No, I Do Not 'Respect the Office of the Presidency'

Trump rally. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

01 November 19

readersupportednews.org

Of course a renegade president* should be heckled at a baseball game. It's the least we can do.

never have seen a politician yet who wasn't booed if he or she showed up at the ballpark. But, I have to admit, the reception given to El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago at the World Series on Monday night in Washington, D.C., was a remarkable exercise of the First Amendment right to deliver the ol' bazoo. And the "Lock him up!" chant was a sauce for the goose moment to end all sauce for the goose moments.

Nobody who sat through the orgy of unbridled hate in Cleveland in 2016 could see it as anything but a comeuppance richly deserved.

But the Civility Police never sleep. By Monday morning, a panel convened on Morning Joe was deploring the whole scene, and Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware had found something to meep about on CNN.

"I have a hard time with the idea of a crowd on a globally televised sporting event chanting 'lock him up' about our President. I frankly think the office of the President deserves respect, even when the actions of our President at times don't," Coons told CNN's John Berman on "New Day." He continued: "I certainly hope that we won't hear 'lock him up' chants at Democratic rallies or at our convention. I think that's one of the most regrettable, even at times despicable, actions by candidate Trump when he was running for president in 2016."

That was the election that Going Low won and Going High lost.

This was 12 hours after he greeted Sunday morning by treating some heroic work by the U.S. military—and by the Kurdish forces he'd sold out a week earlier—as though those troops were his own personal button men. For that, I would argue, he at least deserved the same reception at the ballpark as a shortstop does when he boots three easy grounders in an inning, or as a manager does who leaves a reliever in one pitch too many. And, as for "Lock him up," well, since he still uses the original chant as a highlight at every stop in his traveling wankfests, I'd say it's well inbounds at least until the country is rid of him and the posse of fools he brought to the game with him.

But Coons's argument is one I've heard all too often in my lifetime, very often as a dodge for inexcusable conduct and outright crimes. "Respect for the office" is a self-governing citizen's sin of idolatry. In that context, the Presidency is a graven image. Why should I respect the office of the president when the occupant so clearly doesn't? Why should I respect the office of the president when it serves as a clubhouse for cheap crooks and mountebanks? Guns don't kill people, we hear after every mass shooting, only people kill people. So, The Presidency doesn't commit crimes, only presidents do?

In my lifetime alone, from The Office of the Presidency, I have seen mass murder from the skies, torture, the overthrow of governments, burglaries and the cover-up of same, the selling of missiles to a terrorist state and the cover-up of same, the arming of distant murderers, and that was all before this president* even got there—and even he, with his exceedingly dim wits, saw the potential for high crimes that long had become inherent in the office.

So, no, I don't Respect The Office any more (or less) than I respect the Congress or the federal judiciary or the Department of Agriculture, for all that. Right now, all over the world, from Lebanon to Chile, hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets demanding a voice in their governments. Capital cities are being shut down. And we're all supposed to be alarmed that a renegade president* got heckled at a baseball game? For a country founded through acts of unruly dissent, that's as mild as milk.