Defines the office of the Executive in the US, and the powers of the President who is charged with executing those duties. The comprehensive list of duties is here:
And that’s it folks. Seriously. He is not the psychologist in chief. He is not the parent in chief. And he is certainly NOT the economist in chief. But we have gone so far off the rails that when we publicly celebrate and describe the American Presidency, we make up a whole bunch of stuff – because, you know, the President gets to use all kinds of super-cool powers to make the USA a totally cool awesome place to live.
A friend of mine was in DC and he pointed me to the exhibit at the Smithsonian on the American Presidency. The exhibit celebrates the 7 tasks of a President. Here is the list, compare it to mine above:
Read the rest of the site. The justification for the President’s “management” of the economy is that “it is politically popular.” Yep, that was exactly the justification built into the constitution for everything each of the members of the three branches did. In fact, in case you don’t recall your civics classes, the Constitution was a document meant to secure basic liberties even in the face of other things which might be politically popular or expedient.
Well, yeah. But in fairness, that list was created before we had the great, all-knowing, and merciful OzBama. 😉
And while I was there, visitors were encouraged to rank those supposed duties in terms of their perceived importance. Sorry to say of 600k plus who participated, “manager of the economy” ranked third. (thankfully commander in chief ranked above it).