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I read a blog post today simply because the title caught my eye. The title was "Familiarity Breeds Disrespect." The funny thing is, the post itself was about treating yourself and others right. What I thought it was going to be about it completely different.
When I read "Familiarity Breeds Disrespect" I immediately thought of President and Mrs Obama. Why? Because I feel that in their quest to be the everyman's First Family, they have degraded the office of the President. The President, like any good leader, is not there to make friends. The President's job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." No where in the oath does it state the need to be liked by everyone, to be on late-night TV shows, to be on the cover of magazines every month, etc. Seeing our President on a late-night show with no tie on as if he is just some community organizer instead of the President of the United States was a sad moment for me. (I won't even get into my thoughts on the First Lady being on magazine covers or in ads for Talbots...)
Maybe it is the military part of me coming out, but to me a leader shouldn't be part of the masses. If a leader is part of the masses, the masses tend to stop following and start saying "yeah, but" or "how come?" or "why should I?" a lot more often. And why not, if the leader is part of the group, then what makes them so special? What makes them able to make decisions better than anyone else?
Being "just one of the guys" and allowing, even encouraging, familiarity takes away from the specialness of the office. The man was elected to lead our country. He should remember the Presidency is an office to be held in high-esteem and if he doesn't see it that way, soon enough, others won't either.
It is apparent that he does not hold the office in very high esteem; we can be sure we will see more degrading of the office as time goes by. But then I see it as a continuation of the job allready started by the philandering, sax-playing former governor from Arkansas and his over-imposing wife.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Barak won in part due to his appeal to the masses. He owes them that and plays to it at his need and convenience.
I thought the exact same thing when I saw that Obama went on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The time to appear on Leno is BEFORE the election, if you want to humanize the candidate, show off a sense of humor, and connect with voters instead of coming across as a haughty elitist (Kerry never went on Leno, right?). A sitting POTUS should NEVER appear on a talk show, SNL, or even the Sunday Washington Politics shows.
ReplyDeleteOf course, who actually sits by the radio to listen to the Presidential weekly radio address these days? Maybe I'm the one who needs to join the 21st century.