Well, lots of people will say “that’s an insult to the institution of <whatever>”, but that doesn’t make it so. Similarly, anyone who harps about a nation or a culture being “humiliated” should be looked at with distrust.
Anyway, barring a return of laws akin to lèse majesté, I don’t see the problem in people just getting huffy because Obama (or any President) is dissed. People get offended for all kinds of reasons.
But it’s you who has things backwards. The person who is the “chief representative of the government”, particularly in dealing with foreign governments, is, by definition, the head of state. That is the essential definition. All that stuff about “personifying and embodying the nation” is just fluff.
Ed
But that’s untrue as a practical matter, because in countries that have separate heads of state and government, the head of government actually directs all relations with foreign governments. The head of state acts in merely a symbolic capacity. Thus, it’s the symbolic role that’s essential to the head of state.
“Insults the office of the Presidency.” That’s rich, Mr. Yarrow. The very presence of GWB’s ass in that chair in the Oval Office has been doing that for nearly eight years. Not a lot further it can be degraded.
You seem to be trying to make the essential definition of “head of state” as being comprised of what it is not. That’s like saying that a dogcatcher (head of state) may be defined by comparing it to a policeman (head of government), and completely excluding the possibility that while a policeman does different things than a dogcatcher, someone can serve as a policeman AND a dogcatcher simultaneously.
To say it another way, you have just argued that in some other countries, the chief of state is limited to a ceremonial role. But the president has substantive responsibilities, therefore he isn’t a head of state. That’s like saying humans have four limbs, so if you don’t have four limbs, you’re not a human.
The much more accurate way to describe a chief of state is to simply say what it is: someone who is the chief representative of a country, and sometimes a government, too. How that person carries out those responsibilities is different in various countries.
Yes, it’s precisely about that.
That’s frequently the case, whether there are provisions about it or not. Plenty of Americans obviously feel that the POTUS deserves some level of respect due to his office even if one despise him personally. Plenty of Americans feel their country has been insulted when someone throw a shoe at the president, in the same way they feel their country has been insulted when someone burns its flag. And that’s because they think the president “personifies” their nation and think that the shoe thrower thinks that also.
Not benefiting from this respect or this perception doesn’t makes him any less of a head of state, though. It’s just so that this respect and perception often go along with the job. It’s only particularly blatant in the case of head of states who don’t have actual power, because they end up being not much more than hand-shakers and iconic symbols.
Who is the head of state?
Simple.
A flying saucer from an alien planet lands in ANY country, and the ET demands, “Take me to your leader (or, head of state).” I guarantee, no time will be wasted to get the “leader” on the phone. And, any resident of the country will know exactly who the ET’s are wishing to speak to.
Slice it, dice it, and run it through the blender–the “leader” will be acknowledged, and quickly.
No, because in a constitutional monarchy, the “leader” would probably be interpreted as the prime minister, while (almost) everyone agrees that the monarch is the head of state.
But we’re talking about the President of the United States. In spike404’s scenario, that’s who E.T. would eventually be talking to. The President is, to all intents and purposes, for every meaningful definition of the phrase, the head of state of the republic, even if the Constitution doesn’t explicitly call him that.
Yes, the question would work in the U.S. I was just pointing out that it would not work in many other countries. It works in the U.S. because the office of President of the United States has all the attributes of both head of state and head of government – and I can’t understand why there can be a debate about the issue. I come from a country where there is serious disagreement about who is head of state, but where, if an alien landed on Uluru and said “take me to your leader,” the alien would be taken to someone else – not to either of the possible “heads of state”. So, even though the question would work in the US, it’s not a good question.