As a college student, I never missed a State of the Union address. Feeling a sense of patriotic duty, I sat through the whole bloated spectacle: the obsequious handshakes, interminable applause, and extravagant promises to vanquish foes, blot out injustice, and kickstart a golden age of prosperity.
But over time, I came to see all that for what it was. Then came a series of epiphanies about other allegedly sacred observances. Presidential debates? A wasteland of sound bites. The nominating conventions? Pointless pep rallies. Election night coverage? Instead of wasting hours, I can access the results online in seconds.
Why do so many people feel they owe reverence to the Oval Office? Perhaps it’s one sign we’ve succumbed to what political analyst Gene Healy, in his 2008 book of the same name, calls “the cult of the presidency.”
Five election cycles after publication, Healy’s book is worth revisiting for its still-fresh perspective and unfortunately forgotten wisdom. (The purpose of this column, for those just discovering it, is revisiting books that are neither brand new nor really old).
Healy’s work, subtitled America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, can usefully reframe well-worn evangelical conversations about political idolatry, though it wasn’t written with Christians in mind.
We often bemoan flagrant departures from Christ-centered faith, like Christian nationalism or blind loyalty to Team Red or Team Blue. But the presidential “cult” operates on a lower wavelength, Healy argues. Even if you keep a healthy distance from partisan spectacle, you might have fallen under its sway.
This tendency can be easier to see if we distinguish individual leaders from the office itself. Americans are fond of dismissing particular presidents as fools, knaves, and charlatans. Yet we still expect the White House to work wonders, Healy observes, pining for the president to heal society’s every ill.
That’s not how our government is constitutionally designed. Over 250 years, however, an office envisioned as humble and unglamorous gradually acquired grandiose trappings. The State of the Union, for instance, was originally a practical, written update for lawmakers, and the notion of one man waxing eloquent from Olympian heights would’ve sent shivers down Madisonian spines.
How quaint that seems today! So does the bygone norm against presidents venturing opinions on legislative matters, lest they be seen as stepping on Congress’s toes. From our vantage point, it’s shocking to learn of the informal codes Healy details that once discouraged presidential candidates from appealing directly to the public on behalf of their own ambitions.
In Healy’s telling, the presidency changed irreparably with “transformational” figures, like Woodrow Wilson and both Roosevelts, who saw constitutional limits as anachronistic and ill-suited to modern life. They and most of their successors crafted the office we know today, with staggering power over policy and public opinion.
A Cato Institute researcher, Healy writes as a libertarian who decries elements of crusading moralism in both parties. As such, he appreciates how immodest conceptions of presidential duty precipitate abuses of power, from domestic espionage and suppression of dissent to bloody misadventures overseas. George W. Bush, in office when Healy was writing, earns especially low marks for ignoring constitutional strictures in the name of fighting terror.
Stranger, though no less unsettling, is the spiritual component of this “cult.” Why do we imagine that one person can fulfill our highest hopes? Why, after every natural disaster, does the president don the mantle of national chaplain? Why do we anoint mere mortals as moral tone-setters and purpose-givers for the defiantly pluralistic masses? The error here should be especially obvious to Christians, yet we often fall into these habits as easily as other Americans.
I was surprised to see Healy close on a guardedly optimistic note. Yes, he concedes, presidents of both parties will always be tempted to misuse the power of the office. Yes, our grueling campaign gauntlets favor egotists and demagogues over decent, self-effacing public servants. And yes, even the children of democracy have an incurable craving for kings.
But more than ever, Healy argues, our political culture fosters a healthy distrust of authority and an awareness of corruption in high places. And it permits a style of withering mockery that echoes an earlier, more raucous era of political discourse.
That’s all true, yet I left The Cult of the Presidency wondering whether its critique goes far enough. Healy focuses on what presidents do in office, largely overlooking another important factor: how we memorialize our presidents, inflating their legacies to mythic dimensions. Consider the Capitol rotunda painting Apotheosis of Washington or narratives casting Abraham Lincoln as a Christ figure.
It’s possible too that Healy underrates the media’s role in entrenching presidential monomania. He lands some satisfying blows against prominent pundits who daydream about heroic leaders and causes. But rank-and-file journalists form their own consuming attachments. Why do they crowd into White House press conferences when so many local city councils, regulatory commissions, school boards, and police departments could stand some extra scrutiny? Why do they grumble indignantly when presidents decline to dominate the public conversation with constant speeches and interviews?
Bad News May Be a Burning Bush
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump took office after Healy was writing, but, with hindsight, they seem like tokens of his prescience. In both, we witness a creeping triumph of symbolism over statesmanlike substance, each politician becoming a totemic embodiment of a warring subculture. In Obama, progressives see the urbane intellectualism they cherish in themselves. In Trump, populist conservatives see their own dukes raised against elite condescension.
Ultimately, Healy argues, the heroic president ideal persists because the people desire heroic presidents. But this durability also hints at a vulnerability: At the level of law and practice, it would take years to newly restrain our chief executives. But citizens enjoy an enviable freedom—and Christians a blessed imperative—to fix our affections elsewhere.
After all, the White House isn’t a literal temple, and the president can’t make you literally bend the knee or burn a pinch of incense. Whatever it costs to break away from the cult of the presidency, it won’t land you in the lion’s den.
Matt Reynolds is senior books editor for Christianity Today.
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