The President Is Not Your Boss!

Deaniac83 over at The People’s View has yet another excellent piece that I highly recommend you read. It goes a long way towards explaining a lot of the whining and hand wringing on the left over President Obama’s performance as President. The President is not the CEO of the country, contrary to what you might have heard.

Despite our strong belief that the government does not and should not operate like a business, many on the so-called “Left” seem to be suffering from the delusion that the President is a unitary executive, and can do whatever he pleases. If he really wants to do something, he can do it, the argument goes, thereby attributing anything that does not get done to the President’s unwillingness to do it, rather than legislative reality or any other extraneous factor. It allows people to flat out ignore the fact that the President is but the head of one branch of government, restrained by the other branches, as well as the Constitutional limits on his power. But the same people are also always the first to scream that any use of legitimate executive power is itself abusive!

You have heard it all before. A, B, C didn’t get done because President Obama didn’t really want to do it. Or he didn’t fight for it. He didn’t pound podium enough. He didn’t twist enough arms. He didn’t do this. He didn’t do that. If only he had gone to Maine and verbally beat the Maine Republican senators over the head, we would have the public option in health reform. If only he had issued an executive order rather than go through the legislative process, DADT would be history on Day 2 of his presidency. And I suppose he was supposed to bullypulpit and podium-pound into submission all 90 senators and the overwhelming majority of the House who voted to block the closure of Guantanamo.

Go read it and while you are there, take a look at the other great posts at The People’s View.