A sequel to my previous post, Imagining Serious Change: The First Poor U.S. President
Because the U.S. has never had a poor president, she has never known a president who was truly rich. While poverty can be a distracting concept because it too-easily renders itself into dollars and cents, richness seems to accomplish what its supposed opposite cannot. What does it mean to have a rich president?
To be rich, of course, is to be full of love. And this love-filled president is even more radical and strange than the previously imagined poor president. The rich president would be called to give more than his possessions or comforts: He must be willing to give up his life.
It is interesting to think that the President of the United States (like the Roman Pontiff) requires a fleet of protectors, a secret service militia (or Swiss Guards, as the case may be). The highest honor of those who serve to guard the President is, like Dumas’ Musketeers, to give their life in exchange for the president they serve and protect. To give one’s life in the richest way, I would think, would be to do so out of true love; not as a musketeer but as a mother.
Taking this point to heart, then, what does it mean for the President to call himself (and, again, I do mean himself) a public servant and yet be unwilling to give the kind of service he requires from his public funded guards? It seems to me that the first rich president would be the president who would lay down his life for the public he serves. And do so willingly. Or, at least show in-advance the desire for, and the ability to make, great sacrifices. This is why populist sentiments run highest when they support a military figure. From Jackson to McCain, the image of a president who would sacrifice their body in service to their constituents is compelling.
But this brings us back to the question of poverty. In the current cultural climate being poor is almost worse than being dead. Suicide caused by bankruptcy is hardly exceptional these days. Here we find the vitality of the pocketbook. So, we might ask: If a president full of love—a rich president, in other words—would give his life (much like his own guards pledge their lives to him), then, why not begin by giving away his money? Especially since that gift carries cultural meaning in this age that has devalued human life for its own sake.
So, then, we might imagine the first rich president as someone who gives all he has to the poor as a sign that his executive power will reciprocate the devotion shown to him by a public funded militia. In that imaginary possibility we find that the first poor president is the same person as the first rich president: a president full of love who cannot serve with an ace up her sleeve.
This political imagination is not seeking a nice person, or a kind person, or a populist underdog we can feel good about. This exercise of the imagination is searching for a lover—a true lover. A lover who does not simply say that they love, but loves first. In advance. This is the president we should desire, I think.
And even now, when our throats are parched by the sheer scarcity of such an impossible possibility, we should thirst for a politics of love, governed by lovers. We need to remain restless for justice and truth and love.
After all, this is not merely political, this is a desire for God-to-come who is here, with and in us, right now.
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