Presidential Dictatorship: Not Thinking Things Through

He sees the flaw in your logic: Lucius Fox

Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands -- and your plan is to blackmail this person?... Good luck.

Bruce Wayne's confidante and tech adviser Lucius Fox, confronting accountant Coleman Rose when the number-cruncher tries to expose Batman's secret identity. 

Some of Barack Obama's most impassioned conservative critics see him as an incipient dictator bent on radically transforming the United States into a socialist dystopia through the exercise of unfiltered executive power.

Many of those same critics denounce Obama for being insufficiently ruthless in using arbitrary presidential power to kill and imprison people. Their plan, apparently, is to goad that incipient dictator into becoming a fully realized despot. 

Writing in Investor's Business Daily, attorney Ernest S. Christian and economist Gary A. Robbins -- the former a veteran of the Ford administration, the latter a Reagan administration alumnus -- tidily encapsulate the conservative Republican critique of Obama the embryonic dictator:

"Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion over too many aspects of our lives. There's no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.... [Barack Obama] is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most 'consequential' president ever."

In fact, Obama is nothing less than "an alien in the White House," they write, borrowing an expression coined by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal. 

"A wounded rampaging president can do much damage -- and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that might be," they continue. There is even the possibility that Obama would remain in office in defiance of law and the will of the electorate, since the "overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured -- Chicago-style."

The authors appear to believe that the formidable powers exercised by Obama somehow originated with him -- or, at very least, that Republican occupancy of the White House immunizes the office against depravity.

While painting Obama as a singular threat to liberty and Bill Clinton as a degenerate who "lowered the culture" of an electorate that twice elected him, they insist that "George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily." 

Translated into Roman terms, the authors would have us believe that Clinton was the corrupt, self-absorbed adolescent Elagabalus, and Obama either the depraved Nero or the despotic Diocletian -- but Bush the Younger, heck, he was Claudius, a relatively well-intentioned, albeit physically maladroit and verbally challenged, legitimate heir.

In fact, Obama is not materially different from his predecessor in any significant way. Mssrs. Christian and Robbins depict Obama as a unique threat to our "Anglo-Saxon" tradition of liberty protected by law. But it was Bush -- acting under the influence of his Sith Master, Dick Cheney -- who disemboweled the habeas corpus guarantee, the foundation of common law protections of individual rights. Granted, Obama has embraced and enlarged on Bush's actions, but the damage was done before the "alien" occupied the Oval Office. 

Brutum hominis cum Imperator

Perhaps Christian and Robbins intend to intimate that the threat Obama poses to the "Anglo-Saxon" tradition is a matter of identity, rather than performance, given that the chief damage was done by Bush the All-American Boy, rather than Obama the "alien."

During the reign of Bush the Lesser, Marc Thiessen -- now enjoying a sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute -- was one of the Imperator's scriptwriters. Since the end of that regime, Thiessen has continue to evangelize on behalf of torture, murder by executive decree, and other key tenets of the Bush-Cheney doctrine of totalitarian presidential power.


Thiessen has done nothing to conceal his disdain for the incumbent president; he is firmly in the camp of those who see Obama as a subversive and aspiring tyrant. Yet in a recent Washington Post column, Thiessen called for that same neo-Leninist to employ extraordinary means to abduct WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.


"Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States," observes Thiessen. "This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice  [sic] and put his criminal syndicate out of business."

This could mean sending a CIA or even a military team to snatch Assange off the streets of Iceland, Belgium, or other friendly countries unwilling to surrender him to Washington, Thiessen insists. It also means using the newly created U.S. CyberCommand to interdict WikiLeaks' access to the Web: "With a stroke of his pen, the president can authorize USCYBERCOM to protect American and allied forces by eliminating WikiLeaks' ability to disseminate classified information that puts their lives at risk," Thiessen insists.
 
In other words, Thiessen is eager to see the dreaded Obama deploy kidnapping teams and throw the internet "kill switch," and will hector him mercilessly until he does -- making sure to season those critiques of presidential weakness with dire regarding what he has described as Obama's despotic designs.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, Thiessen's comrade at National Review, likewise laments the supposed fact that Barack Obama -- whom he has described as a "neo-communist" -- has been diffident and tentative in exercising presidential power.

