Dear Mr./Madam President …

Reverend Kurt Kuhwald
February 17, 2008
Palo Alto, CA

Part One: Dealing with the Presidency

The Presidency, ahhh, the Presidency. The Presidency of the United States of America. (I feel like we should have the choir singing, “Hail to the Chief” even at the mention of the name) Some of you may recall … I began my sermon on Democracy back in October with a similar almost plaintive exclamation. It went like this:

Democracy. O Democracy. How is it that when we say that word, when we raise those four syllables into the air, something happens? Something stirs … in the mind … in the heart … in the gut? We are stirred. Yet we’re also hard put to give a clear and final definition of what Democracy truly is. Not just because we all share the inner, disturbing sense that we don’t have it, but in fact, because we are not sure that we ever truly experienced it. Especially on a large scale. Especially on the scale of this country, the United States of America.

However, what I feel about the Presidency, of course, is not really the same. In fact, when I examine my responses to the Presidency there is a very different mixture of emotions.

Awe … awe was bred into me as a child … so that is definitely there. The kind of heart swelling awe that is supposed to be generated at the strains of “Hail to the Chief.”
But, and for me this has lately been exacerbated, I must confess, by the current holder of the office, there is also fear. Fear because the role has so much power over the lives of not only U.S. citizens, but also people all over the world — and that power has exponentially increased during the last seven and one half years.
And, I don’t think I could claim myself as an American — and I don’t mean just a citizen of this country, but an inhabitant of the two continents that make up the western hemisphere, the Americas — I don’t think I could claim myself as an American, in the full sense of that word, if I didn’t have a certain defiance of the Presidency, as well. It is, after all, in the nature of the democratic spirit to question authority.
Lately my feelings about the Presidency have also been filled with a certain compassion, and a certain recognition of the simple, common humanity that we share, the President and I — he and I are both people, persons with human needs, desires, biases, and certainly, active, psychological hang-ups that shape our lives. (We so revere or revile the person in the position, and the hype around them is so thick, that their fundamental humanity is thoroughly obscured.)

It’s good to think of the President of the United States simply as a person with a job. It cuts through the Imperial loftiness that shrouds the President’s ordinariness. (I remember the quote of JFK’s during the Cuban Missile Crises: “I guess this is the week I earn my pay.”) Seeing the President as a person, however, also exposes for me just how conditioned I have been to unthinkingly revere the person who takes that post. At this stage in my life, at this stage in our country’s history, and, in fact, at this stage in the history of the planet, it is critically important to make a distinction among respect for a role that is authentically important, respect for (or at least a clear assessment of) the person who takes on the role, and the danger of inflating both the role and the person above their true human stature.

So part of what I want to lift up today is the simple fact of the President’s ordinariness, commonness and humanness — and also our fundamental equality. I remember Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself” singing: “Have you outstrip the rest? are you the President? / It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there everyone, and still pass on. / And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is … / And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

In this house, this sacred house, touching our humanity and that of others is a critically important endeavor. It is in this community and through that contact that we discover a powerful way to activate together the power of our humanity. We further enhance that power by our governance of this community through the use of the democratic process — for it is on the societal level, on the level of human relationship and communication, that through that process of democracy that the sacredness of our being is grounded as Earthlings.

So … touching my humanness, feeling a kinship and equality with you all, enhanced by democratic engagement, I can more adequately address the issue of the Presidency and compose some words to those who seek that position and to those of us who will decide who wins or loses it.

When I was a public school teacher, and I held that position for over 23 years, many of us teachers came to the belief that the job of being Superintendent of a large school district was … impossible. The job was too complex, required management of too many different domains of responsibility, dealt with too wide a range of students, cultures and languages, and in some respects, was invested with too much power over areas with which it had little true involvement. (We believed a council would have been better.) Now if that is true of the Superintendency of a school district, then how much more true is the realization that … the Presidency of this vast country is also impossible. It all has to do with scale, as I said in my opening words about democracy. The scale of the United States of America is beyond adequate governance: we cover too much geography, house too many people with too many philosophies/cultures/theologies and too many differing needs to be in anyway adequately or responsibly governable. Which means that it is unable to create and sustaing the conditions necessary for authentic democracy!

Added to all of that, that complexifies the situation even further, is the massive divide in national and global wealth, the persistence of a commitment to empire (and all the concomitant distortions of war and violence that go with that), the emergence of particular forms of terrorism, the deification of business (giving corporations the status of persons under the law), this country’s status as the only super power, and, lastly, so as not to overburden my argument, what Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State said, addressing the Commonwealth Club Friday night, “I have never seen the world in such a mess,” which she claimed was a diplomatic term.

But of course, of course, of course, currently, and probably for as long as the United States continues to exist, we are stuck with the form of government we now have, which includes the office of president as it now stands.

So … given all of that — a central, institutional leadership position fraught with distorting imperial qualities, a country more vast and populated than is governable, and a world and national scene shot through with inequity, corporatism and militarism — what could one possibly say to anyone who feels driven to seek the office of President?

The first would have to be: Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. No matter what your popularity or the plurality of votes that brought you into office, (though that seems not to matter in some recent elections) there will be those whose power will always counter and even overshadow yours. Sometimes that is all to the good, in the case of the power of the people — though you might rightly, and in fact, should rightly fear it; sometimes that countering power is dangerous to the health of the nation, as in the case of the inordinate condensation of power into the hands of a very few individuals, and if you have not already sided with them, if they do not bring you down, they have every possibility of thwarting your efforts to do good.

