This diary is just to try to think through some questions relating to the respect we should have for the President, the Presidency, and how to distinguish the two: what kind of respect, and why?
If you go back to the days before our Revolution in 1776, we find that George III, like the other kings of Europe, was protected from verbal assault by laws against the crime of lèse majesté, "injury of majesty" -- any speech or act which tended to call into question the dignity of the king. A king might be, in fact, an ignorant clod, a buffoon, a nitwit with no knowledge of the world -- and some will say that George III was all of those things -- but it was a crime to stand up and publicly say so. Any criticism of the monarch had to be carefully couched in such terms as would not seem to be castigating the character of the monarch himself. If you failed to use the right circumlocutions, you could face fines, jail time, or even a potentially capital charge of treason.
At first blush this seems unreasonable, even tyrannical, and that may well be the case. On the other hand, even if you did not believe in the Divine Right of Kings (and by 1776 very few, in Britain or America, did so), the King still had value as a symbol of the unity of the nation; to attack the King might then seem to be attacking the nation as a whole, undermining its unity, and thereby fomenting insurrection and civil war.
Obviously, the King had a political capacity as well as a ceremonial one, and though somewhat restricted, political dissent and dialogue was a vital reality in Britain (and even more so in America) in 1776. Could one attack the King for his political positions? Not according to the law. The King, the law said, can do no wrong; meaning that all responsibility for the political acts of the King fell upon his ministers, those who led the various departments of government under the king, who in principle carried out his policies, but in reality originated those policies. If you were unhappy with the acts of the government, you could not attack the King; you attacked, instead, his Prime Minister or other high officials serving under him.
In 1776, the line between the King and his ministers was, perhaps, not so bright as it has since became. Nobody today would think of charging Elizabeth II with responsibility for the acts of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. But George III had, by various means (mostly 'constitutional', though still corrupt) managed to assert a greater policy role than either of his two predecessors had taken, and had great influence over a large section of Parliament. As a result, the anger of the revolutionary colonists of America was turned against George III as the symbol of British rule, not primarily against Parliament and not against the King's ministers. The Declaration of Independence refers repeatedly to "the King of Great-Britain"; it never refers to his Prime Minister of the time, Lord North. This was, in itself, a clear repudiation of the political convention that "The King can do no wrong".
Since 1776, we Americans have had no King or Queen; our high officials, even the President, take their oath to the Constitution of the United States. Our highest symbol of national unity, therefore, is the Constitution, the law of the land; and our public officials are, in their different capacities, ministers of that law.
The President is not a King. He is not surrounded by the pomp and regality of "majesty"; he is merely "Mr. President" (and one day we shall have "Madam President"!). The President has no claims to divine right; he is not the symbol of the nation; he can be overridden, overruled, or removed from office. The President is not even the head of the entire governmental structure, but merely of the co-equal Executive branch (the Legislative is led by the Speaker of the House and, ceremonially, the Vice-President; the Judicial by the Chief Justice of the United States), among whom his precedence is merely a matter of protocol.
Moreover, Presidents of the United States have sometimes been cheats, frauds, thieves, adulterers, liars; if they have not committed murder by their own hands, they have hired others to do it for them; they have, perhaps more often than not, been corrupt, venal men, motivated by a lust for money and power that has led them to sacrifice the good of the people to their personal good. What good can be said of Richard Nixon, who used the resources of his office to subvert democracy and cover up his crimes against it? Of Ronald Reagan, who feigned ignorance of illegal arms deals conducted at the highest levels of his administration? Of George W. Bush, who told the Congress, the nation, and the world a steaming pack of sordid lies to justify his efforts to build an American Empire on the corpses of a hundred thousand dead?
And yet we do offer a respect, however grudging, to the men who hold the office of President, not because we believe them to be paragons of virtue (though that would certainly make it easier), but because they hold a high office under the Constitution. It is not the man that makes a President; it is the Constitution that makes the President. By showing, even as lip service, a certain deference to the man in the exercise of his office, we show through that deference our adherence to the Constitution, and our belief and desire that our political differences should be worked out through the rule of law and the exercise of our political privileges -- not through threats, or intimidation, or rebellion, or civil war, or coup d'état.