In an address last March in an event sponsored by Hillsdale College, McCarthy chided Obama for not emulating Andrew Jackson's example as military governor of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

On December 15, 1814 -- shortly before the storied "Battle of New Orleans" -- Jackson issued a decree announcing that it was his "unalterable determination rigidly to execute the martial law in all cases which should come before [my] province." The city would be run as an armed camp. A 9:00 PM curfew was imposed, and anyone found on the streets after that hour would "be apprehended as spies and held for examination."

Following the battle -- regarded as the only significant American victory, although the War of 1812 had already ended -- Jackson refused to restore civilian government. In March, nearly two months after the climactic battle,  a member of the Louisiana senate named Louis Louailler published an anonymous letter in the Louisiana Courier condemning the continued state of martial law as an affront to "our oath of making the Constitution respected."

"It is high time the laws should resume their empire," wrote Senator Louailler, who also demanded that the dozens of civilians held in military custody be brought before civilian courts and either charged or released.

As if anticipating Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction-era dictum -- "Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor" -- Jackson treated this invocation of the U.S. Constitution as the act of a British spy.

He first commissioned publication of a propaganda sheet called Friend of the Laws that pointedly warned New Orleans residents that those found guilty of "espionage" within the "armed camp" would be subject to immediate execution. He then dispatched agents to learn the identity of his anonymous critic and arrest him.


Once Louailler was in military custody, he was accused of acting with  "the direct and manifest object [of bringing] the military authority into contempt," as well as fomenting sedition by "stirring up discontent and mutiny in the camp" -- meaning the City of New Orleans.

Jackson's critics had a point.

Some of Louailler's constituents filed an appeal with U.S. District Judge Dominick Augustin Hall, who issued a writ of habeas corpus.

"Instead of responding to the writ as directed," McCarthy admiringly recalls, Jackson "had Judge Hall arrested." Jackson charged the judge of "aiding[,] abetting, and executing mutiny within the camp" and threw him into the same cell holding Louailler. Shortly thereafter, Judge Hall was marched a short distance outside the "camp" and released.

A few weeks later, Louailler -- a civilian legislator -- was subjected to a court martial on numerous charges, including espionage, "illegal and improper conduct," "disobedience to orders," and "writing a willful and corrupt libel."

To his credit, Louallier refused to recognize the jurisdiction of that spurious court, and also rejected an offer of amnesty "by which they had sought to brand me a criminal." He spent years working to restore his reputation.

Alas, sighs McCarthy, "We've come a long way from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama" -- the latter, presumably, a timid milquetoast scandalously unwilling to punish dissent through summary imprisonment, and exile judges who object to such abuses of due process.

My question to McCarthy would be this: Do you really want Obama to exercise those powers? Would we really be better off if Obama -- the incumbent "wartime Commander-in-Chief" -- treated criticism of his actions as sedition, arrested his critics, and imprisoned judges who issued writs demanding that the government justify its actions?

Jackson repays former allies: The Cherokee "Trail of Tears."

As it happens, Obama's behavior in office isn't that far removed from the totalitarian ideal espoused by Thiessen, McCarthy, and their ilk.


The indefatigable -- and entirely irreplaceable -- Glenn Greenwald of Salon points out that the Obama administration, building on the precedents set by Thiessen and McCarthy's former boss, has created a "hit list" of people subject to summary execution on presidential orders. This includes several U.S. citizens, prominent among them the radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

When Awlaki's father -- working with the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights -- filed an emergency appeal for an injunction to prevent the extra-judicial state murder of his son, "a significant and extraordinary problem arose," notes Greenwald: Regulations issued by the Treasury Department under the Bush administration "prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with individuals labeled by the Government as `Specially Designated Global Terrorists,' and those regulations specifically bar lawyers from providing legal services to such individuals without a special `license' from the Treasury Department specifically allowing such representation."

"On July 16, roughly two weeks after Awlaki's father retained the ACLU and CCR to file suit, the Treasury Department slapped that label on Awlaki," Greenwald continues. "That action would have made it a criminal offense for those organizations to file suit on behalf of Awlaki or otherwise provide legal representation to him without express permission from the U.S. Government."


