In the latest feature article at Reason (not online yet), Gene Healy looks at the growth of the all powerful, all knowing, all affecting, all healing, all preaching, all nourishing president.

Under the headline on page 21 reads the following:

Who can we blame for the radical expansion of executive power? Look no further than you and me.

Indeed. No other political office has come to mean so much to so many people. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Nonetheless, says Healy:

The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise....is America's shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He's also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.

This messianic campaign rhetoric merely reflects what the office has evolved into after decades of public clamoring. The vision of the president as a national guardian and a spiritual redeemer is so ubiquitous that it virtually goes unnoticed.It's difficult for 21st century Americans to imagine things any other way....Americans appear deeply ambivalent about results, alternately cursing the king and pining for Camelot. But executive power will continue to grow and threats to civil liberties increase, until citizens reconsider the incentives we have given a post that started out so humble.

After recalling some drab and tired quotes and ideas about separation of powers, humility and caution from yesteryear by the likes of Madison, Jefferson and even Hamilton and John Jay, Healy rightly traces the roots of this shift chief officer of the executive branch to larger-than-life omnipotent, omnipresent overlord to the Progressive era....the period of backlash after the massive societal shifts...good, bad and yet to be fully understood (at the time)...of the Industrial Revolution. The "Progressives" were, according to a 2003 book, The Presidency and Political Science, "the nearest to presidential absolutists of any theorists or practitioners of the presidency". A leading light of this era was Teddy Roosevelt. Progressive era journalist and founder of the The New Republic, Herbert Croly ominously described Teddy as "a sledgehammer in the cause national righteousness". His relative popularity with liberals and conservatives speaks volumes on how influential Teddy and this era was in our modern political thought.

Indeed, the traces of Obama's hope, hosanna and Yes we CAN! and McCain's push to serve a cause "greater than self-interest" and promises of national redemption, greatness and defeat to all enemies of the state, within and without, can trace their roots back to Teddy's original bully pulpit at the 1912 Progressive Party Convention when he cried:

"To you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment of our Nation, to you who gird yourselves for this great new fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of mankind, I say in closing...WE STAND AT ARMAGEDDON AND WE BATTLE FOR THE LORD!".

Sheesh. Get a grip, Teddy.

Two world wars and a depression (Fed created in 1913) were more than enough to solidify the new found all-powerful office of President of the United States of America. And rather than gulp with pause and reflexion on the God-like figure we've created, Americans seem ever more insistent and impassioned in capturing the prize for themselves via their party leader in the hopes of having all their dreams for a better world, a brighter tomorrow and salvation and redemption for all mankind...and the children...come true.

Pardon my over-the-toppiness. I just caught up in the moment. ;)