Of course, there is a distinction to be made between the activity of a man who happens to be President but is acting as a politician, trying to get money or votes, and his activity in his capacity of President. The distinction isn't always easy to make, but there are some obvious cases. For instance, when a President gets up in front of a $10,000 a plate dinner crowd and shills for contributions, that is not a Presidential activity, and we are not obliged to sing along and clap. When he cheerleads at a Party Convention, we are not un-American if we don't go along with what he says. When he argues with his opponent in a televised debate, we are not obliged to agree with him. And when he expresses his political views, as far as we as American citizens are concerned, they're no more or less valid than the views of Joe or Jenna Blow next door.
But there are also instances where the man acts more in a capacity as President. For instance, when he travels overseas, and represents the United States of America as a whole. When he addresses the nation by radio or television broadcast on subjects of national importance. Or when he addresses a joint session of Congress on important matters of national policy.
In these cases, we still have no obligation to agree with what the President says. But we do owe him some respect because he is acting as President -- the rôle imbues the man with a certain amount of respectability, no matter how much his personality may deny it.
We don't, however, have the neat distinction between the politically-immune monarch and the political pincushion that a minister is in the British system. Our Presidents carry some of the characteristics of both. And there are obviously gray areas in between: 'policy statements' that are little more than thinly-disguised political platforms. There are even brazen abuses where the credibility of the Presidency is put on the line on behalf of corrupt, even evil ends. We have a moral obligation in such cases to attack the policies. We may even need to attack the man sometimes. But we must always respect the Constitution, and in so doing, respect the office and rôle of President. We should not be throwing shoes, no matter how well deserved they may appear; and our verbal brickbats should be hurled in such a manner and in such a time and circumstances that it is clear that our target is the man, or the politician, and not the President as such.
Republicans are very confused on this point. When a Republican holds office, they would have you believe that mere political dissent from the political views a President holds is tantamount to treason. But if a Democrat holds office, they are willing to denounce his legitimacy from Inauguration Day on -- or, like the "birthers", to claim that his leadership of the executive has no legal basis and should not be respected. The latter is not just an attack on a man, his politics, or his policies; it is a blatant attack on the office of the President of the United States, which seeks to undermine all authority, and has as its logical conclusion civil war by one half of the nation against the other half.
And in the latest case of Rep. Wilson (R-S.C.), we have several issues. First, the issue on which he chose to erupt was not a great moral question, like the invasion of a country on dubious grounds, but one of policy. Some countries do elect to cover the health all persons present in their territory, regardless of status -- this has obvious benefits from a public health standpoint. There may also be good reason not to cover certain persons. It's a debatable point, but not one which warrants extraordinary measures.
Second, even if Rep. Wilson was ignorant of the fact that the bills proposed in the house excluded undocumented immigrants, he still had no basis on which to accuse President Obama of being a liar; even if he sincerely believed that Obama was wrong, there's a big gap between "mistaken" and "lying". (Of course, Obama was right, Wilson was wrong, but we can sometimes offer a bit of the benefit of doubt.) Parliamentary procedures have long forbidden hurling the accusation of "liar" at one's opponents; and though the situation was not a debate in Congress, it was nonetheless a breach of decorum. For,
Thirdly, Barack Obama was appearing before a joint session of the Two Houses of Congress with his Cabinet. As such, he was acting entirely in the rôle of President, not as a private citizen, not as a politician, not as the head of his party. Only the President gets to stand at that podium in front of the Stars and Stripes with the Vice-President and Speaker of the House behind him. In that rôle, and in that time and place, Barack Obama clearly was acting as President, and deserved to be treated with the dignity owed the office. Wilson's undignified heckling was equivalent to spitting on the Constitution in a public area.
There are times and places where Rep. Wilson's language would have been, if not acceptable, or excusable, at least tolerable -- for instance, at one of his party rallies. If Wilson had called Obama a liar in front of a bunch of birthers and Palinites, it would hardly have made the news. But Wilson appears to have little awareness that there's a difference in context: what's tolerable in a South Carolina rally at the local track, is absolutely intolerable on the floor of the House of Representatives while the President is speaking. Wilson would have and will have plenty of opportunity to make his case elsewhere: but at that place, and at that time, Wilson should have understood that it wasn't about him.
That difference escaped him. I think it still escapes him. And I think it escapes a great many Republicans to this day. They don't need to agree with Obama on the merits of his proposals (though I suspect their real motive is not that they think the plan lacks merit, but that they fear a long-term loss of political power). But they do need to respect the Constitution and, through it, the Presidency. That means reading their birthers and crypto-birthers the riot act; shutting down the tenthers and the neo-secessionists; and to cease their petty attempts to humiliate Obama by refusing to treat him as an equal.