Timothy Geithner, the career criminal in charge of the Treasury Department, has condescended to issue the requested license, thereby permitting Awlaki's father to press his legal challenge. This also preserves the supposed authority of the executive branch to grant or deny -- on any whimsical basis it considers appropriate -- permission to attorneys seeking to defend the legal rights of people on the president's "kill list."

Last January, after Awlaki was accused of inciting the attempted Christmas bombing of Northwest Flight 253, his father was asked why he didn't encourage his son to return to the United States to confront the charges.

"I will do my best to convince my son to do this," Awlaki told CNN, but he understandably doesn't trust a government that claims the right to execute his son without trial -- or even formal criminal charges.

"They want to kill my son," he pointed out. "How can the American government kill one of their own citizens?"

The unsettling answer to that troubling question is one terrifying word: "easily." Obama's conservative critics want to make this task even easier still. They really haven't thought this through, have they?

    Postscript, August 5: On the subject of the "Alien in the White House"....

This is the kind of thing that threatens to eliminate the ever-narrowing gap between life and parody that sustains The Onion's existence: 

The head of an eastern Pennsylvania amusement company has yanked a carnival game in which players shot foam darts at an image resembling President Barack Obama.

Irvin Good Jr. pulled the target-shooting game after receiving a complaint from a Massachusetts woman attending a fair in Roseto, about 65 miles north of Philadelphia. Good said Wednesday his company, Hellertown-based Goodtime Amusements, won't offer the game again.

"It was just a big, big mistake in judgment, and I feel sorry about it," he told The Associated Press. "I can't take it back, but I can try to make it better."

The game, dubbed "Alien Attack," featured a large painted image of a black man wearing a belt buckle with the presidential seal and holding a scroll labeled "Health Bill." Players could win prizes such as stuffed animals by hitting targets on the image's head and heart.

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Dum spiro, pugno!

Flying Shoes, Bursting Bubbles

The most remarkable thing about the gesture was the fact that it was an act of defiant contempt, rather than one of criminal violence.



Bush's reaction was remarkable only in the sense that he displayed, for perhaps the last time before he becomes deservedly inconsequential, the depth of his ignorance and the utter impregnability of his unearned self-regard.



Immediately after a Iraqi reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi disrupted a Baghdad press conference by hurling both shoes at Bush, calling him a "dog" and denouncing him in the name of "the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," Bush sat down with ABC reporter Martha Raddatz to decant some of his unique wisdom about matters of diplomacy and cultural understanding.



Raddatz pointed out that Zaidi's gesture -- attempting to strike Bush in the face with the sole of a shoe -- is "considered a huge insult in this [part of the] world."



Bush's reply defies parody: "Look, they were humiliated. The press corps, the rest of the Iraqi press corps was humiliated.... But I'm not insulted."



So -- this carefully calibrated gesture, this surgical strike of an insult, which was directed specifically at the individual most responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, managed somehow to humiliate everybody else in the room, while sparing the invincible ego of the one who was targeted.



This is not a sign of a character healthy and stable enough to slough off petty insults. It is a manifestation of a sociopath's indifference to the legitimate concerns of other people -- in this case, a young Iraqi journalist who has been subjected to violence by both American occupation forces (which had previously arrested him twice without cause) and the criminal mobs set free to prey upon the country by the U.S.-led invasion of his homeland.



"The guy wanted to get on TV and he did," opined Bush in his interview with Raddatz. "I don't know what his beef is. But whatever it is I'm sure somebody will hear it."




Mr. Zaidi's inexplicable "beef," of course, is his entirely understandable rage and resentment over the foreign occupation of his country, and the needless death of innocent people.



Unlike Bush, who has made four lightning-quick visits to Baghdad -- fleeting appearances under the cover of impenetrable security, during which he was spared any exposure to the gratitude of the pitiful people he "liberated" -- Zaidi lives in Iraq. He has to live with the consequences of Bush's whimsical little venture in mass murder and social destruction.



