My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born. And with those words went out again to the Jews. It's an image that a lot of us have a hard time with these days. We have a hard enough time imagining what a president should really be like, let alone a king.
Kings bring up images of fairy tales and big castles and lots of jewels.
We don't encounter them much in every day life. Governors, on the other hand, such as Pilate, are a little easier to grasp. They are political figures, powerful but not unaccountable, probably caught in between all kinds of competing issues. Maybe it's because he seems so human that Pontius Pilate gets written about a lot these days. His power more like the power of any politician today, which is why he looks so silly next to Jesus.