeare had it, that “the King is but a man” and that “the violet does indeed smell to him as it doth to me,” but, if so, it is not entirely obvious that our presidents know it. As the years have progressed, Americans have come to expect their leaders to be national avatars, into whose wise hands we place our national destiny. And, alas, far from pushing back with a confused and humble “please don’t,” those leaders have been all too happy to acquiesce. President Trump vowed that “I alone can fix” because he intuited that this was what voters wished to hear. Likewise, President Biden affirmed that he would “shut down the virus” because he sensed that the citizenry would prefer to believe that the destiny of COVID-19 was contingent upon which politician was sitting at the Resolute Desk than upon forces outside of our control. As we hurtle toward the third year of the outbreak — and as it becomes clear that the matter is not up to the head of the federal executive branch, whomever he might be — one might reasonably ask, “How’s that working out for us?”
Across a remarkable range of issues, the superstition that the president is a talisman now reigns unchecked. Aware that there is something a touch off about the conceit, we tend to euphemize the idea a little. In order to avoid sounding strange, political journalists like to refer to the president’s “stewardship” instead of to his “beneficence.” But the implication is the same, nevertheless: that what is good and bad abroad the land is the direct product of the current president, and that there is nothing in America that a quick game of Brutus-in-the-Curia cannot fix.
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