It was quite understandable that Zaidi found himself unable to abide the spectacle of Bush stewing in self-congratulation while Nouri al-Maliki and the assembled reporters dutifully played along with the charade, passively ratifying the lies that continue to sustain the world-historic crime that is the Iraq war.



Those who don't believe in a Creator find it difficult to explain how matter attained self-awareness. The existence of George W. Bush presents us with exactly the opposite conundrum: How can someone blessed with the capacity for thought be at once utterly self-preoccupied and entirely devoid of self-awareness?



Consider how Bush deflected the matter of Zaidi's insult -- which has understandably resonated throughout the Arab world -- by comparing it with what he considers to be a similar incident during the visit of another ruler to Washington:



"I've seen a lot of weird things during my presidency and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest. On the other hand, I do remember when the president of China came to the South Lawn, and a member of the press corps started yelling --I think it was Falun Gong slogans at the Chinese president. So this happens and it's a sign of a free society."



I'm not sure which part of this double-barrelled absurdity to deal with first.



Did Mr. Bush have a measurable understanding of the comparison he was drawing? The Falun Gong movement seems to share a phylum with Scientology and the Unification Church, but there are credible reports that its adherents are on the receiving end of severe official persecution, ranging from imprisonment to (allegedly) summary execution followed by harvesting of their organs for commercial use. Given that fact, is Mr. Bush really comfortable with his comparison?


Furthermore, after Dr. Wenyi Wang, a correspondent for the Falun Gong-founded newspaper Epoch Times, interrupted the press conference by shouting to Bush that he should "ask Hu Jintao to stop persecuting the Falun Gong," she was arrested and charged with "willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official," a misdemeanor carrying penalties up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.



This wasn't done in China by Hu's government; it was done here by the regime over which Bush presides.



Yes, those charges were dropped in April 2007 -- as part of an agreement in which she was required not to commit any other crime, including the supposed offense of "confronting" any foreign leader about his government's human rights record.



All of this, one assumes, constitutes what Bush is pleased to call the workings of "a free society."
Perhaps he means a society in which the ruling elite is generally kept free of vexing exposure to the unfiltered opinions of those they rule.



It was the sudden, unaccustomed exposure to a contrary opinion that may have precipitated
Attorney General Michael Mukasey's sudden fainting spell during a recent address to the Federalist Society in Washington.



Generally described as "conservative," the Federalist Society has been an incubator for many of the Bush Regime's signature policies in the war on terror -- institutionalizing the practice of torture, undermining habeas corpus, indefinite detention of terrorist suspects, the use of drumhead military tribunals with Soviet standards of evidence, exalting the president to the status of Grand and Glorious Decider, and so forth.



Mukasey used his address at the Federalist Society function for the same reason Bush made a final stop in Baghdad: Both of them were seeking to secure the Bush Junta's "legacy" by making grand summary statements of its supposed accomplishments before docile audiences.


In both cases, there was at least one ram among the sheep. For Bush, it was Muntazer al-Zaidi. For Mukasey it was Richard Sanders -- no, not the actor who played Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati, but rather a State Supreme Court Justice from Washington.



Sanders is often described as a libertarian-leaning judge; he says that "protection of our constitutionally guaranteed liberties as the first duty of our highest court." He managed to sit in silence for 17 minutes as Mukasey, basking in the fawning glow of his sycophantic audience, extolled the virtues of the Bush Regime's assault on the rule of law. But Sanders, as sickened by the audience as he was by the speaker, could abide no more.



"Tyrant! You are a tyrant!" Sanders stood and exclaimed, causing Mukasey to pause momentarily. He left just moments later. A few minutes later, Mukasey suddenly started stumbling over his words as he read his prepared text; to the horror of his audience, the Attorney General suddenly slumped foward over the lectern, bringing FBI agents scrambling to the podium to catch him before he fell.



Sanders had left by the time Mukasey's collapse took place, and was understandably concerned for the official's health. But as someone who cherishes liberty and respects the Constitution, Sanders simply couldn't suppress his reaction.



"Frankly, everybody in the room was applauding or sometimes laughing, and I thought, 'I've got to stand up and say something.' And I did," Sanders told his hometown press. "I stood up and said, 'Tyrant,' then I sat down again, then I left."



