The Unmoved Center
To what shall we liken President Obama's highly emotional lobbying campaign for the 2016 Olympics to come to Chicago, which culminated this week in a personal, unsuccessful presentation in Copenhagen to the Olympic Committee?
In some respects, I suspect, its effects will resemble those that followed on President Bush's nomination in October 2005 of his White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Before that nomination, President Bush had been criticized even by his defenders for stubbornness and inarticulateness; the defenders thought it was their job to make the case for the president's policies, because the White House was mysteriously incompetent in that respect. After the Miers incident, though, many of the president's former supporters just gave up. The president had shown unambiguously that he did not know the place of the Supreme Court in the American political system, or the presidency's duties with respect to the Court. The suspicion grew that maybe there were no policies to defend, just improvisations that the White House emitted from time to time as occasion suggested. Thereafter, as Peggy Noonan put it, the president was still transmitting but no one was receiving. There were in fact policy successes in the second Bush Administration term, notably the Surge strategy in Iraq, but they were made purely on the limited strength of the president's official powers and largely in despite of the political system, which almost frustrated them.
Readers may amuse themselves by finding ways in which this analogy applies and does not apply to the Copenhagen Embassy. The president's public support of his home city's bid for the Olympics was justified, indeed endearing. Sending the First Lady and a gaggle of celebrities to make the presentation was also a good idea (not least because, on the merits, Rio had a much stronger case). The announcement that the president himself would be making the trip caused many people to assume that the selection of Chicago was already assured. The failure of the president's personal plea is an embarrassment that will affect several levels of the president's credibility in the years to come. We should consider, however, that even had the president succeeded, that would have been the wrong kind of success, a success inappropriate to the head of state of the United States.
The best analogue to President Obama in this context may be Pius VI (1717-1799; reigned 1775-1799). As readers of this website will know, the great declericalization of Catholic Europe was a phenomenon of the whole 18th century. Well before the French Revolution, Church lands were confiscated and religious institutions disbanded, including most of the Society of Jesus itself. Almost everywhere, monarchs claimed the right to appoint bishops with little or no role for the pope. Among the most vigorous of the promoters of this project was the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Joseph made the pope's life such a misery that Pius traveled to Vienna in person to plea with the emperor to relent.
This was an extraordinary step. A special medal was struck to commemorate the event, which at the time was seem as a confirmation of the Prophecies of Saint Malachy: those artfully ambiguous forecasts had specifically characterized the pope with the number in the line of succession that Pius held as a "pilgrim." Be that as it may, the trip was not the happiest pilgrimage, as we read in Catholic Encyclopedia:
[H]e left Rome on 27 Feb., 1782, and arrived in Vienna on 22 March. The emperor received him respectfully, though the minister, Kaunitz, neglected even the ordinary rules of etiquette. The pope remained at Vienna until 22 April, 1782. All that he obtained from the emperor was the promise that his ecclesiastical reforms would not contain any violation of Catholic dogmas, or compromise the dignity of the pope. The emperor accompanied the pope on his return as far as the Monastery of Mariabrunn, and suppressed this monastery a few hours after the pope had left it.
The power, and even the influence, of the papacy continued to deteriorate. It was not just a matter of losing control of property. When absolutist governments got control of the schools and the power of clerical appointments, they were quite capable of promoting their favorite heresies, notably the rigorist doctrine of Jansenism. When the French Revolution came, Pius tried to negotiate a modus vivendi as much as possible, and maybe more than possible. The French occupied Rome in 1798 and took Pius prisoner. He died in France the next year.
Pius was not the first pope to be captured and die in exile. Actually, he was not even the first pope to be imprisoned by the French. Pius's situation was novel, however, because his own willingness to engage in personal diplomacy dissipated the charisma of his office (if we may mix Weberian categories in that fashion). His successor sent an able representative to the Congress of Vienna, but had the wit not to attend himself. In the later 19th century, the popes gained in authority what they lost in mobility. Possibly the great boostest to papal prestige since the Crusades was the loss of the Papal States in 1870. The popes declared themselves prisoners of the Vatican. They could still engage in politics, but only at the most rarified level. They became the fixed center of the world, so that there was no danger that their presence would undermine their influence. For such an office, the dictum of the wicked Baron Evola has great application: the traditional ruler subdues opposition by the rumor of his imperturbability.
The presidency of the United States evolved through the 20th century into a position in the world system as unique as that of the pope. By no means a universal executive, even in embryo, the president did acquire some of the functions of the traditional universal ruler: the fixed center in relation to which ordinary politics happened. The accelerating disintegration of the post-World War ecumenon in no way implies a retreat from that outcome; when the dust settles, the verdict of the 20th century will remain, though perhaps expressed in different terms. Meanwhile, the president should remember this:
He may call conferences of heads of state. He may attend such conferences called by others. He may not, under any circumstances, be seen making a plea to an international administrative body.
