What It Felt Like To Have A President Again

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What It Felt Like To Have A President Again
July 31, 2020 / John Pavlovitz


I almost forgot what that felt like.

To have a human being, the most powerful human being on the planet, stand before the nation and display their humanity when we so needed to see it.

To be in the middle of a swirling maelstrom of unanswered questions and unthinkable of pain, and have a president assure the people that all was not lost and that disaster was not a foregone conclusion.

Until fairly recently, we’d gotten used to presidents rising to these terrible occasions; men who despite their flaws and failings and political affiliations, were capable of becoming better versions of themselves in order to be a symbolic anchor for all the people in the swirling storms of shared tragedy.

At the funeral for Rep John Lewis, Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, reminded us what true leaders are supposed to do.

They are supposed to step into moments of great shaking and steady us, not willingly contribute to the shaking.

They are supposed to approach our collective wounds with a salve of decency, not press the jagged salt of malice into those painful places.

They are supposed to enter in times of national grieving and alleviate the despair, not intentionally compound it

They are supposed to take the glaring spotlight pointed at them and direct it to someone else, to something else; to our better angels and higher callings, to our many commonalities and to the nation we could be if we lean into them.

They are supposed to show us that the world is bigger than one person.

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https://johnpavlovitz.com/2020/07/31/what-it-felt-like-to-have-a-president-again/