We Love the Emperor Day

Here’s a fun fact via Jacob Tomaw: There is no such Federal Holiday as ‘Presidents’ Day.’ It is officially just Washington’s Birthday.
I rather like that, since he was our greatest President, and it’s been all downhill ever since. But really, there’s no reason to set aside a day to honor any of these bozos just because they became chief executive. What is so special about them? There’s no Congressmen’s Day, no Justices’ Day. (Oh please, spare us from that). I’m opposed to this whole notion that politicians deserve special honor. If they stuck to their jobs and stopped trying to immanentize the eschaton, they should have our thanks and a paycheck, no monuments necessary.
Unfortunately, we tend to lionize our Maximum Leaders, and the whole thing is silly if not disgusting. Reacting to some recent anticipatory vapours, Daniel Larison writes:

In my 29 years, I have never felt proud of any President, and I truly cannot understand how a politician could make anyone feel giddy (except in the way that standing on the edge of a precipice might give you this feeling). At Reagan and the elder Bush’s best moments, I found that I could respect the President, but then I was very young and impressionable. Except for about a one-year period in Mr. Bush’s first term, I can’t remember even having that respect. What would be a truly remarkable accomplishment for the next President would be if he could cause me to have respect for him. I don’t think people should feel proud of their politicians — this is to ask and to give too much — but it certainly shouldn’t be too much to ask that they earn our respect.

It a perverse and often baffling consequence of Bush’s failure to meet even the lowest expectations of his office that the public now seem to have raised those expectations for the next President.
And yet for a long time, the public perception of the President as Leader of the Nation has been blown out of proportion to the version of the office one will find in the Constitutional. I’m gratified to see that Gene Healy is soon coming out with a book that explores our Cult of the Presidency, though I doubt the mob will flock to its message.
The description also seems to hint at a problem many civil libertarians have been making for a while: the growth of abuse under Bush cannot be simply attributed to ideology. Anyone who thinks the next Democratic President will selflessly forsake all of the power the current administration brazenly grabbed is not being honest with themselves — or is naive about the nature of power in the first place.
Congress once jealously guarded its place as a co-equal branch of the national government. The national Republicans have utterly failed in this respect. I don’t expect the Democratic Congress to behave any better under a Democratic President.
Update: Radley Balko has some excerpts, “particularly relevant on a day Congress has set aside to honor an office that’s increasingly looking like America’s elected king.” They are well worth reading. Stirring also is Balko’s conclusion:

It doesn’t take a great man to collect and wield power. All men do that, and always have. It takes a great man to resist the trappings of high office, and the urge to inflict his vision on everyone else. It’s strange how we celebrate our overthrow of the British monarchy each July, and regularly pat ourselves on the back for our system of checks and balances, yet then turn around and celebrate the men who have most behaved like tyrants, and done all in their might to circumvent the restrictions the Constitution puts on their powers.

Update II: Gene Healy’s column for today.

Related on ITA:

“Obama as Head of State“