[randallsquared]

> it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.

That's not why: Reagan, Clinton, W, and Obama all had the opportunity for sweeping changes of this magnitude without regard to further political careers, but none of them wanted to make radical changes. Their view of the US government (even Reagan's!) was "basically doing a good job, but maybe needs a tweak". The current administration does not appear to share this view, though we'll see how that goes.

[nitwit005]

The presidents aren't kings. They need congressional support to get anything major done. They rarely support sweeping changes.

And more recently, congress essentially won't do anything, period. Either because the president is not of their party, or more recently, chaos within the Republican party itself.

Which is why you see presidents trying to do things with executive orders, but typically the courts (correctly) block overreach there. Trump is busy accumulating court rulings against his administration.

[ty6853]

A simplified view: since FDR the main difference in presidential action is whether to crank progress at 1 or 11 in the ever expanding book of regulations, favored tax nook and crannies, and various benefits plans for pay-to-play voters like SS recipients.

Trump is threatening to turn that knob to -1 or lower, for good or ill.