Barack Obama for Senate — or something

Barack Obama.
Barack Obama. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

Barack is dorsum

Sometime President Barack Obama returned to the White House Tuesday for the start time since leaving office. He was there to commemorate the 12th anniversary of his Affordable Care Act and aid President Biden push button for farther health intendance reform.

"Thank yous, Vice President Biden," Obama said as he stepped up to the podium. It was a joke, i Obama took keen pains to downplay, but it accurately reflected the dynamic. Anybody in the room promptly forgot about the virtually powerful man in the world. Videos evidence Biden shuffling awkwardly around the room while murmurations of functionaries swirled around Obama. At 1 point, Biden fifty-fifty placed his manus on Obama's shoulder and said "Barack." Obama didn't even glance at him.

All the energy in the room emanated from and returned to a man whose public life is supposedly over. It shouldn't have to exist. Obama should run for Senate.

He'south only sixty, afterward all. He'south got at least two terms in him. Maybe three. In any blue state, Obama would clear the primary field and win the general in a landslide, and it just and then happens that he owns a home in Massachusetts. Autonomous Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are both in their 70s.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Old fuddy-duddies similar Ronald Reagan (who left part at the age of 77) have every correct to retire at the terminate of their presidencies. Go fishing and spend time with the grandkids.

Obama, on the other hand, was but 55 when his second term concluded. Bill Clinton was only 54, and George W. Bush only 62. The presidency is a grueling task. Viii years in office lined Obama'southward face up and turned his hair gray, and he certainly earned a few years of leisure. Just he has more to offering. So did Bush in 2009. And then did Clinton in 2000. Whatever you lot think of them every bit human being beings or political leaders, these are men of action. The post-presidential lives they're expected to lead are unworthy of them, especially when those long descents to the grave could stretch on for decades.

The last several presidents — with the exception of Trump, who prefers to brood like Megatron in his gilded lair — take all pursued the aforementioned combination of writing memoirs, giving paid speeches, dabbling in political kingmaking, and engaging in the sort of philanthropy i suspects is more than nearly preserving a identify in the upper echelons than serving the poor. Obama's Netflix deal is a difference from this pattern, but not a meaning one. Jimmy Carter, who'southward done real work in diplomacy and clemency, is a glaring exception.

This lingering in the limelight isn't good for former presidents, and it robs us of everything they might yet contribute. If they desire to retire, fine. Only if they desire to practise something, allow's give them something existent to do.

Precedents for presidents

What should that "something" be? History provides a number of options. Grover Cleveland played the stock marketplace. James Madison helped revise the Virginia state constitution and served as president of the American Colonization Gild, which helped erstwhile slaves settle in Liberia. John Adams, like Washington before him, returned to his farm.

The more than vigorous former commanders-in-chief could imitate Theodore Roosevelt, who — after declining to win a third term — undertook a grueling trek to the South American jungle.

Those who aren't quite done with public life are likewise in proficient company. In the first century of the republic, three former presidents were elected to public office. Ane-term president John Quincy Adams won nine terms in the House of Representatives. 6 years later leaving the Oval Office, Andrew Johnson was elected every bit a senator from Tennessee, though he died a few months later on taking office. John Tyler's neighbors — all Whigs who considered his presidency a disaster — mockingly elected the former president as the local overseer of roads, a position he took upward with the utmost seriousness. Tyler besides served briefly in the Confederate Congress.

Princeps or Augustus?

Gaius Octavius, Julius Caesar'southward adopted heir and the first Roman emperor, held ii separate and contradictory titles: Augustus, meaning "illustrious one," and Princeps Civitatis, meaning "first citizen." The first championship presented him as an almost godlike figure, standing far above mere mortals. The 2d gave the contrary impression. "A monarch? Who, me? No way! I'm a denizen, just like y'all!"

In the Us, we seem torn between the two. We expect our presidents to kiss babies and eat hot dogs, limit them to ii terms in office, and hedge them well-nigh with legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic checks. And however, the American presidency yet bears on its brow the recognizable imprint of the crown. This was especially articulate in the offset. Alexander Hamilton proposed that the president should concord office for life, John Adams suggested calling the chief executive "His Elected Highness," and George Washington personally led the army dispatched to crush the Whiskey Rebellion.

Today, the pomp of the Inauguration and the Land of the Union seem far more advisable to Elizabeth Two than to Boris Johnson, who took office following a elementary invitation from the queen and must regularly wrangle with lowly MPs. Recent British prime ministers Gordon Brown and Theresa May both returned to the back benches of Parliament after losing the premiership. Information technology's hard to imagine a modernistic president doing the same. Washington's famous imitation of Cincinnatus in stepping abroad from public life did much to bandage the president as princeps. Today, ironically, that same precedent — admitting with a definition of "private life" more suited to the historic period of air travel and the internet — turns our erstwhile principal executives into semi-deified figures considered too pure to practise anything only kill time equally members of the jet-setting aristocracy.

If the president is some sort of sacramental monarch, who after beingness anointed with the inaugural oil remains forever afterwards a higher sort of existence, then let's acknowledge that. Repeal the term limits and give him a scepter to carry. Go along making scenes similar the one nosotros saw at the White House on Tuesday.

But if the president truly is just the first citizen, a public retainer who served for a time in a particular capacity, then let'southward treat him or her that way. It should be considered perfectly normal for former presidents to sit on corporate boards, go into private law practice, run for Senate or governor, or have an date as administrator. The only possible statement confronting these activities would exist that the old president'south lingering aura of majesty would somehow overawe his business organization partners or opposing counsel or boyfriend lawmakers or whatever.

I'm sorry. I thought this was a commonwealth. I thought we didn't believe in such things.

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