It's inauguration day and Josh is watching as the candidate he campaigned for is being sworn in as President of the United States. Josh has been in this position 5 times before but there is something different about this candidate, it's almost as if...
A long time ago a friend of mine (though there was nothing amicable about our relationship at the time) told me what sort of man it took to be President.
"The man in that job shouldn't have to be presented with anything!" he bellowed at me. "It's for someone who grabs it and holds on to it, for someone who thinks the gods have conspired to bring him to this place, that destiny demands of him this service!"
Over the years I've had the privilege of helping four brilliant men into the Oval Office, three of which didn't have that particular something, this hubris, that my friend was describing.
At the time that my friend shouted those words at me I'd been trying to get a candidate into office. He was the second man I'd helped campaign for the office of President and the first man I had personally picked.
He was my guy.
This guy was a fighter, in every sense of the word. He even went so far as to fight me on the way the campaign was being run, right candidate or not that created a nightmare. I have no idea what I would have done if my wife hadn't become involved halfway through the campaign. The first half of the campaign would have been a lot easier if he had believed (whether it was true or not) that he had been pre-destined to become President; we wouldn't have spent so long pussyfooting around in New Hampshire with him just hoping to shape the debate and me putting everything on the line thinking he was in it to win.
The first candidate I worked for didn't exactly believe that things had been set for him so that he would one day assume the mantle of the Presidency, but it helped immensely that he knew he was meant to do big things with the talents he had been given and had cultivated over the years. This guy had to be approached by an old friend, he had to be convinced that this was what he was meant to do with his life, and even when he accepted his friend's words it took the campaign longer than anyone would have liked to really pick up steam, and a little longer for the candidate to realize that he could actually get into the Oval Office.
My third guy, man was he something, he was such an idealist that it was difficult to believe that he had been involved in the political world nearly as long as I had. He could see through all the muck that came with the dirty game of politics and he always held on to the hope that we could make not just little changes but monumental changes. Even with that mind full of ideas and plans for the future, he too had to be presented with the notion of a presidential campaign. It was hard- convincing him- it took a whole group of friends and colleagues to get him to consider the idea and it wasn't until his wife knocked some sense into him that he allowed me to get things rolling for his campaign.
I can't blame these three men for not having that double-edged sword of hubris. It's a scary thing to wield that kind of pride and arrogance against the gods, or whatever is running this whole show, especially when you don't know what the hell it is these cosmic forces want from you. It's a hell of a lot easier when you think that the universe is taunting you with it, when you think it's laid out a plan for you and wants you to brandish that hubris, wants you to rail against it, to fight it, because in doing so all the pieces will fall into place and you just have to trust in it and hope that you'll manage to do some good before Atë comes (and then hope some more, that you will survive the fall from grace with no more than a bump on the head).
My fourth candidate had everything going for him, all of it, the looks, the brains, the passion, the strangely endearing cockiness softened by his humanity, and the crazy idea that his entire life had been leading up to what he is doing today, being sworn in as President.
He couldn't really help being what he was, this was all in his blood, so all he could do was continue on the course that had been set for him. For a while I thought he was a bit crazy (not that anyone would be too surprised if he was, that was in his blood too after all), I mean I saw his potential from the beginning but I was surprised when I also became convinced that the wheels had been set in motion decades, maybe even centuries, before my final candidate was even born.
Sitting here at the 6th inauguration where I played a part in casting the lead I can say without a doubt that the gods truly have conspired to bring him to this place.
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