Under the baobab: Presidents are embodiment of the American People and must act like it

“…With malice toward none; with charity for all;

With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,

let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…”

President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, said these words on March 4, 1865, during the worst war the country has ever known, the Civil War. There were over a million casualties, 3% of the country’s total population, including an estimated 750,000 deaths. Lincoln was speaking toward the end of the war. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9. Less than a week later, on April 14, Lincoln was assassinated.

I am a war baby, born while my father was off fighting in World War II. During most of my life, American troops have been involved in a shooting war: Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Iraq, and the longest, Afghanistan. In between there was a cold war with the Soviet Union and China. As children, we learned to duck and cover, fearing not just one school shooter, but an entire hostile world, threatening everybody with total nuclear obliteration. Thanks to President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, today, for the first time in over 20 years American soldiers are not involved in active combat.

The president is the embodiment of the American people. When he (or she) takes the oath of office they are legally and mystically transformed into the manifestation of our collective will. It doesn’t mean that all of us will agree with the president’s policies, which would be impossible in a democracy. The president is usually elected by a majority of the voting public filtered through the Electoral College. Only twice in my lifetime did a candidate with fewer votes become president, 1980 and 2016.

We believe that we “are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” To protect and ensure these rights we have, in turn, constitutionally vested the executive authority of the nation in the president. In England the titular head of state is determined by an archaic system of familial inheritance, which undergirds a concept of authority emanating from a theory of divine right. In America our head of state is determined by the power of the electorate.

Once elected, the official “solemnly swears to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and to ... preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Once executed I believe that they are no longer merely an individual. Rather they become the quintessence of “we the people.” What the president does, acquires, says, writes and reads is not their individual possession. It belongs to the people. When leaving office, they can’t take their “stuff” and go home. It ain’t their stuff. It was purchased by the sacrifice and blood of our martyrs.

Abraham Lincoln understood.

“…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

—Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Around town

The Center for Immigrants Rights Clinic, the State College Borough and the State College Area School District presented “Refugees Are Welcomed Here: A Community Conversation” at State High. Speakers were: Dr. Seriashia Chatters, Penn State’s assistant vice provost for educational equity; Associate Dean Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Nicole Bennett, Dillon Lightfoot, Mohammed Bassar from CIRC; Jody Lantz from THRIVE; Allayn Beck from the State College Food Bank; Maureen Safko, senior planner from the borough; Alix Croswell, bilingual supervisor for SCASD, Naomi Altman from ROAR and Brit Shalom; Tom Fontaine, State College manager. Mayor Ezra Nanes and police chief John Gardner also attended.