In a statement issued to the press, Sanders described how his outburst was the product of insuperable revulsion over both the Regime's behavior and that of its willing accomplices in the audience at that Federalist Society event:


"In his speech, Attorney General Mukasey justified the Bush administration's policies in the War on Terror, which included deying meaningful hearings for prisoners in Guantanamo, and other questionable tactics.... [T]he government must never set aside the Constitution; domestic and international law forbids torture; and access to the writ of habeas corpus shoud not be denied.



The program provided no opportunity for questions or response, and I felt compelled to speak out. I stood up, and said, `tyrant,' and then left the meeting. No one else said anything. I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice."



Or, for that matter, if we have only one set of shoes to hurl at the Emperor.



Policymakers, from the Dear Leader on down, are hermetically sealed off from dissent of any kind. On those rare occasions when frustration and moral outrage find a fissure in that bubble and the serenity of a political celebrity is disturbed, the result is usually a prominent display of some kind of corrective violence directed at the dissident.



Because he's a sitting judge, Sanders won't be punished in any way for his eruption. A private citizen almost certainly would face some kind of reprisal: That, after all, is what Tasers are for.



On sale now!












Dum spiro, pugno!

My President Is Nobody

Samuel warned them, but they didn't listen: Saul is anointed king over the Israelites.

“`... you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves [warned the prophet Samuel], and the Lord will not hear you in that day.'

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, `No, but we will have a king over us, that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.'”

I Samuel 8:18-19

Voltaire once said something to the effect that an artist will sacrifice fame, money, and the company of beautiful women, in the hopes of refining his craft ... and thereby obtaining fame, money, and the company of beautiful women.

Those who aspire to become President of the United States follow a somewhat similar course.

With exceptions that are genuinely exceptional, presidential candidates abase themselves shamelessly, their indecent eagerness to pander for votes making them the targets of public ridicule. Indeed, the typical presidential aspirant brings to mind an aging streetwalker driven to pathetic desperation by the knowledge that her merchandise is on the wrong side of the sell-by date. (To visualize what I'm referring to, think of Faith Hill's performance at the 2003 Grammy Awards, and you'll get the basic idea.)

That's just sad: Faith Hill, mother of three daughters, a married woman on the cusp of middle age, debases herself at the 2003 Grammy Awards. The spectacle of pathetic pandering she offered was almost half as sad as that provided by the typical presidential candidate.

That comparison, I'll admit, is grossly unfair: A prostitute only peddles her own flesh, where a president is in the business of stealing the property, and wasting the lives, of others. And a presidential candidate is in the business of buying the votes of some by promising to make war on the rights of others.

The prolonged exercise in self-denigration called a presidential campaign is made bearable by the prospect of personal exaltation that is the nearest thing to apotheosis one can experience in the flesh.

After the most successful of the panderers places his hand on the Bible and perjures himself by promising to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” he is presented to the public as a figure shrouded in sanctity and wreathed with wisdom. His touch can heal, his words can conjure miracles, and – more to the point – his will is the supreme law (at least until his second term). That last provision reflects the most significant innovation from the reign of Bush the Dumber, the dogma of the “unitary executive,” crafted by John C. Yoo and other proponents of executive dictatorship.

"To John Yoo, thanks for everything! -- Adolph Hitler."

The modern American presidency is a moveable feast calculated to sate every appetite whetted to a fine edge by the libido dominandi. Whoever he – or she – is, the US President immediately becomes the most powerful mammal on the planet. This is why anybody seeking the office (unless he emphatically and credibly seeks to reduce it to something like its constitutionally appropriate size) should be considered unworthy of holding any office of public trust. No, that's not enough: Such people should be regarded as enemies of all that is decent and worthy of preservation.

“Ah, but you miss the point,” comes the soothing voice of official sanctimony, threatening to leave the discussion mired in the boggy soil of soggy statist platitudes. “Whatever you think of the [wo]man, you have to respect the office.”

Oh, like hell I do.

To understand just how absurd that commonplace utterance is, try transposing it from the imperial realm to your local municipal government:

“You may not like or respect the County Weed Control supervisor, but you have to respect the office.”

