Respect: Conferred or Deserved?

There are many people I admire and respect. One such person is my father-in-law, Carroll “Kack” Sisler. When you shake hands with Kack, you’ll note the arthritis in his hands and you’ll feel the calluses from a lifetime of manual labor. He has worked as a lumberman, a long-haul truck driver, a farmer, an oilfield worker and an excavator. In his 80s now, you may find him after a snowstorm plowing his neighbor’s driveways or, in summer, helping them build an addition onto their house.  What you may not know, unless you know him, in which case you would surely know, is that when you shake that calloused hand and Kack gives you his word, it is better than any contract written by an entire phalanx of lawyers. As Kack told his children, and my wife, Dawn, has passed on to our children, “There are a lot of things that happen in life that you can’t control. About the only thing that you have control of is your character.” And more than saying, he modeled it for his children. 

Kack would make a terrible politician because he believes in telling the truth, even when inconvenient, maybe especially when it is inconvenient, and for doing the right thing, not the expedient thing. As far as I know, the only elected office that he has ever held was as president of his homeowners association. The only political scandal that he was involved in was when a 30-something year old man impugned my then 70-something father-in-law’s integrity and was challenged to step outside and discuss the situation further. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the whippersnapper was saved the humiliation of being pummeled by an old man. But Kack takes his reputation and his character seriously. They are essential to his very core.  He has never been wealthy; he has never held public office; he never went to college; but I cannot think of anyone I respect more.

A mantra that I have often heard is that, “You may not like the President or his policies, but he is the President so you must respect him or, at least, respect the office.” This is almost always said by supporters of whomever is in office at the time and, translated, means, “Don’t criticize my guy.” But is the President above criticism? Is he or she due respect simply because of the office he or she holds?

The United States is different than most of the rest of the world. We do not have a monarchy where rule and adulation are a birthright, conferred by God and respected by the people. Nor do we have a dictatorship where rule and “respect” are enforced by violence. Our system is egalitarian. We teach our school children that anyone, as long as one is a natural born citizen, can grow up to be President of the United States. No better example can be found than our current President, Barack Obama. Born to a mixed race couple and abandoned at an early age by his father, Obama was raised by his grandparents in a middle class lifestyle. By his own admission, an indifferent high school student who was more interested in basketball and smoking pot than he was in academics, he went on to graduate from Columbia and from Harvard Law School. After famously working as a community organizer, Obama decided to enter politics where he quickly rose up the political ladder, finally culminating in the Presidency. If anyone should embody the egalitarian spirit, it should be Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, people who desire the Presidency are rarely the most intelligent, best managers, most learned, or most humble. Instead, the people who achieve this office are often the most ambitious, most aggressive, and frequently, most ruthless. The Founders, in their wisdom, recognized this. They knew it was dangerous to entrust this amount of responsibility in one man, so they limited his powers by entrusting the responsibility of legislation and budgeting to Congress and Constitutional review to the judiciary. In addition, they empowered the press with freedom from government control in order to serve as a watchdog against government abuse and they made free speech a bedrock of the Bill of Rights so that people could speak out, without fear of reprisal from the very government they may criticize.

It is, therefore, not only allowable to criticize the government, but it was expected that we criticize the government. A free press is essential, but it is also important that we need not be a member of the press to criticize our government. It is a safeguard against governmental abuse that is allowed to anyone in the United States, not just a select few politicians or journalists.

It is telling that in the United States, politicians are said to be in “public service”.  When one is elected President, he is not merely elected to be leader of his party, but the leader of the United States of American, whether they agree with him or not. He is expected to put country over party and to put the public welfare over private ambition. While it may sound quaint, our elected officials are NOT elected to lord over the public, but to serve the public. The Presidency is imbued with tremendous power. As the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military force in the history of the world and as CEO of the vast regulatory apparatus, the President has the power to destroy lives, both literally and figuratively. This is a power that needs to be handled delicately and with an attitude of humility.  It is a huge responsibility to be handed the reins of the Presidency.

Because of the power and responsibility, the President should be held to a very high standard. When he falls short of that standard, the populace has not only a right, but a responsibility to criticize. When a President abuses his power for personal or political gain; when he tries to circumvent the Constitution by legislating by fiat through executive orders when Congress refused to pass what he desired; when his administration thuggishly tries to silence their opponents through intimidation, smear, or by using the power of regulatory agencies; or when, unlike my father-in-law, the truth becomes subservient to expediency, when his core is not integrity, but ambition, he is not deserving of respect.

When a President stands up in public and calls those who oppose his political agenda, “enemies” who must be punished; when he tells his political opponents to “stop talking” and to “go to the back of the bus”; when he calls his political opponents a name denoting a sexual act; when he routinely vilifies and attributes the worst motives to anyone who opposes his agenda; in short, when the President does not respect the American people, he forfeits his right to respect.

There are many people I admire and respect; Barack Obama is not one of them.