Nobody asked but …
In the May 2018 issue of The Atlantic, John Dickerson argues that the office of POTUS has become impossible to execute. I disagree with him in two particulars, but agree with him in the main.
The disagreements are 1) the office has not become impossible, as it began impossible, and 2) Dickerson picks certain POTUS who did a better job — I would probably pick different POTUS and have a much sterner definition of better.
Where we agree, it is in that the office is broken. Dickerson believes that it has evolved into a set of complexities that defy orderliness. I believe that while the organization of the formal foundations of this country are historically significant, they are no better than a step forward, followed by many steps backward. We have been operating with a roadmap (The DOI and the Constitution, among other tent poles) that tends to institutionalize the weaknesses of humankind rather than to remedy them. The idea of POTUS, in particular, signaled the controversial poor choice to retain a monarch (although not hereditary) but then to vest in that monarch saintly responsibilities. It was wishful thinking.
— Kilgore Forelle
