No. of Recommendations: 13
Here is a link to a video on YouTube with a highly recommended analysis of how American expectations of (Presidential) leadership have evolved from those of the founders to the present day.
https://youtu.be/v5wQFm4KfJQ?si=svA-KA2l_cks86boSome key highlights.
Every aspect of our Constitution (which, remember, really amounts to USA 2.0 after a failed atttempt under the original Articles of Confederation) is influenced by the desire of the founders to avoid monarchy and control by a single individual. This is why so many specific powers are scattered across three branches of government and BETWEEN federal and state governments.
The founders were well grounded in their understanding of ideas and concerns that arose from democracy in Greece, specifically concerns over a government that would be overly responsive to the immediate passions of the public and not focused enough on the big picture.
When "reforms" adopted by the Democratic Party in the late 1960s followed immediately by Republicans to eliminate "smoke filled room" baed nominating processes for President took hold, it led Presidential candidates to engage more directly with the American voting public on a much wider variety of VERY specific issues. This created a cycle of expectation and disillusionment as candidates began making more explicit promises about what they could do for voters to win election while still operating in a system with purposely diffused powers that prevented most of any candidate's "proposals" from ever being enacted. This has led to ever-increasing cynicism, polarization and distrust in the democratic process.
The nature of the Presidency itself has been distorted by this process that assumes the President has agency over so many aspects of life and by the cynical attempts by its occupants to deliver on promises to win election or re-election. As recently as the FDR Administration, records show a President had a remarkable amount of free time each day. Time to think about "big picture" items. By the time JFK was President, the time of the President was treated as the rarest commodity on the planet, micromanaged and scheduled down to the minute and, as a result, Presidents are inevitably drawn into the minutia of events and issues they actually have little power to affect. This results in a huge waste of their time, distraction from matters they SHOULD be focused on and more disillusionment on the part of the public.
This is obviously NOT a good feedback cycle for the country.
WTH
