all wins casino What Really Matters Is How Presidents Think About Power

The American presidency is a strange office.

It is the most powerful elected position in the world. To hold the position is to lead a nation of more than 330 million people with a vast and intricate government that touches every aspect of daily life. You are responsible for trillions of dollars in spending, and you must manage the actions of countless civil servants, from your direct appointees — who number in the thousands — to their underlings. You wield the full might of the American military and have direct access to a device that could, with the press of a few keys, end life as we know it.

From the moment you open your eyes to begin a new day to the moment you close them for a few hours of slumber, your conscious mind is occupied by an endless storm of crises and concerns. You decide which need your direct attention and which can go to the relevant aide or secretary. You must find the time — your most precious resource — to plan, prioritize and categorize the problems and opportunities that come your way. And you will be judged for the success or failure of your administration on any number of issues — whether or not you were responsible, whether or not you had any control over them.

The buck, after all, has to stop somewhere.

But here is where it gets strange. All that power comes with limits so hard that it can feel, at times, like you don’t have any at all. You can spend only what Congress allows you to spend. You have discretion to execute the law, but that can be curbed, even erased, by a vote of the Supreme Court.

There are things you can do by fiat — otherwise known as executive orders — but those can be overturned by a court or reversed by the next administration or resisted outright by hostile state governments. Lasting change, if that’s what you want, requires a vote of the legislature, which is to say that you have to put your goals in the hands of people who may not have your interests in mind, whether or not you share the same party. You can be a towering figure abroad — leading the nations of the free world in a crusade against aggression — and a fumbling, even weak one at home. Our constitutional order may be unbalanced, with an executive and judiciary whose influence seems to outstrip that of the legislature, but the checks and balances that do exist can still stymie the plans of an ambitious president.

Those of us who observe and study American politics are more than aware of all this when we try to analyze and explain a given president. But rarely does the reality of the office ever factor into our quadrennial struggle over which man or woman will hold it.

Consider the most recent presidential debate. The moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News, pressed the candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, on a wide range of policy questions. Topics included the economy, inflation, immigration, border security, the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. The moderators — perhaps following the concerns of undecided voters who say they want more specificity — scrutinized the candidates on their plans and, when appropriate, asked for details.

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