Have we put too much stock in the office of the Presidency?
Burn incense to [del]Caesar[/del] POTUS! Burn incense to POTUS or die!
Hey, you said cult!
But yeah, it’s ridiculous. A recent issue of Time had some cover story about how the next Pres could supposedly fix–the economy or something–& I thought, wow, what a simplistic attitude towards our far more complex governing system, & how horrible to encourage that.
It’s a lot easier than researching and actually writing the news, though. Time is the USA Today of glossy news mags - mostly feel-good proto-news designed to be easily consumable before your first cup of coffee and anywhere in the US without offending anyone.
Except Time didn’t say the new President could fix the economy. The article (The New President’s Economy Problem) expressly recognized the limited power the President has:
The point of the article was to identify economic challenges which a new administration is going to face. Presidents do have economic policies in response to economic issues.
Although as much as I like FDR, even he had very few successes with the economy, and most of the New Deal was probably of no real value.
Not a bad article, mswas; thanks.
Yes, we pay more attention to the President, and expect him to do more for (or to) the country than is probably healthy in a modern democracy - certainly more than the Framers ever expected us to. But in a media age, when nuclear weapons can destroy cities in seconds, it’s not too surprising. No single individual can authoritatively speak for Congress or the Supreme Court, as such, while the President is guaranteed to have a camera focused on him just about whenever he wants. I think it was Rossiter who said that the President is the high priest of our civic religion.
Most Presidents aren’t Washington, Lincoln or FDR. Nowadays, most use rhetoric that reality can’t match, and make promises or commitments that they can’t entirely keep, even if they want to. In office, most have to make policy choices from a list of varyingly unappealing options. Most leave office without accomplishing all that much. But every four years we have the chance to pick another one, and part of the genius of American democracy is that every four years we have the chance to begin anew, with someone in the Oval Office who might truly achieve greatness.
Generally I don’t blame economic problems on a President or credit him with a sound economy. But there’s just too much money going into the Middle East when there are hard times for too many here.
Would you elaborate?
Yes, yes (*1000)!
I think it bespeaks an inate human desire for deities. We glorify and magnify our presidents, their good and bad traits, past any reason based expectations. We invest way too much power in our presidents.
With our current environment of 24 news cycles and the blogosphere the president is always present in our daily lives.
I, for one, don’t like it one bit!
To me, the president, and the government as a whole, has a job to do that shouldn’t involve me for the most part. Kinda like the phone company. As long as the phone works and I pay my bill, we stay out of each others way.
To me, this is a dangerous attitude. I don’t think we should stay out of the government’s way and just let them do their “job.” If we don’t make some noise and get involved, we’re doomed to live with other peoples’ decisions. Not holding our elected government officials accountable can be a stupid and dangerous thing.
Also an inate desire to have someone be in control. We’re not too fond of the chaos and complexity.