The first Romney campaign for president, that of Mitt's father, George, famously started on a downward spiral when he tried to explain his changing views on the Vietnam War by claiming: "I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get."

Badly put (a family trait apparently) it was not that hard to understand what he meant, and it is easier still to understand it when considering how brainwashed we have been by the Cheney/Rumsfeld view of the presidency which has dominated thought for so long (predating the Bush II administration, but reaching its high point in recent years). It is time to start the healing, and to restore the republic formed by our Constitution, as we shed the monarchical pretensions that have been beaten into us.


A second set of harangues on this subject, following so so soon after this oneis dictated by an accumulation of news reports and comments, even on progressive blogs, about how President-elect Obama will "rule" or "govern," what "he is going to do" in living up to his "promises" to cut taxes on the middle class and so on.

Today's for instance, is from the usually sober E.J. Dionne, discussing abortion, and saying that "voters don't want Obama to be timid on his core economic promises, but they do expect him to govern as the cultural moderate he promised to be."

NOW HEAR THIS (and this is our first attempt to repair the damage from brainwashing).

In a republic (which is how our country was established in 1787), presidents don't "govern." They do not "rule" and they cannot "cut taxes." Nixon, Bush, Addington, Yoo, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest can keep telling you the opposite, but that does not make it so. Remember the famous story about Ben Franklin emerging from the Constitutional Convention and being asked 'what have we got:a Republic or a Monarchy?" and his response: "A Republic, if you can keep it."

The other day, a Daily Kos blogger, celebrating the impending birth of a child, expressed happiness that he or she would not be born to a country ruled "by a dim-witted rube, a senile old man, or a lunatic hockey-mom." The humorless among us felt compelled to convince the blogger to drop the word "rule" and he substituted "governed." A brief discussion after that included the suggestion that only semantics were at issue, by reference to some definitions of either "rule or govern"

1. to rule over by right of authority: to govern a nation.

7. to exercise the function of government.

8. to have predominating influence, to exercise a directing or restraining influence over; guide: the motives governing a decision.

Words matter, especially words describing the responsibilities and authority of the president of a republic. While kings or emperors "rule over by right" or alone may "exercise the function of government" such as altering the rates of taxation, presidents do not. The republic in which we live divided all that authority (or "power" for those who love that word) among three branches and the creation of a law requires the agreement of both houses of Congress and the president, or, if the president dissents, a two thirds vote of the two houses. A decade or so after the Constitution became effective, the third branch, gave itself the power to throw any such law out as violating the Constitution, but they have promised to use that power "sparingly."

That's how it works. Over the years, presidents have to varying degrees, developed the "predominating influence, to exercise a directing or restraining influence over" our government meeting the definition of wither "govern" or "rule" with which I was presented.

But the "bully pulpit" described by Theodore Roosevelt should not be confused with the president's actual authority. Whatever "predominating influence" a president has comes from this ability, particularly since the fireside chats of FDR to command the public attention and set its agenda. But that is leadership, not governing and his "authority" to lead comes from his standing in the public' eye, not from the powers of his office.

For instance, though the press and public decided that it was the president who leads us to war, the current one was only able to do so because of a docile press and the public support he had. (if, btw, a president had the power to take us to war, Franklin Roosevelt would not have waited until December 8, 1941 to enter World War II, I think.)

Today, that same president who conned us into a war in Iraq could hardly be described to have any ""predominating influence" over anything except, possibly, the White House menu, yet he is still the president. At various times in recent history, almost every president since FDR has found himself in the same boat, despite awesome presidential authority.

The President-elect's promises are to propose the middle class tax cuts and to urge the many things he discussed during the campaign, and the platform he will ascend to on January 20, will certainly give him a leading role in achieving those ends, but, my fellow Americans, do not fall into the trap of thinking that whatever he says will become law. And if everything he thinks should happen, does not, it does not mean he "broke his promise." It means he is not as good at convincing members of Congress that he is right, as we had hoped or he had thought.

That's how it works. I suspect he would like to do something now to help the auto industry and the current administration now sounds as if they want to do something, too. Yesterday's Times suggests that there is substantial opposition to this proposal, though, so notwithstanding the support of presidents present and future (I think the current president's support is a bit tepid), it may not happen since presidents----repeat after me---neither "rule" nor "govern."

On the past two Fourth of July's I have posted a fragment of the Supreme Court's opinion in Youngstown Co v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), because it provides an important lesson to people who forget how our country is supposed to be "governed."

Justice Black, speaking for the Court, explained the arrangement clearly and concisely, in a way that the current President, and a vast majority of the press seems not to understand, as elemental and fundamental as it is:

"In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. The first section of the first article says that 'All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . . .' After granting many powers to the Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may 'make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.'"

The idea that our duties as citizens is to simply elect the right guy and let him take care of everything after that, on pain of our changing our vote next time if he does not solve our problems is wrong, wrongheaded and destructive.


In fact, when I finally decided last January who to vote for as the nominee of my party, my hopes for our country with his election made it to these pages, and reading it again re-enforces the point I am trying to make:

[A]s one of those whose life was surely changed by her father--who "got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to"-- Caroline Kennedy's explanation of her endorsement of Senator Obama as someone who could be "a president who inspire[s] me the way people tell me that my father inspired them" is very meaningful to me.

She overstates the comparison to be sure, and Senator Obama has much to learn, as Paul Krugman has discussed, but often when Senator Obama speaks these words from President Kennedy float into my mind:

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.

That is what I want to hear from our next president. Not what he or she is "going to do" but how we can be inspired as a people to give of ourselves for our country, for our fellow citizens and for the world we live in.

That's what a republic means, and what I mean by leading and not "governing."