Inquisited.com

Sarah Palin’s gaffe about the vice president’s putative role of being “in charge” of the US senate incited a substantial degree of indignity (largely among the senators themselves). But it does raise an interesting question: who’s “in charge” of the country as a whole anyway? Its easy to pin it all on the man in the oval office: the grey-haired middle aged man of impeccable moral standing Americans call president. He’s the man who directs national policies. He’s the man who raises or lower taxes. He’s the man who conducts diplomacy and wages war.

But personally I find such a view to be overly simplistic. The nature of American politics, much like God, works in mysterious ways. Former president Gerald Ford once put forward a theory called the “imperilled presidency” where he argued that the president is not granted nearly enough executive power to effectively push policies in office. According to Ford:

[A] principal weakness in the presidency is the inability of the White House to maintain control over the large federal bureaucracy. There is nothing more frustrating for a President than to issue an order to a Cabinet officer, and then find that, when the order gets out in the field, it is totally mutilated.

Historically, the president of the USA has acted as the commander in chief of the armed forces. But since the 1970s, there has been increasing limitations on his control over foreign policy. On paper, the president handles explicit diplomatic dealings with other heads of states, but there is much that he can’t control. For instance, when the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, China officials offered sharp rebukes and warned of serious rammifications to relationships between the two countries (which did pan out in the form of cancelled trade and military agreements).

Did George W. Bush have any control over this matter? I think not. Yes, he was present at the medal presentation ceremony. Yes, he personally congratulated the Dalai Lama. But ultimately it was congress that collectively decided to hand out the award, and this was something G.W could not veto. The same applies to arms sales. Its congress and the senate (which is, in turn, hugely influenced by lobbyists, think tanks and industrial connections), not the president that calls the shots. And this seems to be something that authoritarian countries with centralized governments don’t understand, and much to their empty frustration at the incumbent president comes to naught.

In domestic policy, the president is again constricted by the legislative branches of the government, and especially so if an opposing party is in control - like what Bill Clinton faced in the 90s with an uncooperative republican senate. Here again, a complex interwoven conglomerate of interest groups vie for control, and president himself is obliged to act long party and voter lines, and not what is necessarily in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Rarely have American presidents been representations of anything other than the prevailing socio-political zeitgist (A select few who dared to challenge the status-quo such as Abraham Lincoln stand as notable and noble exceptions.) In other words, the American president is more an avatar and symbol of America, rather than a real agent of change. No doubt he may try to steer jauggernaut that is the USA, but there is much less than he can do than is generally assumed.