I'm not kidding, or at least not entirely so.

Really, if one pays careful attention to the Constitution's assignment of delegated powers, the office of the presidency is significant, but hardly awe-inspiring. In domestic matters, the president is an executive with modest (and qualified) powers of appointment; in diplomatic affairs, he's the country's official greeter, with some carefully hedged powers to make agreements. The presidential war powers are contingent, derivative, and limited, as defined by the Constitution.

So in a very real sense, if reason were restored to her throne and we lived under the system authorized by the Constitution, the County Weed Control supervisor would have a greater impact on your life than the President of the United States. Such was the happy state of affairs in the United States prior to the advent of Abraham the Awful, Destroyer of Our Republic, in 1861.

The modern cult of the presidency (no other expression will suffice) owes a great deal to the immediate deification of Lincoln following his assassination. Since that time, the presidency has come to be seen as a quasi-divine institution, having been hallowed by the shed blood of Abe the (putative) Savior of the Union, rather than being a constitutionally modest office that should be peripheral to our daily concerns.

"Satan Tempting Booth To The Murder Of The President": This painting depicts the assassination of Lincoln in terms akin to the Passion of Christ.

Alas, we confront in the presidency an office endowed with powers grander than the most emancipated dreams of Caesars, Tsars, Shahs and Kaisers. And at least one of the reasons why people approach that office with chastely downcast eyes, hands dutifully tugging the forelock, is because its extra-constitutional powers make that office so dangerous.

We have to “respect” the office of president because, unlike the County Weed Control supervisor, the president can kill huge numbers of people on a whim. Indeed, presidents aren't truly seen as “presidential” until they have killed someone (or, as official sycophants would put it, they have “displayed leadership in an international crisis”).

"Transfiguration": Here we see the murdered Lincoln portrayed as a literal "Christ" figure, ascending to heaven to be exalted next to the similarly deified Washington.

So obviously the office generally appeals to exactly the sort of people who should be kept as far as possible from power of any kind. I can understand – if only in an anthropological sense – why such people are willing to carry out their half of the transaction through which presidents are made by humiliating themselves for months or years.

What I cannot understand is why we play along by treating presidents as demi-gods, forgetting the myriad acts of conspicuous self-denigration that characterize the typical presidential campaign. Too many Americans – that is, too many of the minority who bother themselves to take part in politics – buy into the official myth that once the typical politician, reeking of corruption and disfigured with his lust to power, becomes president, he somehow becomes a sanctified being.

"The Apotheosis of Washington," a blasphemous rendering of the admittedly noble Washington's supposed ascent to godhood, displayed on the ceiling of the Capitol rotunda. A man who typically left the room rather than be exposed to flattery, Washington would be disgusted.

Thomas Paine, who was wrong about the French Revolution and other, more important things, got this principle exactly right. Writing of the British Monarchy – an executive institution much less corrupt, tyrannical, or murderous than the contemporary American presidency – Paine lamented that “it is one of those evils, which when once established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.”

Paine's most important achievement, as I've pointed out before, was to persuade a substantial portion of the American colonists to abandon the idea that the King was, in some sense, a sanctified and benevolent figure, rather than a spectacularly successful “ruffian.” A similarly useful change in perspective would occur if Americans would stop referring to the occupant of the Oval Office – whoever that person may be – as “my president.”

The Cult of the Presidency, "Christian Right" Version: His Imperial Holiness George II finds solace in his burdens with the help of ascended Jedi Masters Lincoln and Washington, or something. Now let's go kill us some Mooo-slums!

Unless employed by the executive branch of the federal government, or serving in the armed forces when they are called into the service of the united States by Congress, Americans do not have a president – much less a “Commander-in-Chief.” George Bush doesn't preside over me in any sense I can recognize.

A common sight in recent years has been the random “My President is [fill-in-the-blank]” bumper sticker or protest sign displayed by some heretic unsatisfied with the incumbent short-term deity in Washington. That blank has been filled with the names of such dubious worthies as Charlton Heston and (I'm not kidding) former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. I always wonder why people bother to fill in that blank.

My president, I'm proud to say, is Nobody.

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Dum spiro, pugno!