Try putting yourself into a spot that most of us — at least everyone within my sphere of friends and acquaintances — will never experience.
That would be transferring oneself instantaneously from being the most powerful human being on Earth to being just another ordinary guy.
My mind does tend to wander into strange places at times. This is one of them.
After the election of a new president, I try to transport myself into the shoes of the individual who goes from being Somebody to a relative Nobody. How does that feel? Is there a palpable, discernible sense of great weight being lifted from one’s shoulders? Is there a temptation to thumb one’s nose at the successor or offer a snarky “Take it away, pal”?
Or is there a temptation to worry oneself silly over this or that crisis?
Barack Obama might be feeling a little weird today as he continues his transition to husband, father, son-in-law, friend, next-door neighbor.
MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews — who in a previous life served as a speechwriter for President Carter and was on hand to watch his boss hand it over to President Reagan in 1981 — offered an observation the other day I found so very fascinating.
He said the Secret Service presidential detail keeps its eyes riveted on the commander in chief and his immediate surroundings at all times. On Inauguration Day, their attention shifts dramatically at the instant the chief justice of the Supreme Court says, “Congratulations, Mr. President” to the new head of state.
It’s a ritual repeated with utmost precision and without the slightest impact on the event that’s taking place. It happened this past Friday as Barack Obama passed the baton to Donald Trump.
We’ve been focused, quite naturally, on the new president’s activities — and the protests that have greeted his arrival on center stage.
For reasons, though, that haveĀ little to do with my affection for the most recent former president, I will hope he adjusts as smoothly to a “normal life” as he did when he became the focus of billions of us living on Planet Earth.