The Gold Signature

The United States has been independent for 250 years this July. The State Department has chosen a curious way to mark the occasion: by putting the current president's face inside your passport.

A stern-looking Donald Trump, superimposed over the Declaration of Independence. His signature underneath. In gold.[1]

There are few precedents anywhere in the world for putting a sitting leader's portrait in a passport. North Korea does it. Syria does it. Russia does it. Democracies, as a rule, do not. The passport belongs to the citizen, not the state. It is a document that says: this person has the right to leave and to return. Adding the leader's face turns it into something else entirely, a loyalty test you carry in your pocket.

The State Department says it is a limited edition to commemorate the anniversary. A second version shows the Founding Fathers instead. But the existence of the non-Trump version makes the Trump version more telling, not less. Someone chose to produce both. Someone decided the current president belongs alongside the people who wrote "all men are created equal" on a document that millions of Americans will carry through border crossings.

The Pattern

On its own, a picture in a passport is trivial. But nothing this administration does is on its own. It comes after renaming the Gulf of Mexico, after adding Trump's name to government buildings, after proposing his face on Mount Rushmore, after the military parade, after the flag-like merch, after every other act of institutional self-branding that turns the machinery of state into an extension of one person's image.[2]

This is what personalization of state institutions looks like in its early stages. The passport is small. The principle is not. When the state wraps itself in the image of its leader, the institution stops serving the public and starts serving the person. The passport is not yours anymore. It is his, and he is letting you hold it.

Why It Works

The brilliance of this move, if you can call it that, is the excuse. It is for the 250th anniversary! It is limited edition! It is commemorative! Who could object to a little celebration?

The same argument works for every encroachment. The Gulf of Mexico thing was just a name. The military parade was just a celebration. The face on the passport is just a souvenir. None of it is just anything. Each step normalizes the next one. By the time a president's face in passports feels normal, the question of why it is there has already been answered by omission: because he can.

There is a word for a state where the leader's image appears on everything the citizen touches. We used to call those places something specific. Now we call them democracies and look the other way.