great comment from OvercomingBias.com

From a post on yesterday's Overcomingbias.com:

For the last few years the message we'd heard from our relatively liberal media is about how powerful is the U.S. president and how important are leader motives in determining policy outcomes. Specifically, we've heard that U.S. outcomes are bad because of Bush's despicable motives [added: and incompetence] -- Bush has personally destroyed Iraq, New Orleans, the global environment, the deficit, oil and food prices, drug prices, the housing market, the mortgage industry, civil rights, and so on.

Odds are we will soon have a president Obama, and with him the outcomes won't be much different - U.S. presidents don't control that much after all. So we will soon hear the media talking a lot more about how limited is presidential power and how important is other context in determining outcomes -- Obama tried but was thwarted by congress, foreigners, interest groups, the weather, complexity, and so on. Just wait for it.

What a great point. I have always found the intellectually dishonest habit of scapegoating a president for Every Wrong Under the Sun very annoying. Anyone who remembers his 8th grade history and civics lessons in re: to our system of built-in checks and balances (refresher: the legistlative branch; the judiciary; and the executive office ) ought to know that Presidents do not, in fact, have all that much power. Love them or hate them as you wish, but don't blame them personally for decisions that Congress also made, or the Courts upheld.