President Trump smiles while being introduced at the National Prayer Breakfast. (photo: Win Mcnamee/Bloomberg)
09 February 17
he Constitution does not allow 13-year-olds to become president, and after last week we can see why.
The Boy President proudly holding his latest executive
order up for the cameras, to show that he knows right-side-up from
upside-down. Bringing his Supreme Court nominee onstage. (“So was that a
surprise? Was it?”) Cutting short a call with the prime minister of
Australia. His homage to Frederick Douglass (“someone who’s done an
amazing job”) for Black History Month. Twittering about the “so-called
judge” who stopped the Muslim travel ban. Pictured in full smirk at the National Prayer Breakfast,
preening, bloviating (“In towns all across our land, it’s plain to see
what we easily forget — so easily we forget this — that the quality of
our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual
success.”) on a scale of bloviation equal to Warren G. Harding and the
great gasbags of the 19th century. You think, Let the man be president
but please don’t put him in charge of the Weather Service or Amtrak or
the TSA.
His homage to the Navy SEAL killed in the botched raid
in Yemen showed off his style. He has only one, the Jerry Lewis
Telethon style: “Very, very sad, but very, very beautiful. Very, very
beautiful. His family was there. Incredible family, loved him so much.
So devastated — he was so devastated. But the ceremony was amazing.”
Bill Murray destroyed this style, so did Ray of Bob and Ray, Ring
Lardner, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain and every satirist who
ever lived, and here it is, still walking around, and it will be the
voice of our government for years to come.
Senate Republicans have been blessing his Cabinet
appointees. They might have balked at Ben Dover for secretary of defense
or Hedda Hair for secretary of state, but the nominees were fairly
respectable, compared with the man who nominated them.
They showed
dignity. They didn’t sit before a Senate committee and talk about their
great TV ratings. They tried to address the subject at hand. They didn’t
say, “What an honor. So many great senators here this morning. So very,
very important to all of us.
Beautiful people. You do incredible
things. So very special.”
The National Prayer Breakfast is one of those deadly
official pieties, like sand burrs that you can’t get rid of. Every
elected official must now wear a flag pin; more and more public meetings
begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, grown people whose allegiance used
to be assumed now required to stand and salute the flag, like obedient
grade-school pupils. Why not recite the multiplication tables and the
parts of speech? And then there is the official Prayer Breakfast, which
shows the reason for separation of church and state: because politicians
corrupt the church. Jesus was rough on those who pray for show, but
there was the Boy President complimenting the Senate chaplain for his
fine prayer, as if it were a performance.
He went on to gas about his agent and his TV show and
to say that as long as we have God, we are never alone and to say that
he grew up in a “churched home” and that it is faith that keeps us
strong. He also announced that we are not only flesh and blood: We each
have a soul.
I’d like to believe that he does have one and that we
just haven’t seen it yet. I would’ve been moved if he had said a prayer
at the Prayer Breakfast. A classic Christian prayer, such as “Lord God,
You know that I am unworthy to be here as president. You know that I
have lied and worked hard to incite fear and intolerance and to
capitalize on it politically. I have seduced your believers and made
myself their Great White Hope, even though I am not one of them and
never was. You know that I am not capable of executing my duties as the
American people deserve. Lord, I come to You in my unworthiness and
shame and I ask You to take this cup from me. I wish to go to Iowa and
join the Trappist monastery there and take vows of silence and poverty
and learn carpentry or some other useful trade and draw nearer to You in
poverty and prayer. This I pray in Your Name. Amen and Amen.”
Had he been in the Spirit, he would’ve said that. But there will be more opportunities to come.
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