Ordinarily I’m a sucker for the ceremonial trappings of our republic. I always watch the State of the Union address. Whether I approve of the president, whoever he may be, I derive a modest patriotic pleasure from observing his speech and the attendant rituals. I like the announcement of the president’s arrival by the House’s sergeant-at-arms and his slow glad-handing on his way to the podium, greeting senators and representatives, justices of the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to deliver copies of his speech to the speaker of the House.

I appreciate the ceremonials connected to our inaugurations, the speeches, the music, the parades, which serve to publicly affirm our commitment to our most democratic principle, the peaceful transfer of power (usually).

But I wonder if we sometimes overdo this sort of thing.

I was thinking about this while watching the funeral of Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9. It was a beautiful service in magnificent surroundings, carried off with considerable pomp and circumstance by choirs, orchestras, speakers, preachers and surpliced functionaries of the church.

But consider this irony: Of the five presidents present, the only one who we can be sure would NOT have wanted all this grandiloquent ceremony expended in his honor would have been Carter, who was a reserved, unassuming man without much interest in ostentation.

One of the commentators on the funeral was an academic who studies these things. Her opinion—as I understood it—is that our national rituals are too reflective of the monarchical traditions from which our nation emerged. When the funerals of our presidents begin to look too much like the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, and our inaugurations begin to resemble coronations, we’ve gone too far.

Sure, Carter was president, but when he died he was a citizen like the rest of us.

This may seem trivial, but this proposition parallels another concern about the presidency: the office has become too powerful. The Founders conceived of three more or less equal branches of government, and the purpose of the executive branch was to administer the laws passed by the legislative branch.

As presidents of both parties have assumed more and more power, this founding idea has been flipped on its head: While once the president’s job was to execute the legislature’s agenda, we’ve reached the point where Republican leaders have said publicly that their highest priority is to enact the Trump agenda.

This isn’t good for the country or for the president. And with the current president, who is already inclined toward self-aggrandizement and accumulation of power, all of the perks, privileges, pomp, praise and parades can only further undermine his psyche, as well as the Founder’s conception of the proper role of the presidency.

In fact, Trump’s conception of his power sometimes approaches the divine or monarchical:

He has imagined that he can redirect the path of a hurricane with the stroke of a Sharpie. He may not be able to move mountains, but he can rename them, as well as vast bodies of international waters. Thoroughly self-assured, he can prognosticate the progress of a pandemic.

Trump declares that God saved his life so that he could save America, suggesting the divine right that kings used to enjoy. Rich and powerful men come bearing gifts and tribute. He proclaims: Let there be two genders. Holy men praise and exalt him, and the Supreme Court has decreed that he is essentially infallible.

But, of course, he’s not. I’ve read the biographies of all the presidents up through Bill Clinton, and, for the most part, they’re ordinary men, who through various combinations of circumstance, ambition, talent, good looks, connections, money, eloquence, deal-making and luck became president.

And to elevate them much beyond the status of ordinary men and women, just like the rest of us, is thoroughly at odds with our noble aspirations toward an egalitarian democracy.

In America, our presidents aren’t gods or kings; let’s stop treating them as if they were.

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