After Trump, will presidency be same?
— Calvin Coolidge, known by some as “Silent Cal” during his time in theWhiteHouse, used his autobiography to live up to hisnickname. “Thewords of a president,” he wrote in 1929 after leaving office, “have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.”
The world is very different now. Communication is instantaneous. Americans— even a president— are often measured by the quantity and volume of what is now called their “content.” Since he took office in 2017 — and formany years before that— Donald Trump has been a different kind of president when it comes to communication — a more-is-better kind of guy.
You can adore Trump or despise him. But fromtweet storms to oft-repeated untruths to provocative statements about everything from the kneeling of pro football players to canned beans to buying Greenland, there’s one thing it has been almost impossible todowith the president of the United States these past four years: ignore him.
“No one can get away from it. It’s never happened before. I’ve always cared about the president, but it’s never been like this,“says Syd Straw, an entertainer and artist who lives in the Vermontwoods. “Even people who like him feel that way, I think.”
Now, as another administration prepares to take the reins of American power, have theTrump years foreverchangedtheplacethatthe presidency occupies in American life and Americans’ lives? Has Calvin Coolidge’s statement become woefully outdated in the era of the ever-present presidency, or is it an idea whose time has returned, as voiced by a sign on the fence at Lafayette Square near the White House last week: “Enough!”
The presidency was devised as a combination of two things — a big-time leader and a regular person
Candidate Donald Trump speaks during the final day of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. from our ranks. And Americans for Joe Biden and KamalaHarris. have always wanted to interact with it, or at least “Joe and Kamala, when feel they are. they are in office, you’re not
In the1800s, they actually going to have to think about were: Andrew Jackson’s inauguration them every single day,“featured an open Obama told a drive-in rally house in which peoplewandered in Orlando, Florida, in late in and out of the October. “It just won’t be so White House at will. Access exhausting. You’ll be able to in varying degrees continued go about your lives.” for a half century until Many Trump supporters, security concerns ended it. whobeg to differ, have loved
The TV-friendly Kennedy this ubiquity. To them, it’s administration elevated transparency: He has personality to a height brought to the presidency a nearly on par with competence. combination of accessibility and pugnaciousness that
And the stature of the office floods multiple channels — — perched high upon a and is useful even when it’s metaphorical hill, of the draining, which it sometimes people but distant from is even for them. them — has competed ever “Even Trump’s supporters since with the desire to are getting tired of his bring it down toEarth. Thus daily drama,” the conservative did Bill Clinton answer the National Review said in famous 1994 question on a headline last year. MTV — “Boxers or briefs?” Put simply, it’s another — and GeorgeW. Bush gain data point in a saga of national stature as the candidate exhaustion and media you’d “want to sit down and overload — particularly in have a beer with.” the can’t-get-away-from-it
But none of those leaders era of the coronavirus pandemic. was communicating with theAmericanpublic directly “If we are burned out and injecting fresh material with the presidency, howdo on multiple topics into the we go forward in terms of national conversation multiple how we consume media?” times a day. There is simply wonders Apryl Alexander, no precedent for Donald an associate professor of Trump, who — like somany psychology at theUniversity among us — has holed up in of Denver who studies how his bedroom late at night people and communities with his phone and tweeted meet challenges. “I have a about things that irritated text message from friends him. Never before have 280 the minute I wake up about characters from the planet’s something (Trump) said. I most powerful person think Biden and his camp seemednearer. Perhaps they are going to have to navigate neverwill again. this.”
Former President Barack In many ways, it transcends Obama even deployed the Trump. The primacy Trump omnipresence as a of the presidency is so talking point while stumping deeply embedded in American
culture that it’s often hard to look away when the occupant is saying, “Look at me.”
Though the U.S. government has three branches, the chief executivehascome to embody the national psyche, the national mood, the national character. It’s hard to imbue a legislative body or a court with the personality of a nation. The president, though, is expected to channel all of that— and so, in a society weaned on heroes and outsized figures, commandeers the attention.
“We don’t look at the office; we look at the person. And Donald Trump has been the ultimate personality,“says AnthonyDiMaggio, a political scientist at Lehigh University who teaches media politics and propaganda. “It’s not the greatest way to have a nuanced understanding of our political system. But it’s easy.”
Who knows how a President JoeBiden willcommunicate? It’s probably safe to say that his lack of history as a reality-show staple and a frequently provocative tweeter may limit how much national, moment-tomoment bandwidth he will pursue.
And Trump? When he and the presidency become separate entities, he’ll continue to occupywhat sociologists call “the attention space.” He’ll still have a lot to say, and many places to say it, andmany peoplewho want to hear it. But unlike now, when he holds the highest office in the land, more Americans will feel they can shut it off.
“What he says may continue to be newsworthy for quite a long time,” says Caroline Lee, an associate professor at Lafayette University in Pennsylvaniawho specializes in the sociology of politics and culture. “But the question is, at some point he will die, and who takes over his attention space at that point? Could anybody command that style of attention or that amount of attention? It’s hard to imagine somebody stepping into that role.”