When the office wraps itself in the flag

The Hill reports that the White House has defended a series of pro-President Trump television advertisements timed to air ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, offering the justification that 'patriotism isn't partisan.' I will grant that sentiment its most charitable reading before I give it my honest one.

Of course patriotism is not partisan — that is precisely the point those of us who warned against faction were trying to make. Devotion to the Republic, to its laws, to its founding compact, belongs to every citizen without distinction. That very universality is what makes it so dangerous when a government borrows its authority. When an administration uses the machinery and, I am inferring from the report, the resources of public office to broadcast a sitting President's image on the eve of an election, it does not transcend partisanship — it simply puts on partisanship's most seductive costume.

I learned, in the course of two terms, that the office of the executive carries a gravity that no individual entirely deserves. I tried to conduct myself accordingly — to let the dignity reside in the institution rather than in the man. The moment a President's name and face become the message, the office has been turned inward, serving the officeholder rather than the citizenry. That inversion is precisely what the separation of powers was designed to resist.

The argument that 'patriotism isn't partisan' would be persuasive if the advertisements celebrated the Republic's endurance, its constitutional order, its civic rituals. If instead — as the framing of this story plainly suggests — they celebrate a particular President in the season of a contested election, then the invocation of patriotism is not a defense; it is the charge itself, restated as an alibi. A government that cannot tell the difference between the nation and its current leader has already moved some distance down a road I would not recommend.

I do not render a verdict on the law here — whether such advertising violates statute or appropriations rules is a question for the courts and for Congress, the proper tribunals. What I can speak to is the habit of mind it reflects. Republics are sustained not only by written law but by the unwritten restraints that officers impose on themselves. A President who asks, 'Is this legal?' before every action, but never asks, 'Is this the kind of precedent a free republic can afford?', has already diminished the office, regardless of the answer to the first question.

My counsel to those who hold power today is the same I gave to those who held it in my own time: distinguish, always and scrupulously, between the honor owed to the office and the advantage sought by the person who occupies it. And my counsel to citizens is this — be alert when you hear the nation's name spoken in a season of elections. Ask whose interest is actually being served. That alertness is not cynicism; it is the very exercise of the civic virtue on which free government depends.