Those who wish to govern must sacrifice their freedom. It is not only the grinding demands of a campaign, with its enormous demands on the body and the spirit as well as on the finances. It is, when the campaign has been won, that the greatest demands come.  The greatest of our leaders were true public servants and gave us examples of power harnessed to responsibility. We speak of those in government as public servants. Sometimes, that term expresses only a hope. While Harry Truman left the White House in much the same financial shape as when he came in, we have become inured to folks like the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens for whom a lifetime in government turned out to be immensely rewarding financially.  But we see that the charm of living vicariously through glam politician/celebrities has worn thin. The promise of our American democracy has been that it is the ordinary free citizen who is free to make a life as celebrated and glorious and enriching life as that of the glittering elites. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Unity Is a Common Goal, Often Abused) This last election was largely about the working American casting off the enchantment of the elite classes and seeing that instead of doing good, dedicating themselves to the good of the country, they have concentrated far more effectively on doing well for themselves. They spoke at the polls and told would-be public servants: serve us well or we will remove you. The country wants as its public servants those who realize that the only proper use of power is in service to those who have voted to grant it to him — or her. Good governance is responsible, meaning capable of responding, through its power, to the genuine needs of Americans people: protection from enemies, without and within, ensuring a free market and fair trade, and good at responding to disasters that are beyond the resources of private citizens to address adequately by themselves. One of the illusions of those who fancy themselves the governing class has been that Americans have a great desire to be perennially free of such responsibility. They have used the addictive joys of irresponsibility the way a dealer uses drugs — to enrich themselves irresponsibly, little caring for the destructive effects on the people whom they have hooked. And there is an addictive attraction to power with no responsibility, and it allows us to plan lives around money we need not pay back, devotion to ourselves that we may take for granted, and an imagined unlimited ability to satisfy every craving with no consequence of ill health. A permanent childhood, endlessly gratifying.  To the degree we have fallen for this bait and that our culture has turned towards such an ethos, we elect leaders who reflect this irresponsibility in a variety of ways in their own lives. We are blessed, however, with powerful counterexamples of what politicians can be. The greatest of our leaders were true public servants and gave us examples of power harnessed to responsibility. We were blessed at the start with George Washington and his conscious attempt to establish an ethos of selfless duty as the main requisite of the job of head of the American federal union. Adams left a quiet legacy of doing what was right for the country even if it meant political defeat. Lincoln gave his own life in ridding our nation of the obscenity of slavery. In a later age, Truman was famous for the attitude expressed by the sign on his Oval Office desk: The Buck Stops Here. Ronald Reagan had a motto on his desk as well: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit,” teaching that empowerment depends not on enhancing one’s glory but on dedication to what needs to be done. But our own times provide counter examples as well. One of Rush Limbaugh’s most acute criticisms of Obama’s presidency was 44’s proclivity to always speak as the perennial candidate, always free to lecture and criticize, and never accountable for the results of his own use of power. He wanted us to believe as well that the government was something outside him and for which he was not responsible. Judge me on utopian promises, he was saying, and not on what I deliver in the world of action in which you, my subjects, live. On the other hand, one can equally evade responsibility by claiming the opposite: to be power incarnate, and thus reducing to zero the standing of anyone to question him. Dr. Fauci famously showed that attitude when, subject to increasingly telling criticism, he fulminated, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” dimly echoing the phrase famously attributed to Louis XIV: “I am the state.”  In either the Fauci way or the Obama way, the same result follows — the one exercising the power is trying to exempt himself from any accounting. He wishes to be free to act with impunity in the future, either by denying the power he holds (Obama’s way) or denying any accountability for it (Fauci’s way). The problem of responsibility is shared by every free individual. Genesis tells that God gave the human being enough power to rule all other beings, but within a framework: “To work it and to protect it.” The message is that we are responsible for protecting the world over which we have been given power. We are part of a commonwealth that will prosper if we act within the bounds of care and accountability. In the wake of the disastrous results of their narcissistic exercise of power, Obama and his proxies under Biden peddled the excuse that all blame lay elsewhere. They peddled the malignant Woke construct of an always-guilty oppressor class, identifiable by ethnicity and designated from birth to be forever responsible for all that goes wrong in society. Eventually, this metastasized into one great enemy, to whom all blame was always appropriate — Donald Trump as Emmanuel Goldstein. (READ MORE: Created in God’s Image: Where Human Greatness Lies) Existentially fearsome, eternally threatening, his menace justified every abrogation of the traditions of our politics that has kept our Republic from following the Greek democracies into a suicidal plunge into oblivion. But now, by the grace of Providence, the citizens awarded political power to us. What will we do with it? We have had plenty of people to blame for their misuse of power. The drama of Trump overcoming the brute force of a coordinated political attack that aimed to censor, censure, impoverish, isolate, criminalize, and imprison him — certainly inspired some to attempt to assassinate him — is an epic for the ages — yeuge! Time to Deliver for Every American But now we will have the power, and we will be rightly measured by our use of it. Lincoln realized this and tried to turn America towards a new birth rather that into a settlement of old scores once the rebellion had been defeated. It is up to us to as well provide an example for the ages about what American good governance really should look like. The first time around Trump delivered a fine economy and a world more peaceful than in any other administration of this century. All was overwhelmed by the monstrous lies of the impeachment campaigns, which have at last been dealt their mortal blow by an American public that has had years to make up its mind and consider. Now it is up to us to deliver. No excuses, no fear. Just as Trump has put together in this winning campaign a memorable coalition from all parts of America, each bringing their talents to bear for the cause, so must we continue. The path we take must command and excite the best and the brightest, must encourage a path forward in which we welcome merit, ability, and devotion to our national cause and in the cause of freedom. It must look towards what we can all be together, and only in the most egregious and criminal of cases, look backwards towards what we now as a country leave behind. Trump’s comeback is legendary. Now for a legendary presidency, filled with the knowledge he has expressed so movingly of being spared by divine providence from the assassin’s bullet. Let his term of office be galvanized by that knowledge of purpose. May we all welcome in a renewed sense of an American Covenant, an embrace of our responsibility to each other, to the world, and above all, to the One in whom we find our oneness and whose blessings on us all we humbly entreat. The post We Must All Renew the American Covenant appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.