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by thaumasiotes 4485 days ago
>> A critical test? He doesn't have enough power to do anything about it.

> If this is indeed true, then it would mean that the US political system (which is regarded as the best example of democracy, globally) is corrupt from the core and the idea of checks & balances is completely bogus.

Ever since someone asked me if I thought GWB was "a good president", I've been mildly interested in what the president is (a) supposed to do, and (b) empowered to do. It turns out both questions are quite difficult to answer, and in particular the answer to (b), as best as I've been able to tell, is "almost nothing". At this point, I'm a little confused as to why the position is so prestigious.
2 comments
debugunit 4485 days ago
Douglas Adams satirised precisely this point with his Zaphod Beeblebrox character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. To quote wikipedia[1], his was "a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge, a role for which Zaphod was perfectly suited"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaphod_Beeblebrox

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aidos 4485 days ago
As far as I can tell it's some sort of interesting issue with the human condition. If you compare pre-presidential Obama's views with the current Obama's you see that he's become totally impotent regarding the issues he argued so strongly about in the past. So something changes once he's in power (I suspect there's a look of talk about what "is in the best interest of the people").

There's nothing physically stopping him - he's in a position where he addresses the world. He could very well stand up at his next speech and say "I'm very worried about the seemingly illegal activities of govt agencies... I've struggled change anything because... There are powers in play would prefer...". As a human being on this earth there's absolutely nothing stopping him from doing that but we all know it's never going to happen.

It's sad really.

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thaumasiotes 4485 days ago
> So something changes once he's in power

But my point is, he's not actually "in power" as far as I can tell. What power is he in? What can he do? And why?

Ilya Somin likes to point out that the government suffers when shark attacks occur, no matter that there is generally no conceivable relationship between them. Is respect for the office of the president backed by anything more substantial?

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