[gcmac]

Reminds me of this excerpt from an Obama interview:

> When problems reached him in the White House, he said, it was because they were unsolvable. He generally was being asked to choose between two bad options. “By definition, if it was an easily solvable problem, or even a modestly difficult but solvable problem, it would not reach me, because, by definition, somebody else would have solved it,” he said. “So the only decisions that came were the ones that were horrible and that didn’t have a good solution."

[hutzlibu]

"So the only decisions that came were the ones that were horrible and that didn’t have a good solution."

This should probably be a must read for any wanna be presidents and leaders who are only after the power and glory.

[Toine]

So 100% of wannabes

[jpmoral]

This is only true where the system at least somewhat works. In other places you get police press conferences where they say "The president/governor has already given us orders to investigate the crime".

[bgroat]

This is where I learned it, and it's why I'm much more forgiving of leaders than most people I know.

Which isn't to say they should be unaccountable. But these are people who make impossible choices all the time

[ekns]

How can it be "by definition"? Is the president defined as someone who picks unsolvable problems? Are the subordinates defined as people who solve every single solvable problem?

[ekns]

Ah I've resolved my long-standing question about this phrase. All this time I thought it was only used like in mathematics, but not so!

https://www.lexico.com/definition/by_definition

[bgroat]

I, the OP used the phrase "almost by definition". And this has no quantitative backing, just my proselytizing.

The child comment about The President doesn't use the phrase "by definition" at all