Huh?
Unlike years ago, they say, when FDR and Truman were Presidents, the recent past has been filled with what America might call “fungible Presidents.” You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, so to speak. The reason that most people shove them all in the same basket is that the rhetoric is amazingly the same, what gets done is relatively elusive and tends to be here today, and gone tomorrow – the pattern of Presidents that come and go. Even the brighter lights are folded into the pages of history with amazing obscurity. It’s possible that the White House of today isn’t run the same it was in the days of more prominent Presidents, or perhaps longer terms are necessary to augment the common demeanor that is so much a part of public protocol in fulfilling their duties. Far from spectacular, most have been what the public senses as mediocre, momentary alpha characters drawn from a flurry of political insiders hoping to garnish their day in the sun with a style too often the same, an endless array of suits to accompany the suits of today and yesterday. Perhaps the weakness is in the American people, fed ever heightened genre of action films that renders Presidents more ordinary than not, or maybe Americans have simply seen too many come and go. The ability to retain a memory often resides with the spectacular now, or rooted in war zones of the men who fought there. In the endless parade over a lifetime, as we see from history, only history tends to remember their names, much less their records. Passing into the night, few retain former prominence or popularity without the constant, continuous beat of their drums……for those who will listen……unique soldiers of their own fortune, and of America’s effort to make progress in an ancient world. Should they be more, a greater model of humanity, perhaps, or the wise sage of the past that envisioned the future? Possibly, but is the public willing and able to allow that persona to develop wings when they know that in four years, or eight at best, it will be yet another soldier at the helm?
(Two pennies to whomever can tell me where I got that from.)