The second thing I would say to the current presidential candidates is: Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. You are viewed as the single most important person in all the world. That in itself should make you shake in your shoes and foment an upsurge of humility in you that would shock your massive ego (who has ever run for the presidency who did not have a massive ego) rendering it more malleable and permeable … that can serve you well. The power of power to create inflation of the ego is legendary, and real.

And though I am again severely tempted to say, “Be afraid,” lastly I will say: seek your humanness. Through all the glitter and pomp, through all the vastness of your power and the distance your voice carries on this globe, through all the incredible weight of responsibility you carry — to command the most powerful force of military the world has ever seen, to over-ride the will of the people by vetoing the legislation of their elected representatives, to appoint, for life, members of the Supreme Court of the land, to offer pardons to anyone being punished in this land — through all of that, again in the words of Madeline Albright, “Be confident but not certain. A certain president does not even know what he doesn’t know.” And, I would add, confidence in the face of uncertainty, and all of existence is uncertain, confidence in the face of uncertainty is the primal ground upon which all ethics and all religion derives its inner power. “It is,” in the words of Zen Priest, Bonnie Myotai Treace, “to turn one’s face towards the unknown as a way of life.”

Part Two: Some Words for “We the People.”

There is, of course, a whole potfull of messy and dangerous issues that face us all as we move into the national elections in the fall: The tragic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an abusive and inadequate health care system, globalization that serves the powerful, corporatization that has violated the true spirit of the constitution and despoiled the Earth, the continued presence and power of racism (witnessed so horribly in the wake of Katrina and Rita), foreign relations in which the U.S. has become the self-appointed policeman for the world, the national economy (what more needs to be said about this), and more. What we are faced with in all of this calls us to examine the domain that many people today call the Root Causes of social/political issues — which in my estimation are the true lenses through which we need to focus our political choices and actions. The Root Causes. (E.g. What are the root causes of terrorism? That “they” hate us — or that there is a severe imbalance of power, economics and cultural equity that marginalizes many, and in particular many Moslems?)

We are clearly at a critical time in this nation’s, and in fact, the world’s history. Michael Tomsky, writing for the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper wrote:

Now, with the race in full swing, we can say that all of those analogies [that compared this election to unique past elections] are wrong. My “not since” sentence consists of three words: Not since never.

I’m not usually given to hyperbole or (I hope) to purple prose, but I believe this to be absolutely true: There has never been a presidential race quite like this in the history of the United States.

It has genuinely impressive candidates. It has a grand theme. It’s really, meaningfully, about something. It may result in a woman or, perhaps more incredibly still, a black person being the president of the United States. Or, if not one of them — this is footnote-ish by contrast, but still quite interesting — maybe, then, the oldest person ever elected president, a man who would, if he served two full terms, have 80 candles to blow out on his last White House birthday cake.

My question is, “From what in all of this can we derive true hope?” Many would argue that all the current front-runners for president look good … by comparison to the present sitting president. And the surge of energy that has swept the majority of the nation about this election does seem to have at its core a deep concern about change, doesn’t it?

But, and this is a very strong caveat, it could also be forcibly argued that what is impressive about all the front running candidates, fundamentally, is how beholden they all are to incredibly wealthy corporations and individuals. One look into each of their financial dossiers and the names come tumbling out. Names like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch among the biggest givers. One look at who they are relying on for advice and guidance and the picture has the strong odor of the pro-establishment, pro-interventionist cliques of pre-established power: the quotable Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross. One look at their past voting records, and one sees a deep investment in the status quo that, as the Irish poet Yeats famously wrote, “lacks all conviction.” All of this is, of course, arguable, debatable and particularly so when we are faced with circumstances that are out of our control, as is true in so much of what passes for democracy. “This is how it is. Quit your whining. Go and vote.”

But back in October, quoting the author of Radical Democracy, C. Douglas Loomis I shared this: “According to [enlightenment philosopher] Montesquieu, democracy requires, in addition to law and the power to enforce it, ‘one spring more … , namely virtue.’ Loomis adds, ‘That is, there can be democracy where there is political virtue, not otherwise … . For Montesquieu, democracy is the name of a form of rule, not of a form of obedience. It is the name of a situation in which the people are in the sovereign seat of power, which means that they have power over the law. In this situation, nothing but political virtue can lead them to use that power in an orderly and restrained way.’ ”

The deepest question of where there is hope in all of this I will address in another sermon entitled “Blessed Unrest” on March 30^th. Today it seems critical to me that when reflecting on the presidential elections the very complexities of the presidency itself, the dark and thoroughly undemocratic entanglement of big money, the tragic wages of our past misdirections (like slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples), we come must to a place where through it all, and beyond the hype and argumentation, the lying and the confusion, we must recognize and stand upon our own sovereignty as individuals of worth. And particularly individuals who choose to come together in religious community so that our inherent dignity can be restored, enhanced and encouraged. Individuals who strive to discover and act from their own deepest virtue: the virtue of the untrammeled self, the virtue of the caring community member, the virtue of a personhood of preciousness, the virtue of courageous and creative rebellion that is willing to risk deeply for the sake of truth, compassion and integrity.

So I will close today with this wish, this prayer:

May we act so as to use these deep and precious virtues that are our birthright for the formation of a society that truly welcomes fundamental equity: socially, economically and politically.

May our acts of choosing be informed by a consciousness of our own value, and the equally deep value of others.

May we remember who we truly are … and live our political lives from that wholesome flame.

All My Relations.
Ashé. Amen. Ameen. Shalom & Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto