It’s quite possible this belongs in IMHO or MPSIMS, because I don’t know if there’s really much of a debate here, but maybe there is. There were two things that happened recently that, put together, got me thinking, and maybe made me a little sad. The first was the demonstration in Paris to protest the terrorist attack, where a lot of world leaders showed up, but President Obama didn’t go. The second was the announcement of “Big Block of Cheese Day”. As to what these two things have in common…
There was a big foofara in the Pit recently about President Obama not showing up to the Paris thing (which, because it was the Pit, involved one or two people saying he should have gone and a lot of people accusing them of being Fox News shills), but one of the arguments made by people on the “Its ok that the President didn’t go” side was that it would have been a security nightmare. Presidential trips require all sorts of planning and preparation, and having the President down there in the crowd, where anybody could take a shot at him or harm him was just a hassle that neither the President or France needed.
Big Block of Cheese Day is in reference to something that happened when Andrew Jackson became President. Basically, in honor of Jackson’s inauguration (and for the publicity), this New York farmer made this giant, 1400 pound wheel of cheese and sent it to the White House. And it totally stumped Andrew Jackson, because that’s a lot of cheese, and it was stinking up the place. He ate some, he gave some to friends, he gave some to his cabinet, etc, but he still had a lot left. So, just before he stepped down as president, he threw this giant reception, open to everybody, with the theme “Please, eat some of this damn cheese”. About 10,000 people showed up, and finally the cheese all got eaten(This wasn’t the first Presidential cheese, btw. Somebody gave Jefferson a 1200 pound cheese. Most of it got thrown out.) Aaron Sorkin must have heard the story and liked it, because the West Wing had an episode called “Big Block of Cheese Day”, where they told the story (recasting it as a triumph of democratic egalitarianism rather than one man’s desperate attempt to get rid of bad smelling dairy), and met with all sorts of various kookie constituents. Somebody at the White House must be a West Wing fan, because the White House is having their own “Big Block of Cheese Day”, their second, where people can submit questions to the White House on twitter and the White House will answer them.
So what brings these two stories together in my mind? One of the things that sticks out about the Andrew Jackson story (other than the fact that it’s kind of funny) is that Jackson basically opened the White House doors to anybody who wanted to come in and eat cheese. And, in the old days, that sort of thing happened a lot. George Washington, even though he was a fairly private person, had a weekly levee for men every Thursday from 3-4, and Martha had a tea party every Friday evening for men and women. All of these were open to the public, as long as they were decently dressed, and a lot of the appeal was that it was a chance for the average person to meet the President and say hello to him. If you look at President Lincoln’s schedule the day he was assassinated, that afternoon, when he had gotten back from riding, he saw, standing on the White House front porch, two old friends from Illinois who were in town and wanted to say hello. And, of course, one of Lincoln’s complaints when he became President was that there were always all these people waiting in the halls of the White House wanting to speak with him to convince him to make them postmaster or ambassador or give them some other government job.
And with the Paris thing, I understand about the security. But Angela Merkel showed up. David Cameron showed up. Mohammed Abbas showed up. Benjamin Netanyahu showed up, and I have no doubt there are all sorts of people who want to kill Benjamin Netanyahu. The security was good enough for them, but not good enough for President Obama.
It seems like we’re at a point where, even though the President is nominally first among equals, and supposed to be “of the people”, we’ve inflated the office up to a level of majesty and separateness that’s more appropriate for the court of a god-king. The president can’t just go out for a walk. He can’t just decide some evening that he wants to go to a restaurant or the mall or whereever. Everything he does is choreographed and stagemanaged down to the minute. And to see the president involves getting past innumerable gatekeepers, both actual and metaphorical. I’m not singling President Obama out on this. It’s an institutional thing. Everything I’m saying was true of his predecessor, and will be true of his successor.
Obviously, there are good reasons for all of this, and the fact that I had to include the phrase “the day he was assassinated” in the Lincoln anecdote isn’t the least of those reasons. I’m not of the illusion that there’s anything we can do about the situation. I just find it a little sad, and maybe a tiny bit ironic that, as communication and access to information make it more possible for people to have a voice and make educated decisions on political matters, Americans are getting more and more separated from their leaders, who are less and less accessible.