Have you ever stopped to consider the sheer majesty of the words “Commander in Chief?” The word “commander” practically leaps out of the page, demanding fealty and awe, perhaps a crisp salute. “In Chief,” while bordering on the redundant, in this case implies an almost impossibly high office. With its military overtones and unimpeachable executive dominance, the phrase demands acquiescence of those who stand before it.

And these days many Americans have the opportunity to be reminded of the power of this phrase, particularly by the president himself, who is fond of using it to add throw-weight to his magisterial pronouncements. In fact, as President Bush’s credibility diminishes, he is ever more insistent that by virtue of his being “Commander in Chief” we must take him seriously.

Unfortunately, it appears that many Americans would bow before his majestic title rather than judge the seriousness of the man who claims it. Whether it be the force of his logic, which commands the attention of almost no one, his veracity, which frequently strays beyond the boundaries of plausibility, or the outcomes of his many crumbling policy initiatives, of which the Iraq disaster is but the most egregious example among many, it is clear that the president’s only remaining majesty is in his title. Which is why he keeps deploying it like a bunker buster bomb, blasting away at mountains of doubt about his performance as commander in chief.

Perhaps his most egregious misuse of the title is when he invokes it to remind us that as supreme commander of our military forces, he is also the supreme military strategist whose access to all channels of intelligence and expert counsel makes him alone qualified to choose the course for our legions in Iraq and elsewhere. Time and again he has dismissed questions, dissenting views, the recommendations of experts including his own generals, by hiding behind the screen of his official powers, without once addressing the depressing consistency with which his strategies have led to worsening conditions and outright failure. President Bush seems to believe that his status as Commander in Chief makes him infallible, beyond reproach, and his performance irrelevant.

America, and in particular the news media, needs to reach through the imposing artifice of the president’s title and remind President Bush of his humble office as citizen of the United States, answerable to the principles of democracy and to the questions of the people he represents.

-Ted Bucklin